XXXV
LACKING A PARLOUR on the ground floor for the use of special customers, William had arranged a room upstairs where they could smoke and drink. There were tables in front of the windows and chairs against the walls, and in the middle of the room a bagatelle board. When William left off going to race-courses he had intended to refrain from taking money across the bar and to do all his betting business in this room.
 He thought that it would be safer. But as his customers multiplied he found that he could not ask them all upstairs; it attracted more attention than to take the money quietly across the bar. Nevertheless the room upstairs had proved a success. A man spent more money if he had a room where he could sit quietly among his friends than he would seated on a high stool in a public bar, jostled and pushed about; so it had come to be considered a sort of club room; and a large part of the neighbourhood came there to read the papers, to hear and discuss the news. And specially useful it had proved to Journeyman and Stack. Neither was now in employment; they were now professional backers; and from daylight to dark they wandered from public-house to public-house, from tobacconist to barber’s shop, in the search of tips, on the quest of stable information regarding the health of the horses and their trials. But the room upstairs at the “King’s Head” was the centre of their operations. Stack was the indefatigable tipster, Journeyman was the scientific student of public form. His memory was prodigious, and it enabled him to note an advantage in the weights which would escape an ordinary observer. He often picked out horses which, if they did not actually win, nearly always stood at a short price in the betting before the race.
 The “King’s Head” was crowded during the dinner-hour. Barbers and their assistants, cabmen, scene-shifters, if there was an afternoon performance at the theatre, servants out of situation and servants escaped from their service for an hour, petty shopkeepers, the many who grow weary of the scant livelihood that work brings them, came there. Eleven o’clock! In another hour the bar and the room upstairs would be crowded. At present the room was empty, and Journeyman had taken advantage of the quiet time to do a bit of work at his handicap. All the racing of the last three years lay within his mind’s range; he recalled at will every trifling selling race; hardly ever was he obliged to refer to the Racing Calendar. Wanderer had beaten Brick at ten pounds. Snow Queen had beaten Shoemaker at four pounds, and Shoemaker had beaten Wanderer at seven pounds. The problem was further complicated by the suspicion that Brick could get a distance of ground better than Snow Queen. Journeyman was undecided. He stroked his short brown moustache with his thin, hairy hand, and gnawed the end of his pen. In this moment of barren reflection Stack came into the room.
 “Still at yer ’andicap, I see,” said Stack. “How does it work out?”
 “Pretty well,” said Journeyman. “But I don’t think it will be one of my best; there is some pretty hard nuts to crack.”
 “Which are they?” said Stack. Journeyman brightened up, and he proceeded to lay before Stack’s intelligence what he termed a “knotty point in collateral running.”
 Stack listened with attention, and thus encouraged, Journeyman proceeded to point out certain distributions of weight which he said seemed to him difficult to beat.
 “Anyone what knows the running would say there wasn’t a pin to choose between them at the weights. If this was the real ’andicap, I’d bet drinks all around that fifteen of these twenty would accept. And that’s more than anyone will be able to say for Courtney’s ’andicap. The weights will be out to-morrow; we shall see.”
 “What do you say to ’alf a pint,” said Stack, “and we’ll go steadily through your ’andicap? You’ve nothing to do for the next ’alf-hour.”
 Journeyman’s dingy face lit up. When the potboy appeared in answer to the bell he was told to bring up two half-pints, and Journeyman read out the weights. Every now and then he stopped to explain his reasons for what might seem to be superficial, an unmerited severity, or an undue leniency. It was not usual for Journeyman to meet with so sympathetic a listener; he had often been made to feel that his handicapping was unnecessary, and he now noticed, and with much pleasure, that Stack’s attention seemed to increase rather than to diminish as he approached the end. When he had finished Stack said, “I see you’ve given six-seven to Ben Jonson. Tell me why you did that?”
 “He was a good ’orse once; he’s broken down and aged; he can’t be trained, so six-seven seems just the kind of weight to throw him in at. You couldn’t give him less, however old and broken down he may be. He was a good horse when he won the Great Ebor Grand Cup.”
 “Do you think if they brought him to the post as fit and well as he was the day he won the Ebor that he’d win?”
 “What, fit and well as he was when he won the Great Ebor, and with six-seven on his back? He’d walk away with it.”
 “You don’t think any of the three-year-olds would have a chance with him?
A Derby winner with seven stone on his back might beat him.”
“Yes, but nothing short of that. Even then old Ben would make a race of it. A nailing good horse once. A little brown horse about fifteen two, as compact as a leg of Welsh mutton .... But there’s no use in thinking of him. They’ve been trying for years to train him. Didn’t they used to get the flesh off him in a Turkish bath? That was Fulton’s notion. He used to say that it didn’t matter ’ow you got the flesh off so long as you got it off. Every pound of flesh off the lungs is so much wind, he used to say. But the Turkish bath trained horses came to the post limp as old rags. If a ’orse ’asn’t the legs you can’t train him. Every pound of flesh yer take off must put a pound ’o ’ealth on. They’ll do no good with old Ben, unless they’ve found out a way of growing on him a pair of new forelegs. The old ones won’t do for my money.”
 “But do you think that Courtney will take the same view of his capabilities as you do — do you think he’ll let him off as easily as you have?”
 “He can’t give him much more .... The ’orse is bound to get in at seven stone, rather under than over.”
 “I’m glad to ’ear yer say so, for I know you’ve a headpiece, and ’as all the running in there.” Stack tapped his forehead. “Now, I’d like to ask you if there’s any three-year-olds that would be likely to interfere with him?”
 “Derby and Leger winners will get from eight stone to eight stone ten, and three-year-olds ain’t no good over the Cesarewitch course with more than eight on their backs.”
 The conversation paused. Surprised at Stack’s silence, Journeyman said —
 “Is there anything up? Have you heard anything particular about old Ben?”
 Stack bent forward. “Yes, I’ve heard something, and I’m making inquiries.”
 “How did you hear it?”
 Stack drew his chair a little closer. “I’ve been up at Chalk Farm, the ‘Yarborough Arms’; you know, where the ‘buses stop. Bob Barrett does a deal of business up there. He pays the landlord’s rent for the use of the bar — Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays is his days. Charley Grove bets there Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, but it is Bob that does the biggest part of the business. They say he’s taken as much as twenty pounds in a morning. You know Bob, a great big man, eighteen stun if he’s an ounce. He’s a warm ’un, can put it on thick.”
 “I know him; he do tell fine stories about the girls; he has the pick of the neighbourhood, wears a low hat, no higher than that, with a big brim. I know him. I’ve heard that he ’as moved up that way. Used at one time to keep a tobacconist’s shop in Great Portland Street.”
 “That’s him,” said Stack. “I thought you’d heard of him.”
 “There ain’t many about that I’ve not heard of. Not that I likes the man much. There was a girl I knew — she wouldn’t hear his name mentioned. But he lays fair prices, and does, I believe, a big trade.”
 “‘As a nice ’ome at Brixton, keeps a trap; his wife as pretty a woman as you could wish to lay eyes on. I’ve seen her with him at Kempton.”
 “You was up there this morning?”
 “Yes.”
 “It wasn’t Bob Barrett that gave you the tip?”
 “Not likely.” The men laughed, and then Stack said —
 “You know Bill Evans? You’ve seen him here, always wore a blue Melton jacket and billycock hat; a dark, stout, good-looking fellow; generally had something to sell, or pawn-tickets that he would part with for a trifle.”
 “Yes, I know the fellow. We met him down at Epsom one Derby Day. Sarah
Tucker, a friend of the missis, was dead gone on him.”
“Yes, she went to live with him. There was a row, and now, I believe, they’re together again; they was seen out walking. They’re friends, anyhow. Bill has been away all the summer, tramping. A bad lot, but one of them sort often hears of a good thing.”
 “So it was from Bill Evans that you heard it.”
 “Yes, it was from Bill. He has just come up from Eastbourne, where he ’as been about on the Downs a great deal. I don’t know if it was the horses he was after, but in the course of his proceedings he heard from a shepherd that Ben Jonson was doing seven hours’ walking exercise a day. This seemed to have fetched Bill a bit. Seven hours a day walking exercise do seem a bit odd, and being at the same time after one of the servants in the training stable — as pretty a bit of goods as he ever set eyes on, so Bill says — he thought he’d make an inquiry or two about all this walking exercise. One of the lads in the stable is after the girl, too, so Bill found out very soon all he wanted to know. As you says, the ’orse is dicky on ’is forelegs, that is the reason of all the walking exercise.”
 “And they thinks they can bring him fit to the post and win the
Cesarewitch with him by walking him all day?”
“I don’t say they don’t gallop him at all; they do gallop him, but not as much as if his legs was all right.”
 “That won’t do. I don’t believe in a ’orse winning the Cesarewitch that ain’t got four sound legs, and old Ben ain’t got more than two.”
 “He’s had a long rest, and they say he is sounder than ever he was since he won the Great Ebor. They don’t say he’d stand no galloping, but they don’t want to gallop him more than’s absolutely necessary on account of the suspensory ligament; it ain’t the back sinew, but the suspensory ligament. Their theory is this, that it don’t so much matter about bringing him quite fit to the post, for he’s sure to stay the course; he’d do that three times over. What they say is this, that if he gets in with seven stone, and we brings him well and three parts trained, there ain’t no ’orse in England that can stand up before him. They’ve got another in the race, Laurel Leaf, to make the running for him; it can’t be too strong for old Ben. You say to yourself that he may get let off with six-seven. If he do there’ll be tons of money on him. He’ll be backed at the post at five to one. Before the weights come out they’ll lay a hundred to one on the field in any of the big clubs. I wouldn’t mind putting a quid on him if you’ll join me.”
 “Better wait until the weights come out,” said Journeyman, “for if it happened to come to Courtney’s ears that old Ben could be trained he’d clap seven-ten on him without a moment’s hesitation.”
 “You think so?” said Stack.
 “I do,” said Journeyman.
 “But you agree with me that if he got let off with anything less than seven stone, and be brought fit, or thereabouts, to the post, that the race is a moral certainty for him?”
