CHAPTER XVIII.
MISS CLARE'S HOME.
We had now arrived at the passage. The gin-shop was flaring through the fog. A man in a fustian jacket came out of it, and walked slowly down before us, with the clay of the brick-field clinging to him as high as the leather straps with which his trousers were confined, garter-wise, under the knee. The place was quiet. We and the brickmaker seemed the only people in it. When we turned the last corner, he was walking in at the very door where Miss Clare had disappeared. When I told my father that was the house, he called after the man, who came out again, and, standing on the pavement, waited until we came up.
"Does Miss Clare live in this house?" my father asked.
"She do," answered the man curtly.
"First floor?"
"No. Nor yet the second, nor the third. She live nearer heaven than 'ere another in the house 'cep' myself. I live in the attic, and so do she."
"There is a way of living nearer to heaven than that," said my father, laying his hand, "with a right old man's grace," on his shoulder.
"I dunno, 'cep' you was to go up in a belloon," said the man, with a twinkle in his eye, which my father took to mean that he understood him better than he chose to acknowledge; but he did not pursue the figure.
He was a rough, lumpish young man, with good but dull features—only his blue eye was clear. He looked my father full in the face, and I thought I saw a dim smile about his mouth.