not had the heart to say anything; nay, it was with part of the
money that he had handed her silently the evening he did it that
she had bought that last packet of tobacco.

And then, as Mrs. Bunting sat there thinking these painful thoughts,
there suddenly came to the front door the sound of a loud, tremulous,
uncertain double knock.



CHAPTER II

Mr. Bunting jumped nervously to her feet. She stood for a moment
listening in the darkness, a darkness made the blacker by the line
of light under the door behind which sat Bunting reading his paper.

And then it came again, that loud, tremulous, uncertain double
knock; not a knock, so the listener told herself, that boded any
good. Would-be lodgers gave sharp, quick, bold, confident raps.
No; this must be some kind of beggar. The queerest people came at
all hours, and asked--whining or threatening--for money.

Mrs. Bunting had had some sinister experiences with men and women
--especially women--drawn from that nameless, mysterious class
made up of the human flotsam and jetsam which drifts about every
great city. But since she had taken to leaving the gas in the
passage unlit at night she had been very little troubled with that
kind of visitors, those human bats which are attracted by any kind
of light but leave alone those who live in darkness.