“You can stand anything,” said the other, with a sigh; “but I am not as tough as I used to be; and a row in the papers brings the duns in by the dozen. The girl is as sweet a woman as ever looked through a bridle. And I had set my heart upon her, when I thought she would have money. But I could not marry her like this, and be laughed at ever afterwards, for eloping with a pauper. Can’t you take her back to-night, and nobody the wiser? Then perhaps I can have her, in the proper course of things.” “Impossible, you thick old Pots. She has not tasted bit or sup for four and twenty hours; and her face it is a show, as the old women say. No, it must be reeled straight off this time. You can hear her moaning now; that old woman is a fool, and the little girl a rogue, who would betray us, if she could. But we are all right here; and to-morrow the fair Kitty will accept me as her deliverer. We shall make short work of it, and you retire blameless.” The other man began to growl, but Bill stopped not to hear him. His righteous soul was wild already, and his mercy flowed unstrained. Now and then there had come, as from an upper window, the sound of low sobbing, and the weariness of woe, when some human creature finds the whole world set against it, yet cannot get out of it to seek a better. Bill stepped quietly round the little porch, and stood beneath the window whence the sound appeared to come. The window was over the kitchen, as it seemed, and the sill was about twelve feet from the ground. But the kitchen blind was down, and the firelight dull within. Tompkins laid his sack along the kitchen window-sill, and stepping on it softly, could just reach the stone at the bottom of the bedroom window. With a little groping he contrived to get one foot upon the branch of a pear-tree, which was trained against the house, and lifting his tall frame warily, he got his chin upon the level of the window-sill above. The whole aperture was barred with stout wire-netting; but the lower sash had just been lifted to throw something out, something white like an eggshell, that flew by as Bill drew back.