rolled by me with Peter's historian in the seat and two figures clinging on behind. The engine left a streak of steam and a strong smell of burning oil as it rolled out, and I could see one of the figures dash a great burning mass into the furnace. The next instant a wagon full of partly dressed men dashed by me, and I was alone in the big house, the gong beating away with a peculiar jerking "bang, bang," and a thin stream of steam rising from the steam-pipe in the floor, over which the "five tons of machinery" had stood a quarter of a minute before. A hat and coat and a halter-strap, thrown here and there on the floor, were all the evidence left of the fifteen or sixteen living, breath ing creatures. men and horses-that had stood around me a few seconds before. The change had come so quickly I could scarcely realize it, and as I stepped outside, while a kindly neighbor closed the massive doors, I unconsciously looked about me for my friend and for Peter. But they were gone had vanished from the street as quickly as they had from the house; and all that remained was a thin haze of smoke that filled the air with an odd, pungent smell. In the distance I could hear the clang of a bell, the shrieks of a whistle gradually dying away, and above all the shrill barks of a dog - cries so sharp and penetrating that I shall never forget them. That was Peter Spots, fireman, on duty. [Begun in the November number.] CHAPTER XXX. AT THE FALCON INN. BY JOHN BENNETT. And then there came both mist and snow, So says that wonder-ballad of the sea. But over London came a gale that made the chimneys rock; and after it came ice and snow, sharp, stinging sleet, and thumping hail, with sickening winds from the gray west, sour yellow fogs, and plunging rain, till all the world was weary of the winter and the cold. But winter could not last forever. March crept onward, and the streets of London came up out of the slush again with a glad surprise of cobblestones. The sickly mist no longer hung along the river; and sometimes upon a breezy afternoon it was pleasant and fair, the sun shone warmly on one's back, and the rusty sky grew bluer overhead. The trees in Paris Garden put out buds; the lilac-tips began to swell; there was a stirring in the roadside grass, and now and then a questing bird went by upon the wind, piping a little silver thread of song. Nick's heart grew hungry for the woods of Arden, and the gathering rush of the waking water-brooks among the old dead leaves. The rain beat in at his window; but he did not care for that, and kept it open day and night; for when he wakened in the dark he loved to feel the fingers of the wind across his face. Sometimes the moonlight through the ragged clouds came in upon the floor, and in the hurry of the wind he almost fancied he could hear the Avon, bank-full, rushing under the old mill bridge. Then one day there came a shower with a warm south wind, sweet and healthful and serene; and through the shower, out of the breaking clouds, a sun-gleam like a path of gold straight down to the heart of London town; and on the south wind, down that path of gold, came April. That night the wind in the chimney fluted a glad, new tune; and when Nick looked out at his casement the free stars danced before him in the sky. And when he felt that fluting wind blow warm and cool together on his cheek, the chimneys seemed to mock him, and the town was hideous. It fell upon an April night, when the moon was at its full, that Master Carew had come to the Falcon Inn, on the Southwark side of the river, and had brought Nick with him for the air. Master Heywood was along, and it was very pleasant there. Master Tom Heywood had a little table to himself off in a corner, and was writing busily upon a new play. "A sheet a day," said he, "doth a wonder in a year"; so he was always at it. Gaston Carew sat beyond, dicing with a silky rogue who had the coldest, hardest face that Nick had ever seen. His eyes were black and beady as a rat's, and were circled about by a myriad of little crow-foot lines; and his hooked nose lay across his thin blue lips like a finger across a slit in a dried pie. His long, slim hands were white as any woman's; and his fingers slipped among the laces at his cuffs like a The night breeze smelled of green fields, and weasel in a tangle-patch. the inn was thronged with company. The windows were bright, and the air was full of voices. Tables had been brought out into the garden, and set beneath the arbor toward the riverside. The vines upon the arbor were shooting forth their first pink-velvet leaves, and in the moonlight their shadows fell like lacework across the linen cloths, blurred by the glow of the lanterns hung upon the posts. The folds in the linen marked the table-tops with squares like a checker-board, and Nick stood watching from the tap-room door, as if it were a game. Not that he cared for any game; but that watching dulled the teeth of the hunger in his heart to be out of the town and back among the hills of Warwickshire, now that the spring was there. They had been playing for an hour, and the game had gone beyond all reason. The other players had put aside the dice to watch the two, and the nook in which their table stood was ringed with curious faces. A lantern had been hung above, but Carew had commanded it taken down, as its bottom made a shadow on the board. Carew's face was red and white by turns; but the face of the other had no more color than candle-wax. At the end of the arbor some one was strumming upon a gittern. It was strung in a different` key from that in which the men were singing, and the jangle made Nick feel all puckered up inside. By and by the playing ceased, and the singers came to the end of their song. In the brief hush the sharp rattle of the dice sounded like the patter of cold hail against the shutter in the lull of a winter storm. VOL. XXIV.- 102. |