Shuddering convulsively at the memories his voice and his presence brought to her, the words that came to her lips tore his heart. "Am I struck? Am I like the Hoodoo? Am I like Uncle Si?"
To him, just then, this wildness was hardly more than a symptom of a mind deranged. His great distress did not allow him to pursue its implication, nor could he understand the nadir of the soul from which it sprang. Yet many times in the days to follow he was haunted by those words. They came to him in his waking hours and often in lieu of sleep at night.
Returning from this short and unhappy interview to his new home at Number 116, New Cross Street, he found a surprise in store. A visitor had called to see him and, at the moment of his arrival, was on the point of going away.
His late master, looking very grey and frail, had come to beg him to return. He declared that he was now too old to carry on alone. Sight and hearing were growing worse. He had another quarrel with the char and had been obliged to send her permanently away, although the truth of the matter was that an oppressed female had risen at last against his tyranny and had found a better place.
S. Gedge Antiques was now a figure for pity, but William, fresh from the lacerating presence of the niece whom he had so cruelly thrown out of doors, had none to give.
The whine and snuffle of their last meeting, at whose remembrance rose the gorge of an honest man, were no more. Instead of the crocodile tricks were now the slow tears of a soul in agony. The truth was, this childless and friendless old man, who in the grip of the