 “A thousand to a brass farthing.”
 “Mind, not a word.”
 “Is it likely?”
 The conversation paused a moment, and Journeyman said, “You’ve not seen my ’andicap for the Cambridgeshire. I wonder what you’d think of that?” Stack said he would be glad to see it another time, and suggested that they go downstairs.
 “I’m afraid the police is in,” said Stack, when he opened the door.
 “Then we’d better stop where we are; I don’t want to be took to the station.”
 They listened for some moments, holding the door ajar.
 “It ain’t the police,” said Stack, “but a row about some bet. Latch had better be careful.”
 The cause of the uproar was a tall young English workman, whose beard was pale gold, and whose teeth were white. He wore a rough handkerchief tied round his handsome throat. His eyes were glassy with drink, and his comrades strove to quieten him.
 “Leave me alone,” he exclaimed; “the bet was ten half-crowns to one. I won’t stand being welshed.”
 William’s face flushed up. “Welshed!” he said. “No one speaks in this bar of welshing.” He would have sprung over the counter, but Esther held him back.
 “I know what I’m talking about; you let me alone,” said the young workman, and he struggled out of the hands of his friends. “The bet was ten half-crowns to one.”
 “Don’t mind what he says, guv’nor.”
 “Don’t mind what I says!” For a moment it seemed as if the friends were about to come to blows, but the young man’s perceptions suddenly clouded, and he said, “In this blo-ody bar last Monday ... horse backed in Tattersall’s at twelve to one taken and offered.”
 “He don’t know what he’s talking about; but no one must accuse me of welshing in this ’ere bar.”
 “No offence, guv’nor; mistakes will occur.”
 William could not help laughing, and he sent Teddy upstairs for Monday’s paper. He pointed out that eight to one was being asked for about the horse on Monday afternoon at Tattersall’s. The stage door-keeper and a scene-shifter had just come over from the theatre, and had managed to force their way into the jug and bottle entrance. Esther and Charles had been selling beer and spirits as fast as they could draw it, but the disputed bet had caused the company to forget their glasses.
 “Just one more drink,” said the young man. “Take the ten half-crowns out in drinks, guv’nor, that’s good enough. What do you say, guv’nor?”
 “What, ten half-crowns?” William answered angrily. “Haven’t I shown you that the ’orse was backed at Tattersall’s the day you made the bet at eight to one?”
 “Ten to one, guv’nor.”
 “I’ve not time to go on talking .... You’re interfering with my business.
You must get out of my bar.”
“Who’ll put me out?”
 “Charles, go and fetch a policeman.”
 At the word “policeman” the young man seemed to recover his wits somewhat, and he answered, “You’ll bring in no bloody policeman. Fetch a policeman! and what about your blooming betting — what will become of it?” William looked round to see if there was any in the bar whom he could not trust. He knew everyone present, and believed he could trust them all. There was but one thing to do, and that was to put on a bold face and trust to luck. “Now out you go,” he said, springing over the counter, “and never you set your face inside my bar again.” Charles followed the guv’nor over the counter like lightning, and the drunkard was forced into the street. “He don’t mean no ’arm,” said one of the friends; “he’ll come round to-morrow and apologise for what he’s said.”
 “I don’t want his apology,” said William. “No one shall call me a welsher in my bar .... Take your friend away, and never let me see him in my bar again.”
 Suddenly William turned very pale. He was seized with a fit of coughing, and this great strong man leaned over the counter very weak indeed. Esther led him into the parlour, leaving Charles to attend to the customers. His hand trembled like a leaf, and she sat by his side holding it. Mr. Blamy came in to ask if he should lay one of the young gentlemen from the tutor’s thirty shillings to ten against the favourite. Esther said that William could attend to no more customers that day. Mr. Blamy returned ten minutes after to say that there was quite a number of people in the bar; should he refuse to take their money?
 “Do you know them all?” said William.
 “I think so, guv’nor.”
 “Be careful to bet with no one you don’t know; but I’m so bad I can hardly speak.”
 “Much better send them away,” said Esther.
 “Then they’ll go somewhere else.”
 “It won’t matter; they’ll come back to where they’re sure of their money.”
 “I’m not so sure of that,” William answered, feebly. “I think it will be all right, Teddy; you’ll be very careful.”
 “Yes, guv’nor, I’ll keep down the price.”
 XXXVI
 One afternoon Fred Parsons came into the bar of the “King’s Head.” He wore the cap and jersey of the Salvation Army; he was now Captain Parsons. The bars were empty. It was a time when business was slackest. The morning’s betting was over; the crowd had dispersed, and would not collect again until the Evening Standard had come in. William had gone for a walk. Esther and the potboy were alone in the house. The potman was at work in the backyard, Esther was sewing in the parlour. Hearing steps, she went into the bar. Fred looked at her abashed, he was a little perplexed. He said —
 “Is your husband in? I should like to speak to him.”
 “No, my husband is out. I don’t expect him back for an hour or so. Can I give him any message?”
 She was on the point of asking him how he was. But there was something so harsh and formal in his tone and manner that she refrained. But the idea in her mind must have expressed itself in her face, for suddenly his manner softened. He drew a deep breath, and passed his hand across his forehead. Then, putting aside the involuntary thought, he said —
 “Perhaps it will come through you as well as any other way. I had intended to speak to him, but I can explain the matter better to you .... It is about the betting that is being carried on here. We mean to put a stop to it. That’s what I came to tell him. It must be put a stop to. No right-minded person — it cannot be allowed to go on.”
 Esther said nothing; not a change of expression came upon her grave face. Fred was agitated. The words stuck in his throat, and his hands were restless. Esther raised her calm eyes, and looked at him. His eyes were pale, restless eyes.
 “I’ve come to warn you,” he said, “that the law will be set in motion .... It is very painful for me, but something must be done. The whole neighbourhood is devoured by it.” Esther did not answer, and he said, “Why don’t you answer, Esther?”
 “What is there for me to answer? You tell me that you are going to get up a prosecution against us. I can’t prevent you. I’ll tell my husband what you say.”
 “This is a very serious matter, Esther.” He had come into command of his voice, and he spoke with earnest determination. “If we get a conviction against you for keeping a betting-house, you will not only be heavily fined, but you will also lose your licence. All we ask is that the betting shall cease. No,” he said, interrupting, “don’t deny anything; it is quite useless, we know everything. The whole neighbourhood is demoralized by this betting; nothing is thought of but tips; the day’s racing — that is all they think about — the evening papers, and the latest information. You do not know what harm you’re doing. Every day we hear of some new misfortune — a home broken up, the mother in the workhouse, the daughter on the streets, the father in prison, and all on account of this betting. Oh, Esther, it is horrible; think of the harm you’re doing.”
 Fred Parsons’ high, round forehead, his weak eyes, his whole face, was expressive of fear and hatred of the evil which a falsetto voice denounced with much energy.
 Suddenly he seemed to grow nervous and perplexed. Esther was looking at him, and he said, “You don’t answer, Esther?”
 “What would you have me answer?”
 “You used to be a good, religious woman. Do you remember how we used to speak when we used to go for walks together, when you were in service in the Avondale road? I remember you agreeing with me that much good could be done by those who were determined to do it. You seem to have changed very much since those days.”
 For a moment Esther seemed affected by these remembrances. Then she said in a low, musical voice —
 “No, I’ve not changed, Fred, but things has turned out different. One doesn’t do the good that one would like to in the world; one has to do the good that comes to one to do. I’ve my husband and my boy to look to. Them’s my good. At least, that’s how I sees things.”
 Fred looked at Esther, and his eyes expressed all the admiration and love that he felt for her character. “One owes a great deal,” he said, “to those who are near to one, but not everything; even for their sakes one should not do wrong to others, and you must see that you are doing a great wrong to your fellow-creatures by keeping on this betting. Public-houses are bad enough, but when it comes to gambling as well as drink, there’s nothing for us to do but to put the law in motion. Look you, Esther, there isn’t a shop-boy earning eighteen shillings a week that hasn’t been round here to put his half-crown on some horse. This house is the immoral centre of the neighbourhood. No one’s money is refused. The boy that pawned his father’s watch to back a horse went to the ‘King’s Head’ to put his money on. His father forgave him again and again. Then the boy stole from the lodgers. There was an old woman of seventy-five who got nine shillings a week for looking after some offices; he had half-a-crown off her. Then the father told the magistrate that he could do nothing with him since he had taken to betting on horse-races. The boy is fourteen. Is it not shocking? It cannot be allowed to go on. We have determined to put a stop to it. That’s what I came to tell your husband.”
 “Are you sure,” said Esther, and she bit her lips while she spoke, “that it is entirely for the neighbourhood that you want to get up the prosecution?”
 “You don’t think there’s any other reason, Esther? You surely don’t think that I’m doing this because — because he took you away from me?”
 Esther didn’t answer. And then Fred said, and there was pain and pathos in his voice, “I am sorry you think this of me; I’m not getting up the prosecution. I couldn’t prevent the law being put in motion against you even if I wanted to .... I only know that it is going to be put in motion, so for the sake of old times I would save you from harm if I could. I came round to tell you if you did not put a stop to the betting you’d get into trouble. I have no right to do what I have done, but I’d do anything to save you and yours from harm.”
 “I am sorry for what I said. It was very good of you.”
 “We have not any proofs as yet; we know, of course, all about the betting, but we must have sworn testimony before the law can be set in motion, so you’ll be quite safe if you can persuade your husband to give it up.” Esther did not answer. “It is entirely on account of the friendship I feel for you that made me come to warn you of the danger. You don’t bear me any ill-will, Esther, I hope?”
