"I've heard tell of men feeling just like me," said he, holding Nelly's hand rather longer than good breeding required, "and being found next morning stark dead on the moor. There was a woman up at my place only last Martinmas, and she says, 'Parson,' says she, 'there's something coming to me that's past praying for; I know as well as if I saw it. I'm that down-hearted I don't seem to fill my bodice, and there's a din in both my ears like the waves of a flood-tide, so as I can't scarce hear myself speak.' It wasn't a month before her only brother got drowned off the Lizard, and will you tell me now, Mistress Nelly, as you did once before, that such warnings are but idle fancies and old women's fables? I'm down-hearted too; I'm not ashamed to say so. And when it's fallen on me, whatever it is, I should like to know who will care a pinch of snuff what's gone with wild Abner Gale?" "I wouldn't speak so, if I were you," answered the girl, who, having disengaged her hand, was now standing at the cottage door to see him mount for his homeward ride across the moor. "There are plenty of all sorts to welcome you when you come, and wish you 'good-speed' when you go away--you that have so many friends." "Friends!" repeated the Parson, turning his mare's head homewards, with a bitter smile. "The church wouldn't hold my acquaintance, but the pulpit is large enough for my _friends_!" CHAPTER III. WAIF. Deadman's Alley was at all times a secluded thoroughfare; after dark, indeed, its echoes rarely woke to the sound of a footstep; and the watch reflecting, perhaps, that such loneliness saved them a deal of trouble, abstained from disturbing its repose. An empty cask, a bale of goods, or a human body thrown aside in Deadman's Alley, might have remained there many hours without attracting the notice or obstructing the transit of a passenger. John Garnet, however, was unusually fortunate, for he had wallowed in the gutter but a few minutes, when a girl's step came dancing along the alley, and the lightest foot in London tripped over him as he lay at length upon the stones, not quite unconscious, yet altogether powerless to move. The girl, who had nearly fallen, recovered her footing with the activity of a cat; and smothering an exclamation in some outlandish tongue, peered down through the darkness to discover the nature of her stumbling-block. Then she felt that her naked ankles, for she wore no stockings, were wet with blood. In an instant she flew to the little red lamp, for which John Garnet had been making when he fell, tapped hard at the latticed window whence it shone; and after a hurried whisper with some one inside, returned in equal haste, accompanied by an old man wearing a skull-cap and black velvet gown. Together they lifted their burden in a deliberate business-like manner, as though they traded habitually in such goods, and carried it into their dwelling, carefully securing the shutters of the lattice, and closing the door.