Volume Three—Chapter Twelve.
A Late Recognition.
As Richard Glaire followed Daisy Banks and reached the works, he made for the great gates, took a rapid glance up and down the dark street to see that it was quite forsaken, and then slipped a latch-key in the wicket, which yielded quietly, and he passed in.
“Will she be here?” he said; and then it struck him suddenly that it was impossible: the works had been closely shut up.
“But she came here—to find me. Perhaps she has Joe Banks’s key,” he exclaimed. “At all events I’ll have a look.”
He crossed the yard, entered the great pile of buildings, and listened; then returning, he went to the counting-house, and through the passage to the dark opening into the alley, to find it on the latch.
“She is here,” he exclaimed, joyously; and, leaving it as it was, he proceeded to the great building, and then began to peer about in the darkness and listen, ending by seeking the first ladder leading to the half-floor.
“She’s playing with me,” he said, half laughing. “She’s a plucky little thing, though, to come here by herself;” and then he ascended, and stopped at one of the windows looking towards the town to listen, but all seemed still.
He had hardly placed his foot on the second flight of stairs, and begun to ascend, when the light of a bull’s-eye lantern was flashed all over the foundry.
“Dark as Jonah’s sea-parlour, my lad,” said a voice. “Come along, all of you,” and several men, who had entered by the counting-house door, and then gone back to fetch something, came silently into the great gloomy place.