 “No, Fred, I don’t. I think I understand.” The conversation paused again. “I suppose we have said everything.” Esther turned her face from him. Fred looked at her, and though her eyes were averted from him she could see that he loved her. In another moment he was gone. In her plain and ignorant way she thought on the romance of destiny. For if she had married Fred her life would have been quite different. She would have led the life that she wished to lead, but she had married William and — well, she must do the best she could. If Fred, or Fred’s friends, got the police to prosecute them for betting, they would, as he said, not only have to pay a heavy fine, but would probably lose their licence. Then what would they do? William had not health to go about from race-course to race-course as he used to. He had lost a lot of money in the last six months; Jack was at school — they must think of Jack. The thought of their danger lay on her heart all that evening. But she had had no opportunity of speaking to William alone, she had to wait until they were in their room. Then, as she untied the strings of her petticoats, she said —
 “I had a visit from Fred Parsons this afternoon.”
 “That’s the fellow you were engaged to marry. Is he after you still?”
 “No, he came to speak to me about the betting.”
 “About the betting — what is it to do with him?”
 “He says that if it isn’t stopped that we shall be prosecuted.”
 “So he came here to tell you that, did he? I wish I had been in the bar.”
 “I’m glad you wasn’t. What good could you have done? To have a row and make things worse!”
 William lit his pipe and unlaced his boots. Esther slipped on her night-dress and got into a large brass bedstead, without curtains. On the chest of drawers Esther had placed the books her mother had given her, and William had hung some sporting prints on the walls. He took his night-shirt from the pillow and put it on without removing his pipe from his mouth. He always finished his pipe in bed.
 “It is revenge,” he said, pulling the bed-clothes up to his chin, “because
I got you away from him.”
“I don’t think it is that; I did think so at first, and I said so.”
 “What did he say?”
 “He said he was sorry I thought so badly of him; that he came to warn us of our danger. If he had wanted to do us an injury he wouldn’t have said nothing about it. Don’t you think so?”
 “It seems reasonable. Then what do you think they’re doing it for?”
 “He says that keeping a betting-house is corruption in the neighbourhood.”
 “You think he thinks that?”
 “I know he do; and there is many like him. I come of them that thinks like that, so I know. Betting and drink is what my folk, the Brethren, holds as most evil.”
 “But you’ve forgot all about them Brethren?”
 “No, one never forgets what one’s brought up in.”
 “But what do you think now?”
 “I’ve never said nothing about it. I don’t believe in a wife interfering with her husband; and business was that bad, and your ’ealth ’asn’t been the same since them colds you caught standing about in them betting rings, so I don’t see how you could help it. But now that business is beginning to come back to us, it might be as well to give up the betting.”
 “It is the betting that brings the business; we shouldn’t take five pounds a week was it not for the betting. What’s the difference between betting on the course and betting in the bar? No one says nothing against it on the course; the police is there, and they goes after the welshers and persecutes them. Then the betting that’s done at Tattersall’s and the Albert Club, what is the difference? The Stock Exchange, too, where thousands and thousands is betted every day. It is the old story — one law for the rich and another for the poor. Why shouldn’t the poor man ’ave his ’alf-crown’s worth of excitement? The rich man can have his thousand pounds’ worth whenever he pleases. The same with the public ’ouses — there’s a lot of hypocritical folk that is for docking the poor man of his beer, but there’s no one that’s for interfering with them that drink champagne in the clubs. It’s all bloody rot, and it makes me sick when I think of it. Them hypocritical folk. Betting! Isn’t everything betting? How can they put down betting? Hasn’t it been going on since the world began? Rot, says I! They can just ruin a poor devil like me, and that’s about all. We are ruined, and the rich goes scot-free. Hypocritical, mealy-mouthed lot. ‘Let’s say our prayers and sand the sugar’; that’s about it. I hate them that is always prating out religion. When I hears too much religion going about I says now’s the time to look into their accounts.”
 William leaned out of bed to light his pipe from the candle on the night-table.
 “There’s good people in the world, people that never thinks but of doing good, and do not live for pleasure.”
 “‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,’ Esther. Their only pleasure is a bet. When they’ve one on they’ve something to look forward to; whether they win or lose they ’as their money’s worth. You know what I say is true; you’ve seen them, how they look forward to the evening paper to see how the ’oss is going on in betting. Man can’t live without hope. It is their only hope, and I says no one has a right to take it from them.”
 “What about their poor wives? Very little good their betting is to them. It’s all very well to talk like that, William, but you know, and you can’t say you don’t, that a great deal of mischief comes of betting; you know that once they think of it and nothing else, they neglect their work. There’s Stack, he’s lost his place as porter; there’s Journeyman, too, he’s out of work.”
 “And a good thing for them; they’ve done a great deal better since they chucked it.”
 “For the time, maybe; but who says it will go on? Look at old John; he’s going about in rags; and his poor wife, she was in here the other night, a terrible life she’s ’ad of it. You says that no ’arm comes of it. What about that boy that was ’ad up the other day, and said that it was all through betting? He began by pawning his father’s watch. It was here that he made the first bet. You won’t tell me that it is right to bet with bits of boys like that.”
 “The horse he backed with me won.”
 “So much the worse .... The boy’ll never do another honest day’s work as long as he lives .... When they win, they ’as a drink for luck; when they loses, they ’as a drink to cheer them up.”
 “I’m afraid, Esther, you ought to have married the other chap. He’d have given you the life that you’d have been happy in. This public-& ’ouse ain’t suited to you.”
 Esther turned round and her eyes met her husband’s. There was a strange remoteness in his look, and they seemed very far from each other.
 “I was brought up to think so differently,” she said, her thoughts going back to her early years in the little southern seaside home. “I suppose this betting and drinking will always seem to me sinful and wicked. I should ’ave liked quite a different kind of life, but we don’t choose our lives, we just makes the best of them. You was the father of my child, and it all dates from that.”
 “I suppose it do.”
 William lay on his back, and blew the smoke swiftly from his mouth.
 “If you smoke much more we shan’t be able to breathe in this room.”
 “I won’t smoke no more. Shall I blow the candle out?”
 “Yes, if you like.”
 When the room was in darkness, just before they settled their faces on the pillow for sleep, William said —
 “It was good of that fellow to come and warn us. I must be very careful for the future with whom I bet.”

XXXVII
ON SUNDAY, as soon as dinner was over, Esther had intended to go to East Dulwich to see Mrs. Lewis. But as she closed the door behind her, she saw Sarah coming up the street.
“Ah, I see you’re going out.”
 “It don’t matter; won’t you come in, if it’s only for a minute?”
 “No, thank you, I won’t keep you. But which way are you going? We might go a little way together.”
 They walked down Waterloo Place and along Pall Mall. In Trafalgar Square there was a demonstration, and Sarah lingered in the crowd so long that when they arrived at Charing Cross, Esther found that she could not get to Ludgate Hill in time to catch her train, so they went into the Embankment Gardens. It had been raining, and the women wiped the seats with their handkerchiefs before sitting down. There was no fashion to interest them, and the band sounded foolish in the void of the grey London Sunday. Sarah’s chatter was equally irrelevant, and Esther wondered how Sarah could talk so much about nothing, and regretted her visit to East Dulwich more and more. Suddenly Bill’s name came into the conversation.
 “But I thought you didn’t see him any more; you promised us you wouldn’t.”
 “I couldn’t help it .... It was quite an accident. One day, coming back from church with Annie — that’s the new housemaid — he came up and spoke to us.”
 “What did he say?”
 “He said, ‘How are ye? ... Who’d thought of meeting you!’”
 “And what did you say?”
 “I said I didn’t want to have nothing to do with him. Annie walked on, and then he said he was very sorry, that it was bad luck that drove him to it.”
 “And you believed him?”
 “I daresay it is very foolish of me. But one can’t help oneself. Did you ever really care for a man?”
 And without waiting for an answer, Sarah continued her babbling chatter. She had asked him not to come after her; she thought he was sorry for what he had done. She mentioned incidentally that he had been away in the country and had come back with very particular information regarding a certain horse for the Cesarewitch. If the horse won he’d be all right.
 At last Esther’s patience was tired out.
 “It must be getting late,” she said, looking towards where the sun was setting. The river rippled, and the edges of the warehouses had perceptibly softened; a wind, too, had come up with the tide, and the women shivered as they passed under the arch of Waterloo Bridge. They ascended a flight of high steps and walked through a passage into the Strand.
 “I was miserable enough with him; we used to have hardly anything to eat; but I’m more miserable away from him. Esther, I know you’ll laugh at me, but I’m that heart-broken ... I can’t live without him ... I’d do anything for him.”
 “He isn’t worth it.”
 “That don’t make no difference. You don’t know what love is; a woman who hasn’t loved a man who don’t love her, don’t. We used to live near here. Do you mind coming up Drury Lane? I should like to show you the house.”
 “I’m afraid it will be out of our way.”
 “No, it won’t. Round by the church and up Newcastle Street .... Look, there’s a shop we used to go to sometimes. I’ve eaten many a good sausage and onions in there, and that’s a pub where we often used to go for a drink.”
 The courts and alleys had vomited their population into the Lane. Fat girls clad in shawls sat around the slum opening nursing their babies. Old women crouched in decrepit doorways, fumbling their aprons; skipping ropes whirled in the roadway. A little higher up a vendor of cheap ices had set up his store and was rapidly absorbing all the pennies of the neighborhood. Esther and Sarah turned into a dilapidated court, where a hag argued the price of trotters with a family leaning one over the other out of a second-floor window. This was the block in which Sarah had lived. A space had been cleared by the builder, and the other side was shut in by the great wall of the old theatre.
 “That’s where we used to live,” said Sarah, pointing up to the third floor. “I fancy our house will soon come down. When I see the old place it all comes back to me. I remember pawning a dress over the way in the lane; they would only lend me a shilling on it. And you see that shop — the shutters is up, it being Sunday; it is a sort of butcher’s, cheap meat, livers and lights, trotters, and such-like. I bought a bullock’s heart there, and stewed it down with some potatoes; we did enjoy it, I can tell you.”
 Sarah talked so eagerly of herself that Esther had not the heart to interrupt her. They made their way out into Catherine Street, and then to Endell Street, and then going round to St. Giles’ Church, they plunged into the labyrinth of Soho.
 “I’m afraid I’m tiring you. I don’t see what interest all this can be to you.”
 “We’ve known each other a long time.”
