Stranica 237 [237]
OCR
179 person in the adjoining room. s Is that the woman?" scarcely above his breath. The Jew nodded " yes," sc [ can’t see her face well,” whispered Noah. “She is looking down, and the candle is behind her.” “Stay there,” whispered Fagin. He signed to Barney, who withdrew. In an he asked, ing, and under pretence of snufling the tion, and speaking to the girl, caused her to raise her face. “T see her now,” cried the spy. “ Plainly?” asked the Jew. He hastily descended as the room-door opened, cad the girl came out. Fagin drew him behind a small partition which was curtained off, and they held their breath as she passed within a few feet of their place of concealment, and emerged by the door at which they had entered. “ Hist!" cried the lad who held the door. ‘ Noah.” Noah exchanged a look with Fagin, and darted out. “To the left," whispered the lad. s Take the left hand, and keep on the other side." He did so, and by the light of the lam saw the girl’s retreating figure already at some distance before him. He advanced as near as he considered prudent, and kept on the opposite side of the street, the better to observe her motions. She looked nervously round twice or thrice, and once stopped to let two men who were following close behind her pass on. She seemed to gather courage as she advanced, and to walk with a steadier and firmer step. The spy preserved the same lowed with his eye upon her. CHAPTER THE EIGHTH. The appointment kept. THE church clocks chimed three quarters past eleven, as two figures emerged on London Bridge. One which advanced with a swift and rapid step, was that of a woman, who looked eagerly about her as though in quest of some expected object; the other figure was that of a man, who slunk along in the deepest shadow he could find, and at some distance, ac pace to hers, stopping when she stopped, and as she moved, a creeping stealthily on; but never lowing himself, in the ardour of his pursuit, to gain upon her footsteps. ‘Thus they crossed the bridge from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore, where the woman, apparently disappointed in her anxious scrutiny of the foot-passengers, turned back. The movement was sudden, but he who watched her was not thrown off his guard by it; for shrinking into one of the recesses which surmount the piers of the bridge, and leaning over the rapet the better to conceal his figure, e sufiered her to pass by on the opposite pavement; and when she was about the same distance in advanee as she had been before, he slipped quietly down and followed her again. At nearly the centre of the bridge she stopped. The man stopped too. It was a very dark night. The day had been unfavourable, and at that hour and place there were few people stirring. Such as there were hurried quickly past, very possibly without seeing, but certainly without noticing, either the woman or the man who kept her in view. Their appearance was not calculated to attract the importunate regards of such of London’s destitute population as chanced to take their way over the bridge that night in search of some cold arch or doorless hovel whereon to lay their head. They stood there in silence, neither speaking nor spoken to by any one who passed. A mist hung over the river, deepening the glare of the fires that burnt upon the small craft moored off the different wharfs, and rendering darker and more indistinct the murky buildings on the banks. The old smoke-stained storehouses on either side rose heavy and dull from the dense mass of roofs and gables, and frowned sternly upon water too black to reflect even their lumbering shapes. The tower of old Saint Saviour’S chureh, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the giant warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom, but the forest of shipping below the bridge, and the thickly scattered spires of churches above, were nearly all hidden from the sight. The girl had taken a few restless turns to and fro—closely watched, meanwhile, by her hidden observer—when the heavy bell of Saint Paul’s tolled for the death of another day. Midnight had come upon the crowded city. The palace, the nightcellar, the jail, the mad-house, the chambers of birth and death, of health and
