“I am starving,” he drew his cloak closer around him, as if by so doing he shut out his appeal to humanity, and hurried on at a rapid pace.
Gray had not been begging long enough to have learnt humility, and the bitter curses he muttered after the man with the cloak would have made his hair stand on end, had he have heard them.
As he was then upon the point of rising from the step, and crawling to some more public thoroughfare, in which he might have a more extended sphere of operation, a strange wild noise smote his ears, and he drew back into the shadow of the doorway with a feeling of alarm.
The sound seemed to approach from the further end of the street, and now he could distinguish a voice addressing some one in imploring tones, which were replied to by a harsh voice. The words spoken Gray could not distinguish, but a strange presentiment came over him that he was somehow connected with the persons approaching, or the subject matter of their discourse.
Back—back—he shrunk into the doorway, until he was completely hidden in the shadow of the house.
The disputants rapidly approached, and then he could hear the rougher voice exclaim,—
“There is no harm meant you. You are a foolish woman. I tell you, over and over again, that you are wanted for your own good.”
“Murderer, away, away!” cried a voice that struck to the heart of Jacob Gray, for he knew it to be the woman he had seen at the public-house by Vauxhall, when he ran so narrow a chance of capture by Sir Francis Hartleton.
“Will you come quietly?” cried the man.
“No—no—not with you,” cried Maud, “not with you. Look at your hands, man, are they not dyed deeply with blood? Ha! Ha! Ha! You shrink now. No—no—Maud will not go with you; but I will tell you a secret. Listen—do you know Andrew Britton, the savage smith?”