 Sarah looked at her, and then, unable to resist the temptation, she continued her narrative — Bill had said this, she had said that. She rattled on, until they came to the corner of Old Compton Street. Esther, who was a little tired of her, held out her hand. “I suppose you must be getting back; would you like a drop of something?”
 “It is going on for seven o’clock; but since you’re that kind I think I’d like a glass of beer.”
 “Do you listen much to the betting talk here of an evening?” Sarah asked, as she was leaving.
 “I don’t pay much attention, but I can’t help hearing a good deal.”
 “Do they talk much about Ben Jonson for the Cesarewitch?”
 “They do, indeed; he’s all the go.”
 Sarah’s face brightened perceptibly, and Esther said —
 “Have you backed him?’
 “Only a trifle; half-a-crown that a friend put me on. Do they say he’ll win?”
 “They say that if he don’t break down he’ll win by ’alf a mile; it all depends on his leg.”
 “Is he coming on in the betting?”
 “Yes, I believe they’re now taking 12 to 1 about him. But I’ll ask
William, if you like.”
“No, no, I only wanted to know if you’d heard anything new.”

XXXVIII
 During the next fortnight Sarah came several times to the “King’s Head.” She came in about nine in the evening, and stayed for half-an-hour or more. The ostensible object of her visit was to see Esther, but she declined to come into the private bar, where they would have chatted comfortably, and remained in the public bar listening to the men’s conversation, listening and nodding while old John explained the horse’s staying power to her. On the following evening all her interest was in Ketley. She wanted to know if anything had happened that might be considered as an omen. She said she had dreamed about the race, but her dream was only a lot of foolish rubbish without head or tail. Ketley argued earnestly against this view of a serious subject, and in the hope of convincing her of her error offered to walk as far as Oxford Street with her and put her into her ‘bus. But on the following evening all her interest was centered in Mr. Journeyman, who declared that he could prove that according to the weight it seemed to him to look more and more like a certainty. He had let the horse in at six stone ten pounds, the official handicapper had only given him six stone seven pounds.
 “They is a-sending of him along this week, and if the leg don’t go it is a hundred pound to a brass farthing on the old horse.”
 “How many times will they gallop him?” Sarah asked.
 “He goes a mile and a ’arf every day now .... The day after to-morrow they’ll try him, just to see that he hasn’t lost his turn of speed, and if he don’t break down in the trial you can take it from me that it will be all right.”
 “When will you know the result of the trial?”
 “I expect a letter on Friday morning,” said Stack. “If you come in in the evening I’ll let you know about it.”
 “Thank you very much, Mr. Stack. I must be getting home now.”
 “I’m going your way, Miss Tucker .... If you like, we’ll go together, and
I’ll tell you,” he whispered, “all about the ’orse.”
When they had left the bar the conversation turned on racing as an occupation for women.
 “Fancy my wife making a book on the course. I bet she’d overlay it and then turn round and back the favourite at a shorter price than she’d been laying.”
 “I don’t know that we should be any foolisher than you,” said Esther; “don’t you never go and overlay your book? What about Syntax and the ’orse you told me about last week?”
 William had been heavily hit last week through overlaying his book against a horse he didn’t believe in, and the whole bar joined in the laugh against him.
 “I don’t say nothing about bookmaking,” said Journeyman; “but there’s a great many women nowadays who is mighty sharp at spotting a ’orse that the handicapper had let in pretty easy.”
 “This one,” said Ketley, jerking his thumb in the direction that Stack and Sarah had gone, “seems to ’ave got hold of something.”
“We must ask Stack when he comes back,” and Journeyman winked at William.
 “Women do get that excited over trifles,” old John remarked, sarcastically. “She ain’t got above ’alf-a-crown on the ’orse, if that. She don’t care about the ’orse or the race — no woman ever did; it’s all about some sweetheart that’s been piling it on.”
 “I wonder if you’re right,” said Esther, reflectively. “I never knew her before to take such an interest in a horse-race.”
 On the day of the race Sarah came into the private bar about three o’clock. The news was not yet in.
 “Wouldn’t you like to step into the parlour; you’ll be more comfortable?” said Esther.
 “No thank you, dear; it is not worth while. I thought I’d like to know which won, that’s all.”
 “Have you much on?”
 “No, five shillings altogether .... But a friend of mine stands to win a good bit. I see you’ve got a new dress, dear. When did you get it?”
 “I’ve had the stuff by me some time. I only had it made up last month. Do you like it?”
 Sarah answered that she thought it very pretty. But Esther could see that she was thinking of something quite different.
 “The race is over now. It’s run at half-past two.”
 “Yes, but they’re never quite punctual; there may be a delay at the post.”
 “I see you know all about it.”
 “One never hears of anything else.”
 Esther asked Sarah when her people came back to town, and was surprised at the change of expression that the question brought to her friend’s face.
 “They’re expected back to-morrow,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
 “Oh, nothing; something to say, that’s all.”
 The conversation paused, and the two women looked at each other. At that moment a voice coming rapidly towards them was heard calling, “Win-ner, win-ner!”
 “I’ll send out for the paper,” said Esther.
 “No, no ... Suppose he shouldn’t have won?”
 “Well, it won’t make any difference.”
 “Oh, Esther, no; some one will come in and tell us. The race can’t be over yet; it is a long race, and takes some time to run.”
 By this time the boy was far away, and fainter and fainter the terrible word, “Win-ner, win-ner, win-ner.”
 “It’s too late now,” said Sarah; “some one’ll come in presently and tell us about it .... I daresay it ain’t the paper at all. Them boys cries out anything that will sell.”
 “Win-ner, win-ner.” The voice was coming towards them.
 “If he has won, Bill and I is to marry .... Somehow I feel as if he hasn’t.”
 “Win-ner.”
 “We shall soon know.” Esther took a halfpenny from the till.
 “Don’t you think we’d better wait? It can’t be printed in the papers, not the true account, and if it was wrong —” Esther didn’t answer; she gave Charles the halfpenny; he went out, and in a few minutes came back with the paper in his hand. “Tornado first, Ben Jonson second, Woodcraft third,” he read out. “That’s a good thing for the guv’nor. There was very few what backed Tornado .... He’s only lost some place-money.”
 “So he was only second,” said Sarah, turning deadly pale. “They said he was certain to win.”
 “I hope you’ve not lost much,” said Esther. “It wasn’t with William that you backed him.”
 “No, it wasn’t with William. I only had a few shillings on. It don’t matter. Let me have a drink.”
 “What will you have?”
 “Some whisky.”
 Sarah drank it neat. Esther looked at her doubtfully.
 The bars would be empty for the next two hours; Esther wished to utilize this time; she had some shopping to do, and asked Sarah to come with her. But Sarah complained of being tired, and said she would see her when she came back.
 Esther went out a little perplexed. She was detained longer than she expected, and when she returned Sarah was staggering about in the bar-room, asking Charles for one more drink.
 “All bloody rot; who says I’m drunk? I ain’t ... look at me. The ’orse did not win, did he? I say he did; papers all so much bloody rot.”
 “Oh, Sarah, what is this?”
 “Who’s this? Leave go, I say.”
 “Mr. Stack, won’t you ask her to come upstairs? ... Don’t encourage her.”
 “Upstairs? I’m a free woman. I don’t want to go upstairs. I’m a free woman; tell me,” she said, balancing herself with difficulty and staring at Esther with dull, fishy eyes, “tell me if I’m not a free woman? What do I want upstairs for?”
 “Oh, Sarah, come upstairs and lie down. Don’t go out.”
 “I’m going home. Hands off, hands off!” she said, slapping Esther’s hands from her arm.

“For every one was drunk last night, And drunk the night before; And if we don’t get drunk to-night, We don’t get drunk no more.

(Chorus.)

“Now you will have a drink with me, And I will drink with you; For we’re the very rowdiest lot Of the rowdy Irish crew.”

 “That’s what we used to sing in the Lane, yer know; should ’ave seen the coster gals with their feathers, dancing and clinking their pewters. Rippin Day, Bank ’oliday, Epping, under the trees — & ’ow they did romp, them gals!

“We all was roaring drunk last night, And drunk the night before; And if we don’t get drunk to-night, We won’t get drunk no more.”

 “Girls and boys, you know, all together.”
 “Sarah, listen to me.”
 “Listen! Come and have a drink, old gal, just another drink.” She staggered up to the counter. “One more, just for luck; do yer ’ear?” Before Charles could stop her she had seized the whisky that had just been served. “That’s my whisky,” exclaimed Journeyman. He made a rapid movement, but was too late. Sarah had drained the glass and stood vacantly looking into space. Journeyman seemed so disconcerted at the loss of his whisky that every one laughed.
 A few moments after Sarah staggered forward and fell insensible into his arms. He and Esther carried her upstairs and laid her on the bed in the spare room.
 “She’ll be precious bad to-morrow,” said Journeyman.
 “I don’t know how you could have gone on helping her,” Esther said to Charles when she got inside the bar; and she seemed so pained that out of deference to her feelings the subject was dropped out of the conversation. Esther felt that something shocking had happened. Sarah had deliberately got drunk. She would not have done that unless she had some great trouble on her mind. William, too, was of this opinion. Something serious must have happened. As they went up to their room Esther said —
 “It is all the fault of this betting. The neighbourhood is completely ruined. They’re losing their ’omes and their furniture, and you’ll bear the blame of it.”
 “It do make me so wild to hear you talkin’ that way, Esther. People will bet, you can’t stop them. I lays fair prices, and they’re sure of their money. Yet you says they’re losin’ their furniture, and that I shall have to bear the blame.”
 When they got to the top of the stairs she said —
 “I must go and see how Sarah is.”
 “Where am I? What’s happened? ... Take that candle out of my eyes .... Oh, my head is that painful.” She fell back on the pillow, and Esther thought she had gone to sleep again. But she opened her eyes. “Where am I? ... That’s you, Esther?”
 “Yes. Can’t you remember?”
 “No, I can’t. I remember that the ’orse didn’t win, but don’t remember nothing after .... I got drunk, didn’t I? It feels like it.”
