Stranica 247 [247]
187
CHAPTER THE TENTH.
The flight of Sikes,
Or all bad deeds that, under cover of
the darkness, had been committed within
wide London’s bounds since night hung
over it, that was the worst. Of all the
horrors that rose with an ill scent upon
the morning air, that was the foulest and
most cruel.
The sun—the bright sun, that brings
back not light alone, but new life and
hope and freshness to man,—burst upon
ry. Through costly coloured glass and
agence window, through cathedral
ome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal
ray. It lighted up the room where the
murdered woman lay. It did. He tried
to shut it out, but it would stream in. If
the sight had been a ghastly one in the
dull morning, what was it now in all that
brilliant light?
He had not moved: he had been afraid
to stir. There had been a moan and mo¬
tion of the hand; and, with terror added
to hate, he had struck and struck again.
Once he threw a rug over it—but it was
worse to fancy the eyes and imagine them
moving towards him, than to see them
laring upwards, as if watching the re¬
ection of the pool of gore, that quivered
and danced in the sunlight on the ceiling.
He had plucked it off again. And there
was the body—mere flesh and blood, no
more—but such flesh and such blood!
He struck a light, kindled a fire, and
thrust the club into it. There was hu¬
man hair upon the end which blazed, and
shrunk into a light cinder, and, caught by
the air, whirled up the chimney. Even
that frightened him, sturdy as he was, but
he held the weapon till it broke, and then
piled it on the coals to burn away and
smoulder into ashes. He washed him¬
self and rubbed his clothes; there were
spots that would not be removed, but he
cut the pieces out and burnt them. How
those stains were dispersed about the
room! The very feet of the dog were
bloody.
All this time he had never once turned
his back upon the corpse; no, not for a
moment. Such preparations completed,
he moved backwards towards the door,
dragging the dog with him, lest he should
carry out new evidences of the crime
into the streets. He shut it softly, locked
it, took the key, and left the house.
He crossed over, and glanced up at the
window, to be sure that nothing was visi¬
tain still drawn which she would have
opened to admit the light she never saw
again. It lay nearly under there. He
knew that. God! how the sun poured
down upon the very spot!
The glance was instantaneous. It was
a relief to have got free of the room.
He whistled on the dog, and walked ra¬
a away.
e went through Islington, strode up
the hill at Highgate, on which stands the
stone in honour of Whittington; turned
down to Highgate Hill, unsteady of pur¬
pose, and uncertain where to go; struck
off to the right again almost as soon as
he began to descend it, and taking the
footpath across the fields, skirted Carn
Wood, and came out on Hampstead
Heath. Traversing the hollow by the
Vale of Health, he mounted the opposite
bank, and crossing the road which joins
the villages of Hampstead and Highgate,
made along the remuining portion of the
Heath to the Fields at North End, in one
of which he laid himself down under a
hedge and slept.
Soon he was up again and away,—not
far into the country, but back towards
London by the High Road—then back
again—then over another part of the same
ground as he had already traversed—then
wandering up and down in fields, and
lying on ditches’ banks to rest, and start¬
ing up to make for some other spot and
do the same, and ramble on again.
Where could he go to, that was near,
and not too public, to get some meat and
drink? Hendon. That was a
place, not far off, and out of most people’s
way. ‘Thither he directed his steps—
running sometimes, and sometimes with
a strange perversity loitering at a snail’s
pace, or stopping altogether, and idly
breaking the hedges with his stick. But
when he got there, all the people he met
—the very children at the doors—seemed
to view him with suspicion. Back he
turned again, without the courage to pur¬
chase a bit or drop, though he had tasted
no food for many hours; and once more
he lingered on the heath uncertain where
to go.
He wandered over miles and miles of
ground, and still came back to the old
place; morning and noon had passed, and
the day was on the wane, and still he
rambled to and fro, and up and down, and
round and round, and still lingered about
got away, and
shaped his course to Hatfield.
It was nine o’clock at night when the
man quite tired out, and the dog limomg