第103章

But, how comed you by it? He sets great store on it. Is he bound for the shooting gallery? He is not, for sure, now his aunt is so ill, and me left all alone"; and the immediate cause of her anxiety being thus recalled to her mind, she entered on a long story of Alice's illness, interspersed with recollections of her husband's and her children's deaths. The disguised policeman listened for a minute or two, to glean any further information he could; and then, saying he was in a hurry, he turned to go away. She followed him to the door, still telling him her troubles, and was never struck, until it was too late to ask the reason, with the unaccountableness of his conduct, in carrying the gun away with him. Then, as she heavily climbed the stairs, she put away the wonder and the thought about his conduct by determining to believe he was some workman with whom her son had made some arrangement about shooting at the gallery; or mending the old weapon; or something or other.She had enough to fret her, without moidering herself about old guns. Jem had given it him to bring to her; so it was safe enough; or, if it was not, why, she should be glad never to set eyes on it again, for she could not abide fire-arms, they were so apt to shoot people. So, comforting herself for the want of thought in not making further inquiry, she fell off into another doze, feverish, dream-haunted, and unrefreshing. Meanwhile, the policeman walked off with his prize, with an odd mixture of feelings; a little contempt, a little disappointment, and a good deal of pity. The contempt and the disappointment were caused by the widow's easy admission of the gun being her son's property, and her manner of identifying it by the ornaments. He liked an attempt to baffle him; he was accustomed to it; it gave some exercise to his wits and his shrewdness. There would be no fun in fox-hunting, if Reynard yielded himself up without any effort to escape. Then, again, his mother's milk was yet in him, policeman, officer of the Detective Service though he was; and he felt sorry for the old woman, whose "softness" had given such material assistance in identifying her son as the murderer. However, he conveyed the gun, and the intelligence he had gained, to the superintendent; and the result was, that, in a short time afterwards, three policemen went to the works at which Jem was foreman, and announced their errand to the astonished overseer, who directed them to the part of the foundry where Jem was then superintending a casting. Dark, black were the walls, the ground, the faces around them, as they crossed the yard. But, in the furnace-house, a deep and lurid red glared over all; the furnace roared with mighty flame. The men, like demons, in their fire-and-soot colouring, stood swart around, awaiting the moment when the tons of solid iron should have melted down into fiery liquid, fit to be poured, with still, heavy sound, into the delicate moulding of fine black sand, prepared to receive it. The heat was intense, and the red glare grew every instant more fierce; the policemen stood awed with the novel sight. Then, black figures, holding strange shaped bucket-shovels, came athwart the deep-red furnace light, and clear and brilliant flowed forth the iron into the appropriate mould. The buzz of voices rose again; there was time to speak, and gasp, and wipe the brows; and then, one by one, the men dispersed to some other branch of their employment. No. B 72 pointed out Jem as the man he had seen engaged in a scuffle with Mr Carson, and then the other two stepped forward and arrested him, stating of what he was accused, and the grounds of the accusation. He offered no resistance, though he seemed surprised; but calling a fellow-workman to him, he briefly requested him to tell his mother he had got into. trouble, and could not return home at present. He did not wish her to hear more at first. So Mrs Wilson's sleep was next interrupted in almost an exactly similar way to the last, like a recuring nightmare. "Missis! missis!" some one called out from below. Again it was a workman, but this time a blacker-looking one than before. "What don ye want?" said she, peevishly. "Only, nothing but----" stammered the man, a kind-hearted, matter-of-fact person, with no invention, but a great deal of sympathy. "Well, speak out, can't ye, and ha' done with it?" "Jem's in trouble," said he, repeating Jem's very words, as he could think of no others. "Trouble?" said the mother, in a high-pitched voice of distress. "Trouble!