 “The ’orse didn’t win, and then you took too much. It’s very foolish of you to give way.”
 “Give way! Drunk, what matter? I’m done for.”
 “Did you lose much?”
 “It wasn’t what I lost, it was what I took. I gave Bill the plate to pledge; it’s all gone, and master and missis coming back tomorrow. Don’t talk about it. I got drunk so that I shouldn’t think of it.”
 “Oh, Sarah, I didn’t think it was as bad as that. You must tell me all about it.”
 “I don’t want to think about it. They’ll come soon enough to take me away. Besides, I cannot remember nothing now. My mouth’s that awful — Give me a drink. Never mind the glass, give me the water-bottle.”
 She drank ravenously, and seemed to recover a little. Esther pressed her to tell her about the pledged plate. “You know that I’m your friend. You’d better tell me. I want to help you out of this scrape.”
 “No one can help me now, I’m done for. Let them come and take me. I’ll go with them. I shan’t say nothing.”
 “How much is it in for? Don’t cry like that,” Esther said, and she took out her handkerchief and wiped Sarah’s eyes. “How much is it in for? Perhaps I can get my husband to lend me the money to get it out.”
 “It’s no use trying to help me .... Esther, I can’t talk about it now; I shall go mad if I do.”
 “Tell me how much you got on it.”
 “Thirty pounds.”
 It took a long time to undress her. Every now and then she made an effort, and another article of clothing was got off. When Esther returned to her room William was asleep, and Esther took him by the shoulder.
 “It is more serious than I thought,” she shouted. “I want to tell you about it.”
 “What about it?” he said, opening his eyes.
 “She has pledged the plate for thirty pounds to back that ’orse.”
 “What ’orse?”
 “Ben Jonson.”
 “He broke down at the bushes. If he hadn’t I should have been broke up. The whole neighbourhood was on him. So she pledged the plate to back him. She didn’t do that to back him herself. Some one must have put her up to it.”
“Yes, it was Bill Evans.”
 “Ah, that blackguard put her up to it. I thought she’d left him for good.
She promised us that she’d never speak to him again.”
“You see, she was that fond of him that she couldn’t help herself. There’s many that can’t.”
 “How much did they get on the plate?”
 “Thirty pounds.”
 William blew a long whistle. Then, starting up in the bed, he said, “She can’t stop here. If it comes out that it was through betting, it won’t do this house any good. We’re already suspected. There’s that old sweetheart of yours, the Salvation cove, on the lookout for evidence of betting being carried on.”
 “She’ll go away in the morning. But I thought that you might lend her the money to get the plate out.”
 “What! thirty pounds?”
 “It’s a deal of money, I know; but I thought that you might be able to manage it. You’ve been lucky over this race.”
 “Yes, but think of all I’ve lost this summer. This is the first bit of luck I’ve had for a long while.”
 “I thought you might be able to manage it.”
 Esther stood by the bedside, her knee leaned against the edge. She seemed to him at that moment as the best woman in the world, and he said —
 “Thirty pounds is no more to me than two-pence-halfpenny if you wish it, Esther.”
“I haven’t been an extravagant wife, have I?” she said, getting into bed and taking him in her arms. “I never asked you for money before. She’s my friend — she’s yours too — we’ve known her all our lives. We can’t see her go to prison, can we, Bill, without raising a finger to save her?”
 She had never called him Bill before, and the familiar abbreviation touched him, and he said —
 “I owe everything to you, Esther; everything that’s mine is yours. But,” he said, drawing away so that he might see her better, “what do you say if I ask something of you?”
 “What are you going to ask me?”
 “I want you to say that you won’t bother me no more about the betting. You was brought up to think it wicked. I know all that, but you see we can’t do without it.”
 “Do you think not?”
 “Don’t the thirty pounds you’re asking for Sarah come out of betting?”
 “I suppose it do.”
 “Most certainly it do.”
 “I can’t help feeling, Bill, that we shan’t always be so lucky as we have been.”
 “You mean that you think that one of these days we shall have the police down upon us?”
 “Don’t you sometimes think that we can’t always go on without being caught? Every day I hear of the police being down on some betting club or other.”
 “They’ve been down on a great number lately, but what can I do? We always come back to that. I haven’t the health to work round from race-course to race-course as I used to. But I’ve got an idea, Esther. I’ve been thinking over things a great deal lately, and — give me my pipe — there, it’s just by you. Now, hold the candle, like a good girl.”
 William pulled at his pipe until it was fully lighted. He threw himself on his back, and then he said —
 “I’ve been thinking things over. The betting ’as brought us a nice bit of trade here. If we can work up the business a bit more we might, let’s say in a year from now, be able to get as much for the ’ouse as we gave .... What do you think of buying a business in the country, a ’ouse doing a steady trade? I’ve had enough of London, the climate don’t suit me as it used to. I fancy I should be much better in the country, somewhere on the South Coast. Bournemouth way, what do you think?”
 Before Esther could reply William was taken with a fit of coughing, and his great broad frame was shaken as if it were so much paper.
 “I’m sure,” said Esther, when he had recovered himself a little, “that a good deal of your trouble comes from that pipe. It’s never out of your mouth .... I feel like choking myself.”
 “I daresay I smoke too much .... I’m not the man I was. I can feel it plain enough. Put my pipe down and blow out the candle .... I didn’t ask you how Sarah was.”
 “Very bad. She was half dazed and didn’t tell me much.”
 “She didn’t tell you where she had pledged the plate?”
 “No, I will ask her about that to-morrow morning.” Leaning forward she blew out the candle. The wick smouldered red for a moment, and they fell asleep happy in each other’s love, seeming to find new bonds of union in pity for their friend’s misfortune.

XXXIX
 “SARAH, you must make an effort and try to dress yourself.”
 “Oh, I do feel that bad, I wish I was dead!”
 “You must not give way like that; let me help you put on your stockings.”
 Sarah looked at Esther. “You’re very good to me, but I can manage.” When she had drawn on her stockings her strength was exhausted, and she fell back on the pillow.
 Esther waited a few minutes. “Here’re your petticoats. Just tie them round you; I’ll lend you a dressing-gown and a pair of slippers.”
 William was having breakfast in the parlour. “Well, feeling a bit poorly?” he said to Sarah. “What’ll you have? There’s a nice bit of fried fish. Not feeling up to it?”
 “Oh, no! I couldn’t touch anything.” She let herself drop on the sofa.
 “A cup of tea’ll do you good,” said Esther. “You must have a cup of tea, and a bit of toast just to nibble. William, pour her out a cup of tea.”
 When she had drunk the tea she said she felt a little better.
 “Now,” said William, “let’s ’ear all about it. Esther has told you, no doubt, that we intend to do all we can to help you.”
 “You can’t help me .... I’m done for,” she replied dolefully.
 “I don’t know about that,” said William. “You gave that brute Bill Evans the plate to pawn, so far as I know.”
 “There isn’t much more to tell. He said the horse was sure to win. He was at thirty to one at that time. A thousand to thirty. Bill said with that money we could buy a public-house in the country. He wanted to settle down, he wanted to get out of — I don’t want to say nothing against him. He said if I would only give him this chance of leading a respectable life, we was to be married immediately after.”
 “He told you all that, did he? He said he’d give you a ’ome of your own, I know. A regular rotter; that man is about as bad as they make ’em. And you believed it all?”
 “It wasn’t so much what I believed as what I couldn’t help myself. He had got that influence over me that my will wasn’t my own. I don’t know how it is — I suppose men have stronger natures than women. I ’ardly knew what I was doing; it was like sleep-walking. He looked at me and said, ‘You’d better do it.’ I did it, and I suppose I’ll have to go to prison for it. What I says is just the truth, but no one believes tales like that. How long do you think they’ll give me?”
 “I hope we shall be able to get you out of this scrape. You got thirty pounds on the plate. Esther has told you that I’m ready to lend you the money to get it out.”
 “Will you do this? You’re good friends indeed .... But I shall never be able to pay you back such a lot of money.”
 “We won’t say nothing about paying back; all we want you to do is to say that you’ll never see that fellow again.”
 A change of expression came over Sarah’s face, and William said, “You’re surely not still hankering after him?”
 “No, indeed I’m not. But whenever I meets him he somehow gets his way with me. It’s terrible to love a man as I love him. I know he don’t really care for me — I know he is all you say, and yet I can’t help myself. It is better to be honest with you.”
 William looked puzzled. At the end of a long silence he said, “If it’s like that I don’t see that we can do anything.”
 “Have patience, William. Sarah don’t know what she’s saying. She’ll promise not to see him again.”
 “You’re very kind to me. I know I’m very foolish. I promised before not to see him, and I couldn’t keep my promise.”
 “You can stop with us until you get a situation in the country,” said Esther, “where you’ll be out of his way.”
“I might do that.”
 “I don’t like to part with my money,” said William, “if it is to do no one any good.” Esther looked at him, and he added, “It is just as Esther wishes, of course; I’m not giving you the money, it is she.”
 “It is both of us,” said Esther; “you’ll do what I said, Sarah?”
 “Oh, yes, anything you say, Esther,” and she flung herself into her friend’s arms and wept bitterly.
 “Now we want to know where you pawned the plate,” said William.
 “A long way from here. Bill said he knew a place where it would be quite safe. I was to say that my mistress left it to me; he said that would be sufficient .... It was in the Mile End Road.”
 “You’d know the shop again?” said William.
 “But she’s got the ticket,” said Esther.
 “No, I ain’t got the ticket; Bill has it.”
 “Then I’m afraid the game’s up.”
 “Do be quiet,” said Esther, angrily. “If you want to get out of lending the money say so and have done with it.”
 “That’s not true, Esther. If you want another thirty to pay him to give up the ticket, you can have it.”
 Esther thanked her husband with one quick look. “I’m sorry,” she said, “my temper is that hasty. But you know where he lives,” she said, turning to the wretched woman who sat on the sofa pale and trembling.
 “Yes, I know where he lives — 13 Milward Square, Mile End Road.”
 “Then we’ve no time to lose; we must go after him at once.”
