"Perhaps they are unaware of your situation. I will call and communicate to them the sad tidings. As your relatives, it is right that they should know the truth."
He then took leave of the young creature, who now felt less forlorn since she knew that she possessed at least one friend who would not only exert himself in her behalf, but who also believed in her innocence.
From the New Prison Richard proceeded to Saint Giles's, and knocked at the door of the Public Executioner's abode.
But his summons remained unanswered.
He repeated it again: all was silent within.
At length a neighbour,—a man who kept a coal and potato shed,—emerged from his shop, and volunteered some information concerning the hangman and his son.
"It's no use knocking and knocking there, sir," said the man: "Smithers and his lad left London early yesterday morning for some place in the north of Ireland—I don't know the name—but where there's some work in his partickler line. The postman brought Smithers a letter, asking him to start off without delay; and he did so. He took Gibbet with him to give him another chance, he said, of trying his hand. Smithers told me all this before he went away, and asked me to take in any letters that might come for him, or answer any one that called. That's how I came to know all this."
"Do you happen to be aware when he will return?" asked Richard.
"I've no more idea than that there tater," answered the man, indicating with his foot a specimen of the vegetable alluded to.
Richard thanked the man for the information which he had been enabled to give, and then pursued his way towards the chief police station in the neighbourhood.