Then he turned back into the saloon to find Stephen. He met him, having broken away at last from the fatherly advice of the Pole, and brushing the front of his coat down with his hand. He was very flushed and angry.
"You'd better waste no more time," remarked Talbot, calmly. "She is down at the 'Cock-pit,' playing."
Stephen gasped. "How did you find out that?" he asked.
"I've just been told by one of the habitués. Come along at once." Both the men went out, and Talbot, following the girl's directions, marched on decidedly, scarcely noticing Stephen's questions, which he could not answer.
"I don't know," he said, for the fiftieth time, to Stephen's last absurd query as to how long she had been there.
The houses became poorer and shabbier as they walked. Even in log-cabins there is a great difference marked between the respectable and the disreputable. And the figures that passed them from time to time, though more rarely here in this quarter, looked of the toughest, most cut-throat class.
"How can she like to come here alone?" exclaimed Stephen, with a shudder. "I wonder she is not afraid. I'm surprised she has not come to some harm long ago."
Talbot smiled to himself inside his fur collar and said nothing. The girl's absolute fearlessness was the point which he admired most in her character, and the immunity from danger seemed in her case, as in others, the natural accompaniment of it. Fortune is said to favour the brave. Misfortune certainly seems to spare them.
"I think this is the place," said Talbot at last, and they stopped before a large, but old and dirty-looking cabin. It was sunk beneath the usual level of the ground, and reached by some crooked, slippery steps. At the foot of these steps was a sort of yard, which you had to cross before reaching the cabin door itself. What was in the yard, or what its condition was, it was too dark to see, but a sickening smell came from it as the men descended the steps, and the ground seemed slippery or miry in places above the frozen snow. The windows of the cabin in front gave out no light whatever, but that there was light inside, and very bright light, was evidenced by that which burst through the chinks all over it.
"I shouldn't wonder if I stumbled over a corpse next," muttered Talbot, as he slipped and almost fell in the darkness on a slimy something under his feet that reminded him of blood. They got up to the door and tried the latch. It would not yield; then they thumped on it with their gloved fists.