 “No, William dear; you must not; you’d only lose your temper, and he might do you an injury.”
 “An injury! I’d soon show him which was the best man of the two.”
 “I’ll not hear of it, Sarah. He mustn’t go with you.”
 “Come, Esther, don’t be foolish. Let me go.”
 He had taken his hat from the peg. Esther got between him and the door.
 “I forbid it,” she said; “I will not let you go — perhaps to have a fight, and with that cough.”
 William was coughing. He had turned pale, and he said, leaning against the table, “Give me something to drink, a little milk.”
 Esther poured some into a cup. He sipped it slowly. “I’ll go upstairs,” she said, “for my hat and jacket. You’ve got your betting to attend to.” William smiled. “Sarah, mind, he’s not to go with you.”
 “You forget what you said last night about the betting.”
 “Never mind what I said last night about the betting; what I say now is that you’re not to leave the bar. Come upstairs, Sarah, and dress yourself, and let’s be off.”
 Stack and Journeyman were waiting to speak to him. They had lost heavily over old Ben and didn’t know how they’d pull through; and the whole neighbourhood was in the same plight; the bar was filled with gloomy faces.
 And as William scanned their disconcerted faces — clerks, hair-dressers, waiters from the innumerable eating houses — he could not help thinking that perhaps more than one of them had taken money that did not belong to them to back Ben Jonson. The unexpected disaster had upset all their plans, and even the wary ones who had a little reserve fund could not help backing outsiders, hoping by the longer odds to retrieve yesterday’s losses. At two the bar was empty, and William waited for Esther and Sarah to return from Mile End. It seemed to him that they were a long time away. But Mile End is not close to Soho; and when they returned, between four and five, he saw at once that they had been unsuccessful. He lifted up the flap in the counter and all three went into the parlour.
 “He left Milward Square yesterday,” Esther said. “Then we went to another address, and then to another; we went to all the places Sarah had been to with him, but no tidings anywhere.”
 Sarah burst into tears. “There’s no more hope,” she said. “I’m done for; they’ll come and take me away. How much do you think I’ll get? They won’t give me ten years, will they?”
 “I can see nothing else for you to do,” said Esther, “but to go straight back to your people and tell them the whole story, and throw yourself on their mercy.”
 “Do you mean that she should say that she pawned the plate to get money to back a horse?”
 “Of course I do.”
 “It will make the police more keen than ever on the betting houses.”
 “That can’t be helped.”
 “She’d better not be took here,” said William; “it will do a great deal of harm .... It don’t make no difference to her where she’s took, do it?”
 Esther did not answer.
 “I’ll go away. I don’t want to get no one into trouble,” Sarah said, and she got up from the sofa.
 At that moment Charles opened the door, and said, “You’re wanted in the bar, sir.”
 William went out quickly. He returned a moment after. There was a scared look on his face. “They’re here,” he said. He was followed by two policemen. Sarah uttered a little cry.
 “Your name is Sarah Tucker?” said the first policeman.
 “Yes.”
 “You’re charged with robbery by Mr. Sheldon, 34, Cumberland Place.”
 “Shall I be taken through the streets?”
 “If you like to pay for it, you can go in a cab,” the police-officer replied.
 “I’ll go with you, dear,” Esther said. William plucked her by the sleeve.
“It will do no good. Why should you go?”

XL
THE MAGISTRATE of course sent the case for trial, and the thirty pounds which William had promised to give to Esther went to pay for the defence. There seemed at first some hope that the prosecution would not be able to prove its case, but fresh evidence connecting Sarah with the abstraction of the plate was forthcoming, and in the end it was thought advisable that the plea of not guilty should be withdrawn. The efforts of counsel were therefore directed towards a mitigation of sentence. Counsel called Esther and William for the purpose of proving the excellent character that the prisoner had hitherto borne; counsel spoke of the evil influence into which the prisoner had fallen, and urged that she had no intention of actually stealing the plate. Tempted by promises, she had been persuaded to pledge the plate in order to back a horse which she had been told was certain to win. If that horse had won, the plate would have been redeemed and returned to its proper place in the owner’s house, and the prisoner would have been able to marry. Possibly the marriage on which the prisoner had set her heart would have turned out more unfortunate for the prisoner than the present proceedings. Counsel had not words strong enough to stigmatise the character of a man who, having induced a girl to imperil her liberty for his own vile ends, was cowardly enough to abandon her in the hour of her deepest distress. Counsel drew attention to the trusting nature of the prisoner, who had not only pledged her employer’s plate at his base instigation, but had likewise been foolish enough to confide the pawn-ticket to his keeping. Such was the prisoner’s story, and he submitted that it bore on the face of it the stamp of truth. A very sad story, but one full of simple, foolish, trusting humanity, and, having regard to the excellent character the prisoner had borne, counsel hoped that his lordship would see his way to dealing leniently with her.
 His Lordship, whose gallantries had been prolonged over half a century, and whose betting transactions were matters of public comment, pursed up his ancient lips and fixed his dead glassy eyes on the prisoner. He said he regretted that he could not take the same view of the prisoner’s character as learned counsel had done. The police had made every effort to apprehend the man Evans who, according to the prisoner’s story, was the principal culprit. But the efforts of the police had been unavailing; they had, however, found traces of the man Evans, who undoubtedly did exist, and need not be considered to be a near relative of our friend Mrs. Harris. And the little joke provoked some amusement in the court; learned counsel settled their robes becomingly and leant forward to listen. They were in for a humorous speech, and the prisoner would get off with a light sentence. But the grim smile waxed duller, and it was clear that lordship was determined to make the law a terror to evil-doers. Lordship drew attention to the fact that during the course of their investigations the police had discovered that the prisoner had been living for some considerable time with the man Evans, during which time several robberies had been effected. There was no evidence, it was true, to connect the prisoner with these robberies. The prisoner had left the man Evans and had obtained a situation in the house of her present employers. When the characters she had received from her former employers were being examined she had accounted for the year she had spent with the man Evans by saying that she had been staying with the Latches, the publicans who had given evidence in her favour. It had also come to the knowledge of the police that the man Evans used to frequent the “King’s Head,” that was the house owned by the Latches; it was probable that she had made there the acquaintance of the man Evans. The prisoner had referred her employers to the Latches, who had lent their sanction to the falsehood regarding the year she was supposed to have spent with them, but which she had really spent in cohabitation with a notorious thief. Here lordship indulged in severe remarks against those who enabled not wholly irreproachable characters to obtain situations by false pretences, a very common habit, and one attended with great danger to society, one which society would do well to take precautions to defend itself against.
 The plate, his Lordship remarked, was said to have been pawned, but there was nothing to show that it had been pawned, the prisoner’s explanation being that she had given the pawn-ticket to the man Evans. She could not tell where she had pawned the plate, her tale being that she and the man Evans had gone down to Whitechapel together and pawned it in the Mile End Road. But she did not know the number of the pawnbroker’s, nor could she give any indications as to its whereabouts — beyond the mere fact that it was in the Mile End Road she could say nothing. All the pawnbrokers in the Mile End Road had been searched, but no plate answering to the description furnished by the prosecution could be found.
 Learned counsel had endeavoured to show that it had been in a measure unpremeditated, that it was the result of a passing but irresistible temptation. Learned counsel had endeavoured to introduce some element of romance into the case; he had described the theft as the outcome of the prisoner’s desire of marriage, but lordship could not find such purity of motive in the prisoner’s crime. There was nothing to show that there was any thought of marriage in the prisoner’s mind; the crime was the result, not of any desire of marriage, but rather the result of vicious passion, concubinage. Regarding the plea that the crime was unpremeditated, it was only necessary to point out that it had been committed for a distinct purpose and had been carried out in conjunction with an accomplished thief.
 “There is now only one more point which I wish to refer to, and that is the plea that the prisoner did not intend to steal the plate, but only to obtain money upon it to enable her and the partner in her guilt to back a horse for a race which they believed to be —” his Lordship was about to say a certainty for him; he stopped himself, however, in time — “to be, to be, which they believed him to be capable of winning. The race in question is, I think, called the Cesarewitch, and the name of the horse (lordship had lost three hundred on Ben Jonson), if my memory serves me right (here lordship fumbled amid papers), yes, the name is, as I thought, Ben Jonson. Now, the learned counsel for the defence suggested that, if the horse had won, the plate would have been redeemed and restored to its proper place in the pantry cupboards. This, I venture to point out, is a mere hypothesis. The money might have been again used for the purpose of gambling. I confess that I do not see why we should condone the prisoner’s offence because it was committed for the sake of obtaining money for gambling purposes. Indeed, it seems to me a reason for dealing heavily with the offence. The vice among the poorer classes is largely on the increase, and it seems to me that it is the duty of all in authority to condemn rather than to condone the evil, and to use every effort to stamp it out. For my part I fail to perceive any romantic element in the vice of gambling. It springs from the desire to obtain wealth without work, in other words, without payment; work, whether in the past or the present, is the natural payment for wealth, and any wealth that is obtained without work is in a measure a fraud committed upon the community. Poverty, despair, idleness, and every other vice spring from gambling as naturally, and in the same profusion, as weeds from barren land. Drink, too, is gambling’s firmest ally.”
 At this moment a certain dryness in his Lordship’s throat reminded him of the pint of excellent claret that lordship always drank with his lunch, and the thought enabled lordship to roll out some excellent invective against the evils of beer and spirits. And lordship’s losses on the horse whose name he could hardly recall helped to a forcible illustration of the theory that drink and gambling mutually uphold and enforce each other. When the news that Ben Jonson had broken down at the bushes came in, lordship had drunk a magnum of champagne, and memory of this champagne inspired a telling description of the sinking feeling consequent on the loss of a wager, and the natural inclination of a man to turn to drink to counteract it. Drink and gambling are growing social evils; in a great measure they are circumstantial, and only require absolute legislation to stamp them out almost entirely. This was not the first case of the kind that had come before him; it was one of many, but it was a typical case, presenting all the familiar features of the vice of which he had therefore spoken at unusual length. Such cases were on the increase, and if they continued to increase, the powers of the law would have to be strengthened. But even as the law stood at present, betting-houses, public-houses in which betting was carried on, were illegal, and it was the duty of the police to leave no means untried to unearth the offenders and bring them to justice. Lordship then glanced at the trembling woman in the dock. He condemned her to eighteen months’ hard labour, and gathering up the papers on the desk, dismissed her for ever from his mind.
