There could be no ear to hear that smothered cry, as, abruptly lifted in his arms, she was pitched over the parapet of the bridge! Swinton did not even himself stay to hear the plunge. He only heard it; indistinctly blending with the sound of his own footsteps, as with terrified tread he retreated along the Park Road!
Chapter Eighty.
On the Tow-Rope.
With difficulty cordelling his barge around the Regent’s Park, Bill Bootle, the canal boatman, was making slow speed. This because the fog had thickened unexpectedly; and it was no easy matter to guide his old horse along the tow-path.
He would not have attempted it; but that he was next morning due in the Paddington Basin; where, at an early hour, the owner of the boat would be expecting him.
Bill was only skipper of the craft; the crew consisting of his wife, and a brace of young Bootles, one of them still at the breast. Mrs B, wearing her husband’s dreadnought to protect her from the raw air of the night, stood by the tiller, while Bootle himself had charge of the tow-horse.
He had passed through the Park Road Bridge, and was groping his way beyond, when a drift of the fog thicker than common came curling along the canal, compelling him to make stop.
The boat was still under the bridge; and Mrs Bootle, feeling that the motion was suspended, had ceased working the spokes. Just at this moment, both she and her husband heard a shuffling sound upon the bridge above them; which was quick followed by a “swish,” as of some bulky object descending through the air!