"I thought thou wast ahind me, Rachael?"

No."

"Early t'night, lass?"

"'Times I 'm a little early, Stephen; 'times
a little late. I 'm never to be counted on,
going home."

"Nor going t'other way, neither, 't seems
to me, Rachael ?"

"No, Stephen."

He looked at her with some disappointment
in his face, but with a respectful and
patient conviction that she must be right in
whatever she did. The expression was not
lost upon her; she laid her hand lightly
on his arm a moment, as if to thank him
for it.

We are such true friends, lad, and such
old friends, and getting to be such old folk,
now."

"No, Rachael, thou'rt as young as ever
thou wast."

"One of us would be puzzled how to get
old, Stephen, without t' other getting so too,
both being alive," she answered, laughing;
"but, any ways, we 're such old friends, that
t'hide a word of honest truth fra 'one another
would be a sin and a pity. 'Tis better not to
walk too much together. 'Times, yes!
'Twould be hard, indeed, if 'twas not to be at
all," she said, with a cheerfulness she sought
to communicate to him.

"'Tis hard, anyways, Rachael."

"Try to think not; and 'twill seem
better."

"I've  tried a long time, and 't a'nt got
better. But thou'rt right; 'tmight make
folk talk, even of thee. Thou hast been that
to me, Rachael, through so many year: thou
hast done me so much good, and heartened
of me in that cheering way: that thy word is
a law to me. Ah lass, and a bright good
law! Better than some real ones."

"Never fret about them, Stephen," she
answered quickly, and not without an anxious
glance at his face. " Let the laws be."

"Yes," he said, with a slow nod or two.
"Let 'em be. Let everything be. Let all
sorts alone: 'Tis a muddle, and that's all."

"Always a muddle? " said Rachael, with
another gentle touch upon his arm, as if
to recall him out of the thoughtfulness, in
which he was biting the long ends of his
loose neckerchief as he walked along. The
touch had its instantaneous effect. He let
them fall, turned a smiling face upon her, and
said, as he broke into a good-humoured laugh,
"Ay, Rachael, lass, awlus a muddle. That's
where I stick. I come to the muddle many
times and agen, and I never get beyond it."

They had walked some distance, and were
near their own homes. The woman's was the
first reached. It was in one of the many
small streets for which the favourite undertaker
(who turned a handsome sum out of
the one poor ghastly pomp of the neighbourhood)
kept a black ladder, in order that those
who had done their daily groping up and
down the narrow stairs might slide out of
this working world by the windows. She
stopped at the corner, and putting her hand
in his, wished him good night.

"Good night, dear lass; good night!"

She went, with her neat figure and her
sober womanly step, down the dark street,
and he stood looking after her until she
turned into one of the small houses. There
was not a flutter of her coarse shawl, perhaps,
but had its interest in this man's eyes; not a
tone of her voice but had its echo in his
innermost heart.

When she was lost to his view, he pursued
his homeward way, glancing up sometimes at
the sky, where the clouds were sailing fast and
wildly. But, they were broken now, and the
rain had ceased, and the moon shone—looking
down the high chimneys of Coketown on
the deep furnaces below, and casting Titanic
shadows of the steam engines at rest, upon
the walls where they were lodged. The man
seemed to have brightened with the night, as
he went on.

His home, in such another street as the
first, saving that it was narrower, was over a
little shop. How it came to pass that any
people found it worth their while to sell or
buy the wretched little toys, mixed up in its
window with cheap newspapers and pork
(there was a leg to be raffled for to-morrow
night), matters not here. He took his end of
candle from a shelf, lighted it at another end
of candle on the counter, without disturbing
the mistress of the shop who was asleep in
her little room, and went up stairs into his
lodging.

It was a room, not unacquainted with the
black ladder under various tenants; but as
neat, at present, as such a room could be. A
few books and writings were on an old bureau
in a corner, the furniture was decent and
sufficient, and, though the atmosphere was
tainted, the room was clean.

Going to the hearth to set the candle down
upon a round three-legged table standing
there, he stumbled against something. As he
recoiled, looking down at it, it raised itself
up into the form of a woman in a sitting
attitude.

"Heaven's mercy, woman! " he cried, falling
farther off from the figure. " Hast thou
come back again!"

Such a woman! A disabled, drunken
creature, barely able to preserve the sitting
posture by steadying herself with one
begrimed hand on the floor, while the other
was so purposeless in trying to push away
her tangled hair from her face, that it only
blinded her the more with the dirt upon it.
A creature so foul to look at, in her tatters,
stains, and splashes, but so much fouler than
that in her moral infamy, that it was a
shameful thing even to see her.

After an impatient oath or two, and some
stupid clawing of herself with the hand not
necessary to her support, she got her hair