Sandy did not linger to discuss the dreadful question with her; he was only the more eager to be off, and prove the suspicion false, by finding Gip somewhere. Tucking up his stock-in-trade, by which he was to support Gip and himself, as securely as he could under his jacket, he turned away, and ran down the dark archway into the street.
But once there, which way was he to turn—to the right hand or the left? In the alley this perplexity had not troubled him, for there were not two directions where Gip could wander. There were spirit-vaults which his mother frequented at each end of the street. Every way there stretched around him a tangled network of streets, with lanes and alleys and courts crossing one another, extending for hundreds of miles. True, little Gip could not have wandered very far off as yet, for she was too small and weakly; but if Sandy chose one direction, perhaps she would be paddling away just in the opposite one, and every step he took would set them farther and farther apart.
First of all, he went to both of the spirit-vaults, which were crowded this wet night, and searched in every corner, asking the busy assistants behind the counters if they had seen a little girl all alone. But she was not there, and there was nothing else to guide him to her. Yet a choice had to be made, and trusting himself to his luck, Sandy set off running as fast as he could through the now deserted streets, peeping into every doorway with his quick, searching eyes, and shouting "Gip! Gip!" up every archway and passage where she might have found shelter, if she had had sense enough.
It was a miserable night, one that Sandy could never forget, if he lived to be a hundred years old. The rain came down pitilessly, and the gusts of wind tore past him, blowing open his tattered clothes, as to force a way for the cold rain to beat against his bare skin. But his dread for Gip made him almost unconscious of his own wretchedness and weariness and hunger. She had no shoes, had little Gip, or a bonnet, or a jacket; nothing but a worn-out cotton frock, which he had picked up very cheaply in Rag Fair; so cheap and worn that his mother had not found it worth while to sell it again.
To think of Gip out in this rain and wind was agony to him; and he could very well bear the smaller misery of being wet and chilled to the bone himself. Along the silent streets, over crossings, round corners, Sandy pressed on at the top of his speed, resting now and then to take breath on a doorstep for a short minute or so, until the eastern sky grew grey and the clouds overhead were no longer black, and the morning came, and all the great city woke up slowly; but yet he had not found Gip. She was lost still.
As the streets filled, he knew his chance of seeing or hearing her would be very small. But he could not give up the search. It seemed as if he could not live without little Gip. Why to lose her in this way would be a hundred times worse than to see her lying dead in her small coffin, like the other babies, and watch the lid nailed over her peaceful face, and follow her with quiet tears to the cemetery a long way off; where the ground swallowed them up, and there was an end of them! They would never be cold, or famished, or beaten any more. Why had not Gip died rather than this dreadful misfortune happen to her? He would never give up seeking for her until he found out whether she was living or dead.
———◆———
[CHAPTER IV.]
LOST IN JERUSALEM.
FOUR days after this, Sandy was still seeking his lost Gip, but with a forlorn and despairing heart. Never until now had London seemed so big to him; never before had he felt how crowded it was with people, all strangers to him; many of them, as it appeared, enemies to him. He did not know a single friend among them. There were a few fusee boys who were good to him when they were in luck, but they did not altogether approve of Sandy's plan, that he should do nothing but search for Gip, whilst they worked to feed him. There had been some hard words already spoken to him about it; and Sandy could see close at hand that even these old comrades would forsake him.