The evening was boisterous--scarcely better than the previous night had
been. It was not easy for a stout man like Gabriel to keep his legs at
the street corners, or to make head against the high wind, which often
fairly got the better of him, and drove him back some paces, or, in
defiance of all his energy, forced him to take shelter in an arch or
doorway until the fury of the gust was spent. Occasionally a hat or wig,
or both, came spinning and trundling past him, like a mad thing; while
the more serious spectacle of falling tiles and slates, or of masses of
brick and mortar or fragments of stone-coping rattling upon the pavement
near at hand, and splitting into fragments, did not increase the
pleasure of the journey, or make the way less dreary.

'A trying night for a man like me to walk in!' said the locksmith, as
he knocked softly at the widow's door. 'I'd rather be in old John's
chimney-corner, faith!'

'Who's there?' demanded a woman's voice from within. Being answered, it
added a hasty word of welcome, and the door was quickly opened.

She was about forty--perhaps two or three years older--with a cheerful
aspect, and a face that had once been pretty. It bore traces of
affliction and care, but they were of an old date, and Time had smoothed
them. Any one who had bestowed but a casual glance on Barnaby might
have known that this was his mother, from the strong resemblance between
them; but where in his face there was wildness and vacancy, in hers
there was the patient composure of long effort and quiet resignation.

One thing about this face was very strange and startling. You could not
look upon it in its most cheerful mood without feeling that it had some
extraordinary capacity of expressing terror. It was not on the surface.