“Perhaps He does hate Himself!” said the man Matsin, who had also come in, and now looked at the scene with sullen apathy—“That may be the cause of all our troubles! I don’t understand the ways of God; or the ways of man either. I have done no harm. I married the woman—and we had that one child. I worked hard for both. I could not get sufficient money to keep us going; I did metal work—very well, so I was told. But they make it all abroad now by machinery—I cannot compete. They don’t want new designs they say—the old will serve. I do anything now that I can—but it is difficult. You, too,—you starve with us!”
“I am poor, if that is what you mean,” said Thord,—“but take all I have to-night, Matsin—” and he emptied a small purse of silver coins into the man’s hand. “Bury the poor little innocent one;—and comfort the mother when she wakes. Comfort her!—love her!—she needs love! I will be back again to-morrow.”
He strode away quickly, and Matsin remained at his door turning over the money in his hand.
“He will sacrifice something he needs himself, for this,” he muttered. “Yet that is the man they say the King would hang if ever he got hold of him! By Heaven!—the King himself should hang first!”
Meanwhile Sergius Thord went on, slackening his pace a little as he came near his own destination, a tall and narrow house at the end of the street, with a single light shining in one of the upper windows. There was a gas-lamp some few paces off, and under this stood a man reading, or trying to read, a newspaper by its flickering glare. Thord glanced at him with some suspicion—the stranger was too near his own lodging for his pleasure, for he was always on his guard against spies. Approaching more closely, he saw that though the man was shabbily attired in a rough pilot suit, much the worse for wear, he nevertheless had the indefinable look and bearing of a gentleman. Acting on impulse, as he often did, Thord spoke to him.
“A rough night for reading by lamplight, my friend!” he said.
The man looked up, and smiled.
“Yes, it is, rather! But I have only just got the evening paper.”
“Any special news?”
“No—only this—” and he pointed to a bold headline—“The King versus The Jesuits.”