He was “treated.” He drank beer. Other old friends came in. He drank gin. If good resolves had been coming up in his mind earlier in the day he forgot them now. If better feelings had been struggling for the mastery, he crushed them now. He got drunk. He became disorderly. He went into High Street, Whitechapel, with a view to do damage to somebody. He succeeded. He tumbled over a barrow, and damaged his own shins. He encountered Number 666 soon after, and, through his influence, passed the night in a police cell.
After this Ned gave up all thought of searching for his wife and family.
“Better let ’em alone,” he growled to himself on being discharged from the police-office with a caution.
But, as we have said or hinted elsewhere, Ned was a man of iron will. He resolved to avoid the public-house, to drink in moderation, and to do his drinking at home. Being as powerful and active as ever he had been, he soon managed, in the capacity of a common labourer, to scrape enough money together to enable him to retake his old garret, which chanced to be vacant. Indeed its situation was so airy, and it was so undesirable, that it was almost always vacant. He bought a few cages and birds; found that the old manager of the low music-hall was still at work and ready to employ him, and thus fell very much into his old line of life.
One night, as he was passing into his place of business—the music-hall—a man saw him and recognised him. This was a city missionary of the John Seaward type, who chanced to be fishing for souls that night in these troubled waters. There are many such fishermen about, thank God, doing their grand work unostentatiously, and not only rescuing souls for eternity, but helping, more perhaps than even the best informed are aware of, to save London from tremendous evil.
What it was in Ned Frog that attracted this man of God we know note but, after casting his lines for some hours in other places, he returned to the music-hall and loitered about the door.
At a late hour its audience came pouring out with discordant cries and ribald laughter. Soon Ned appeared and took his way homeward. The missionary followed at a safe distance till he saw Ned disappear through the doorway that led to his garret. Then, running forward, he entered the dark passage and heard Ned’s heavy foot clanking on the stone steps as he mounted upwards.
The sound became fainter, and the missionary, fearing lest he should fail to find the room in which his man dwelt—for there were many rooms in the old tenement—ran hastily up-stairs and paused to listen. The footsteps were still sounding above him, but louder now, because Ned was mounting a wooden stair. A few seconds later a heavy door was banged, and all was quiet.
The city missionary now groped his way upwards until he came to the highest landing, where in the thick darkness he saw a light under a door. With a feeling of uncertainty and a silent prayer for help he knocked gently. The door was opened at once by a middle-aged woman, whose outline only could be seen, her back being to the light.
“Is it here that the man lives who came up just now?” asked the missionary.