"A bit odd!"--in one of those fits which had often prompted him to strike down his weak, suffering, patient wife with dastardly, cruel hand, and then to kick her with his heavy boots, or drag at her hair until her head was bleeding--oddness which made the tiny child in the room shrink from him; while before now it had been traced on the poor woman's features in blackened and swollen bruises. But shrieks, and the falling of heavy blows, were common sounds in Bennett's-rents, and people took but little notice of Mr Jarker's odd fits. Bill took no heed to the weary, strangling cough which shook his wife's feeble frame, but smoked on furiously till the fire went out. She would not get up to put on more coals, and he wasn't agoing to muck his hands; for, as has been before hinted, Mr Jarker had soft, whitish hands, which looked as though they had never done a hard day's work; and at last, when the place looked more cheerless and dull than usual, he prepared himself for rest. "You're allus ill," growled the ruffian, who had had just drink enough to make him savage; "and it's my belief as you wants rousing up." But there came no answer to his remark. The little one slept soundly upon the two chairs which formed its bed, and, with half-closed eyes, the woman lay, breathing very faintly, as her lips moved, forming words she had heard from Mr Sterne. Bill felt himself to be ill-used, and was very sulky, a feeling which made him kick his boots to the end of the room, where one knocked over a linnet's cage, when, still growling, the owner had to go and pick it up, which he did at the expense of his dignity, and there and then shook the cage till the unoffending bird rustled and fluttered about, panting and terror-stricken, to be half-drowned by the water he poured into its little glass the next minute. For, what business had his wife to be ill and allus having parsons and Mrs Simses a-pottering about in his place? Hadn't he made a row about it when she came when the kid was born, and hadn't she allus come at uncomfortable times since? Didn't she come when it died, and weren't things uncomfortable now, and she a-making them worse? He wouldn't have it--that he wouldn't; and, growling and swearing in a low tone, Mr Jarker divested himself of a part of his attire, and threw himself upon the bed. The rushlight danced and flickered, and a few drops of rain pattered against the window as the night breeze sighed mournfully down the court; first one and then another bird scraped at its perch, roused as it had been by the noise and light, so that it sounded again and again like the earth upon the coffin-lid; some loose woodwork amongst the pigeon-traps upon the roof swung in the wind, and beat against the tiles, and then all was very quiet and still in the wretched attic. "Bill--Bill, dear," murmured a voice after a while--a strange harsh-sounding voice, as if it came from a parched and fevered throat; "Bill!"