water, especially of water dark and unexpected. Possibly he had once
been thrown into such water to be got rid of. But Clare at the moment
was too weary to take much notice of his dismay.

It was an old town in which they were wandering, and change in the
channels of traffic had so turned its natural nourishment aside, that
it was in parts withering and crumbling away. Not a few of the houses
were, some from poverty, some from utter disuse, yielding fast to
decay. But there were other causes for the condition of one, which,
almost directly they came out of the lane I have just mentioned, into
the end of a wide silent street, drew the roving, questing eyes of
Clare and Tommy. The moon was near the full and shining clear, so that
they could perfectly see the state it was in. Most of its windows were
broken; its roof was like the back of a very old horse; its
chimney-pots were jagged and stumped with fracture; from one of them,
by its entangled string, the skeleton of a kite hung half-way down the
front. But, notwithstanding such signs of neglect, the red-brick wall
and the wrought-iron gate, both seven feet high, that shut the place
off from the street, stood in perfect aged strength. The moment they
saw it, the house seemed to say to them, "There's nobody here: come
in!" but the gate and the wall said, "Begone!"



Chapter XIX.

The blacksmith and his forge.


At the end of the wall was a rough boarded fence, in contact with it,