 The court adjourned for lunch, and Esther and William edged their way out of the crowd of lawyers and their clerks. Neither spoke for some time. William was much exercised by his Lordship’s remarks on betting public-houses, and his advice that the police should increase their vigilance and leave no means untried to uproot that which was the curse and the ruin of the lower classes. It was the old story, one law for the rich, another for the poor. William did not seek to probe the question any further, this examination seemed to him to have exhausted it; and he remembered, after all that the hypocritical judge had said, how difficult it would be to escape detection. When he was caught he would be fined a hundred pounds, and probably lose his licence. What would he do then? He did not confide his fears to Esther. She had promised to say no more about the betting; but she had not changed her opinion. She was one of those stubborn ones who would rather die than admit they were wrong. Then he wondered what she thought of his Lordship’s speech. Esther was thinking of the thin gruel Sarah would have to eat, the plank bed on which she would have to sleep, and the miserable future that awaited her when she should be released from gaol.
 It was a bright winter’s day; the City folk were walking rapidly, tightly buttoned up in top-coats, and in a windy sky a flock of pigeons floated on straightened wings above the telegraph wires. Fleet Street was full of journalists going to luncheon-bars and various eating-houses. Their hurry and animation were remarkable, and Esther noticed how laggard was William’s walk by comparison, how his clothes hung loose about him, and that the sharp air was at work on his lungs, making him cough. She asked him to button himself up more closely.
 “Is not that old John’s wife?” Esther said.
 “Yes, that’s her,” said William. “She’d have seen us if that cove hadn’t given her the shilling .... Lord, I didn’t think they was as badly off as that. Did you ever see such rags? and that thick leg wrapped up in that awful stocking.”
 The morning had been full of sadness, and Mrs. Randal’s wandering rags had seemed to Esther like a foreboding. She grew frightened, as the cattle do in the fields when the sky darkens and the storm draws near. She suddenly remembered Mrs. Barfield, and she heard her telling her of the unhappiness that she had seen come from betting. Where was Mrs. Barfield? Should she ever see her again? Mr. Barfield was dead, Miss May was forced to live abroad for the sake of her health; all that time of long ago was over and done with. Some words that Mrs. Barfield had said came back to her; she had never quite understood them, but she had never quite forgotten them; they seemed to chime through her life. “My girl,” Mrs. Barfield had said, “I am more than twenty years older than you, and I assure you that time has passed like a little dream; life is nothing. We must think of what comes after.”
 “Cheer up, old girl; eighteen months is a long while, but it ain’t a lifetime. She’ll get through it all right; and when she comes out we’ll try to see what we can do for her.”
 William’s voice startled Esther from the depth of her dream; she looked at him vaguely, and he saw that she had been thinking of something different from what he had suspected. “I thought it was on account of Sarah that you was looking so sad.”
 “No,” she said, “I was not thinking of Sarah.”
 Then, taking it for granted that she was thinking of the wickedness of betting, his face darkened. It was aggravating to have a wife who was always troubling about things that couldn’t be helped. The first person they saw on entering the bar was old John; and he sat in the corner of the bar on a high stool, his grey, death-like face sunk in the old unstarched shirt collar. The thin, wrinkled throat was hid with the remains of a cravat; it was passed twice round, and tied according to the fashions of fifty years ago. His boots were broken; the trousers, a grey, dirty brown, were torn as high up as the ankle; they had been mended and the patches hardly held together; the frock coat, green with age, with huge flaps over the pockets, frayed and torn, and many sizes too large, hung upon his starveling body. He seemed very feeble, and there was neither light nor expression in his glassy, watery eyes.
 “Eighteen months; a devil of a stiff sentence for a first offence,” said William.
“I just dropped in. Charles said you’d sure to be back. You’re later than I expected.”
“We stopped to have a bit of lunch. But you heard what I said. She got eighteen months.”
 “Who got eighteen months?”
 “Sarah.”
 “Ah, Sarah. She was tried to-day. So she got eighteen months.”
 “What’s the matter? Wake up; you’re half asleep. What will you have to drink?”
 “A glass of milk, if you’ve got such a thing.”
 “Glass of milk! What is it, old man — not feeling well?”
 “Not very well. The fact is, I’m starving.”
 “Starving! ... Then come into the parlour and have something to eat. Why didn’t you say so before?”
 “I didn’t like to.”
 He led the old chap into the parlour and gave him a chair. “Didn’t like to tell me that you was as hard up as all that? What do you mean? You didn’t use to mind coming round for half a quid.”
 “That was to back a horse; but I didn’t like coming to ask for food — excuse me, I’m too weak to speak much.”
 When old John had eaten, William asked how it was that things had gone so badly with him.
 “I’ve had terrible bad luck lately, can’t get on a winner nohow. I have backed ’orses that ’as been tried to win with two stone more on their backs than they had to carry, but just because I was on them they didn’t win. I don’t know how many half-crowns I’ve had on first favourites. Then I tried the second favourites, but they gave way to outsiders or the first favourites when I took to backing them. Stack’s tips and Ketley’s omens was all the same as far as I was concerned. It’s a poor business when you’re out of luck.”
 “It is giving way to fancy that does for the backers. The bookmaker’s advantage is that he bets on principle and not on fancy.”
 Old John told how unlucky he had been in business. He had been dismissed from his employment in the restaurant, not from any fault of his own, he had done his work well. “But they don’t like old waiters; there’s always a lot of young Germans about, and customers said I smelt bad. I suppose it was my clothes and want of convenience at home for keeping one’s self tidy. We’ve been so hard up to pay the three and sixpence rent which we’ve owed, that the black coat and waistkit had to go to the pawnshop, so even if I did meet with a job in the Exhibition places, where they ain’t so particular about yer age, I should not be able to take it. It’s terrible to think that I should have to come to this and after having worked round the table this forty years, fifty pounds a year and all found, and accustomed always to a big footman and page-boy under me. But there’s plenty more like me. It’s a poor game. You’re well out of it. I suppose the end of it will be the work’us. I’m pretty well wore out, and —”
 The old man’s voice died away. He made no allusion to his wife. His dislike to speak of her was part and parcel of his dislike to speak of his private affairs. The conversation then turned on Sarah; the severity of the sentence was alluded to, and William spoke of how the judge’s remarks would put the police on the watch, and how difficult it would be to continue his betting business without being found out.
 “There’s no doubt that it is most unfortunate,” said old John.
 “The only thing for you to do is to be very particular about yer introductions, and to refuse to bet with all who haven’t been properly introduced.”
 “Or to give up betting altogether,” said Esther.
 “Give up betting altogether!” William answered, his face flushed, and he gradually worked himself into a passion. “I give you a good ’ome, don’t I? You want for nothing, do yer? Well, that being so, I think you might keep your nose out of your husband’s business. There’s plenty of prayer-meetings where you can go preaching if you like.”
 William would have said a good deal more, but his anger brought on a fit of coughing. Esther looked at him contemptuously, and without answering she walked into the bar.
 “That’s a bad cough of yours,” said old John.
 “Yes,” said William, and he drank a little water to pass it off. “I must see the doctor about it. It makes one that irritable. The missis is in a pretty temper, ain’t she?”
 Old John did not reply; it was not his habit to notice domestic differences of opinion, especially those in which women had a share — queer cattle that he knew nothing about. The men talked for a long time regarding the danger the judge’s remarks had brought the house into; and they considered all the circumstances of the case. Allusion was made to the injustice of the law, which allowed the rich and forbade the poor to bet; anecdotes were related, but nothing they said threw new light on the matter in hand, and when Old John rose to go William summed up the situation in these few words —
 “Bet I must, if I’m to get my living. The only thing I can do is to be careful not to bet with strangers.”
 “I don’t see how they can do nothing to you if yer makes that yer principle and sticks to it,” said old John, and he put on the huge-rimmed, greasy hat, three sizes too large for him, looking in his square-cut tattered frock-coat as queer a specimen of humanity as you would be likely to meet with in a day’s walk. “If you makes that yer principle and sticks to it,” thought William.
 But practice and principle are never reduced to perfect agreement. One is always marauding the other’s territory; nevertheless for several months principle distinctly held the upper hand; William refused over and over again to make bets with comparative strangers, but the day came when his principle relaxed, and he took the money of a man whom he thought was all right. It was done on the impulse of the moment, but the two half-crowns wrapped up in the paper, with the name of the horse written on the paper, had hardly gone into the drawer than he felt that he had done wrong. He couldn’t tell why, but the feeling came across him that he had done wrong in taking the man’s money — a tall, clean-shaven man dressed in broadcloth. It was too late to draw back. The man had finished his beer and had left the bar, which in itself was suspicious.
 Three days afterwards, between twelve and one, just the busiest time, when the bar was full of people, there came a cry of “Police!” An effort was made to hide the betting plant; a rush was made for the doors. It was all too late; the sergeant and a constable ordered that no one was to leave the house; other police were outside. The names and addresses of all present were taken down; search was made, and the packets of money and the betting books were discovered. Then they all had to go to Marlborough Street.

XLI
 Next day the following account was given in most of the daily papers: — “Raid on a betting man in the West End. William Latch, 35, landlord of the ‘King’s Head,’ Dean Street, Soho, was charged that he, being a licensed person, did keep and use his public-house for the purpose of betting with persons resorting thereto. Thomas William, 35, billiard marker, Gaulden Street, Battersea; Arthur Henry Parsons, 25, waiter, Northumberland Street, Marylebone; Joseph Stack, 52, gentleman; Harold Journeyman, 45, gentleman, High Street, Norwood; Philip Hutchinson, grocer, Bisey Road, Fulham; William Tann, piano-tuner, Standard Street, Soho; Charles Ketley, butterman, Green Street, Soho; John Randal, Frith Street, Soho; Charles Muller, 44, tailor, Marylebone Lane; Arthur Bartram, stationer, East Street Buildings; William Burton, harness maker, Blue Lion Street, Bond Street, were charged with using the ‘King’s Head’ for the purpose of betting. Evidence was given by the police regarding the room upstairs, where a good deal of drinking went on after hours. There had been cases of disorder, and the magistrate unfortunately remembered that a servant-girl, who had pledged her master’s plate to obtain money to back a horse, had been arrested in the ‘King’s Head.’ Taking these facts into consideration, it seemed to him that he could not do less than inflict a fine of £100. The men who were found in Latch’s house he ordered to be bound over.”
 Who had first given information? That was the question. Old John sat smoking in his corner. Journeyman leaned against the yellow-painted partition, his legs thrust out. Stack stood square, his dark, crimson-tinted skin contrasting with sallow-faced little Ketley.
 “Don’t the omens throw no light on this ’ere matter?” said Journeyman.
 Ketley started from his reverie.
 “Ah,” said William, “if I only knew who the b — was.”
 “Ain’t you got no idea of any sort?” said Stack.
 “There was a Salvation chap who came in some months ago and told my wife that the betting was corrupting the neighbourhood. That it would have to be put a stop to. It may ’ave been ’e.”
 “You don’t ask no one to bet with you. They does as they like.”
 “Does as they like! No one does that nowadays. There’s a temperance party, a purity party, and a hanti-gambling party, and what they is working for is just to stop folk from doing as they like.”
 “That’s it,” said Journeyman.
 Stack raised his glass to his lips and said, “Here’s luck.”
 “There’s not much of that about,” said William. “We seem to be losing all round. I’d like to know where the money goes. I think it is the ’ouse; it’s gone unlucky, and I’m thinking of clearing out.”
 “We may live in a ’ouse a long while before we find what its luck really is,” said Ketley. “I’ve been in my old ’ouse these twenty years, and it ain’t nothing like what I thought it.”
 “You are that superstitious,” said Journeyman. “If there was anything the matter with the ’ouse you’d’ve know’d it before now.”
 “Ain’t you doing the trade you was?” said Stack.
 “No, my butter and egg trade have fallen dreadful lately.”
 The conversation paused. It was Stack who broke the silence.
 “Do you intend to do no more betting ’ere?” he asked.
 “What, after being fined £100? You ’eard the way he went on about Sarah, and all on account of her being took here. I think he might have left Sarah out.”
 “It warn’t for betting she took the plate,” said Journeyman; “it was ‘cause her chap said if she did he’d marry her.”
 “I wonder you ever left the course,” said Stack.
 “It was on account of my ’ealth. I caught a dreadful cold at Kempton, standing about in the mud. I’ve never quite got over that cold.”
 “I remember,” said Ketley; “you couldn’t speak above a whisper for two months.”
 “Two months! more like three.”
 “Fourteen weeks,” said Esther.
 She was in favour of disposing of the house and going to live in the country. But it was soon found that the conviction for keeping a betting-house had spoiled their chance of an advantageous sale. If, however, the licence were renewed next year, and the business did not in the meantime decline, they would be in a position to obtain better terms. So all their energies should be devoted to the improvement of their business. Esther engaged another servant, and she provided the best meat and vegetables that money could buy; William ordered beer and spirits of a quality that could be procured nowhere else in the neighbourhood; but all to no purpose. As soon as it became known that it was no longer possible to pass half a crown or a shilling wrapped up in a piece of paper across the bar, their custom began to decline.
 At last William could stand it no longer, and he obtained his wife’s permission to once more begin book-making on the course. His health had begun to improve with the spring weather, and there was no use keeping him at home eating his heart out with vexation because they were doing no business. So did Esther reason, and it reminded her of old times when he came back with his race-glasses slung round his shoulder. “Favourites all beaten today; what have you got for me to eat, old girl?” Esther forgot her dislike of racing in the joy of seeing her husband happy, if he’d only pick up a bit of flesh; but he seemed to get thinner and thinner, and his food didn’t seem to do him any good.
 One day he came home complaining that the ring was six inches of soft mud; he was wet to the skin, and he sat shivering the whole evening, with the sensation of a long illness upon him. He was laid up for several weeks, and his voice seemed as if it would never return to him again. There was little or no occupation for him in the bar; and instead of laying he began to take the odds. He backed a few winners, it is true; but they could not rely on that. Most of their trade had slipped from them, so it did not much matter to them if they were found out. He might as well be hung for an old sheep as a lamb, and surreptitiously at first, and then more openly, he began to take money across the bar, and with every shilling he took for a bet another shilling was spent in drink. Custom came back in ripples, and then in stronger waves, until once again the bar of the “King’s Head” was full to overflowing. Another conviction meant ruin, but they must risk it, so said William; and Esther, like a good wife, acquiesced in her husband’s decision. But he took money only from those whom he was quite sure of. He required an introduction, and was careful to make inquiries concerning every new backer. “In this way,” he said to Ketley, “so long as one is content to bet on a small scale, I think it can be kept dark; but if you try to extend your connection you’re bound to come across a wrong ’un sooner or later. It was that room upstairs that did for me.”
 “I never did think much of that room upstairs,” said Ketley. “There was a something about it that I didn’t like. Be sure you never bet in that jug and bottle bar, whatever you do. There’s just the same look there as in the room upstairs. Haven’t you noticed it?”
 “Can’t say I’ve, nor am I sure that I know exactly what you mean.”
 “If you don’t see it, you don’t see it; but it’s plain enough to me, and don’t you bet with nobody standing in that bar. I wouldn’t go in there for a sovereign.”
 William laughed. He thought at first that Ketley was joking, but he soon saw that Ketley regarded the jug and bottle entrance with real suspicion. When pressed to explain, he told Journeyman that it wasn’t that he was afraid of the place, he merely didn’t like it. “There’s some places that you likes better than others, ain’t they?” Journeyman was obliged to confess that there were.
 “Well, then, that’s one of the places I don’t like. Don’t you hear a voice talking there, a soft, low voice, with a bit of a jeer in it?”
 On another occasion he shaded his eyes and peered curiously into the left-hand corner.
 “What are you looking at?” asked Journeyman.
 “At nothing that you can see,” Ketley answered; and he drank his whisky as if lost in consideration of grave and difficult things. A few weeks later they noticed that he always got as far from the jug and bottle entrance as possible, and he was afflicted with a long story concerning a danger that awaited him. “He’s waiting; but nothing will happen if I don’t go in there. He can’t follow me; he is waiting for me to go to him.”
 “Then keep out of his way,” said Journeyman. “You might ask your bloody friend if he can tell us anything about the Leger.”
 “I’m trying to keep out of his way, but he’s always watching and a-beckoning of me.”
 “Can you see him now?” asked Stack.
 “Yes,” said Ketley; “he’s a-sitting there, and he seems to say that if I don’t come to him worse will happen.”
 “Don’t say nothing to him,” William whispered to Journeyman. “I don’t think he’s quite right in ’is ’ead; he’s been losing a lot lately.”
 One day Journeyman was surprised to see Ketley sitting quite composedly in the jug and bottle bar.
 “He got me at last; I had to go, the whispering got so loud in my head as I was a-coming down the street. I tried to get out into the middle of the street, but a drunken chap pushed me across the pavement, and he was at the door waiting, and he said, ‘Now, you’d better come in; you know what will happen if you don’t.’”
 “Don’t talk rot, old pal; come round and have a drink with us.”
 “I can’t just at present — I may later on.”
 “What do he mean?” said Stack.
 “Lord, I don’t know,” said Journeyman. “It’s only his wandering talk.”
 They tried to discuss the chances of the various horses they were interested in, but they could not detach their thoughts from Ketley, and their eyes went back to the queer little sallow-faced man who sat on a high stool in the adjoining bar paring his nails.
 They felt something was going to happen, and before they could say the word he had plunged the knife deep into his neck, and had fallen heavily on the floor. William vaulted over the counter. As he did so he felt something break in his throat, and when Stack and Journeyman came to his assistance he was almost as white as the corpse at his feet. Blood flowed from his mouth and from Ketley’s neck in a deep stream that swelled into a great pool and thickened on the sawdust.
 “It was jumping over that bar,” William replied, faintly.
 “I’ll see to my husband,” said Esther.
 A rush of blood cut short his words, and, leaning on his wife, he walked feebly round into the back parlour. Esther rang the bell violently.
 “Go round at once to Doctor Green,” she said; “and if he isn’t in inquire which is the nearest. Don’t come back without a doctor.”
 William had broken a small blood-vessel, and the doctor said he would have to be very careful for a long time. It was likely to prove a long case. But Ketley had severed the jugular at one swift, keen stroke, and had died almost instantly. Of course there was an inquest, and the coroner asked many questions regarding the habits of the deceased. Mrs. Ketley was one of the witnesses called, and she deposed that he had lost a great deal of money lately in betting, and that he went to the “King’s Head” for the purpose of betting. The police deposed that the landlord of the “King’s Head” had been fined a hundred pounds for keeping a betting-house, and the foreman of the jury remarked that betting-houses were the ruin of the poorer classes, and that they ought to be put a stop to. The coroner added that such places as the “King’s Head” should not be licensed. That was the simplest and most effectual way of dealing with the nuisance.
 “There never was no luck about this house,” said William, “and what there was has left us; in three months’ time we shall be turned out of it neck and crop. Another conviction would mean a fine of a couple of hundred, or most like three months, and that would just about be the end of me.”
 “They’ll never license us again,” said Esther, “and the boy at school and doing so well.”
 “I’m sorry, Esther, to have brought this trouble on you. We must do the best we can, get the best price we can for the ’ouse. I may be lucky enough to back a few winners. That’s all there is to be said — the ’ouse was always an unlucky one. I hate the place, and shall be glad to get out of it.”
 Esther sighed. She didn’t like to hear the house spoken ill of, and after so many years it did seem a shame.