The agony began at length to abate--ready to revive with augmented strength when the next hour for supplying the human furnace should begin to approach. Few even of those who know what hunger is, understand to what it may grow--how desire becomes longing, longing becomes craving, and craving a wild pa.s.sion of demand. It must be terrible to be hungry, and not know G.o.d!

As the evening came down upon them, worn out, faint with want, shivering with cold, and as miserable in prospect as at the moment, yet another need presented itself with equally imperative requisition--that of shelter that they might rest. It was even more imperative: they could not eat; they _must_ lie down!

Whether it be a rudiment retained from their remote ancestry, I cannot tell, but any kind of suffering will wake in some a masterful impulse to burrow; and as the boys walked about in their misery, white with cold and hunger, Clare's eyes kept turning to every shallowest archway, every breach in wall or hedge that seemed to offer the least chance of covert, while, every now and then, Tommy would bolt from his side to peer into some opening whose depth was not immediately patent to his ferret-gaze. Once, in a lane on the outskirts of the town, he darted into a narrow doorway in the face of a wall, but instantly rushed back in horror: within was a well, where water lay still and dark. Then first Clare had a hint of the peculiar dread Tommy had of 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 n.o.body 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, and reaching, some fifty yards or so, to a hovel in which a blacksmith, of unknown antecedents, had taken possession of a forsaken forge, and did what odd jobs came in his way. The boys went along the fence till they came to the forge, where, looking in, they saw the blacksmith working his bellows. To one with the instincts of Clare's birth and breeding, he did not look a desirable acquaintance. Tommy was less fastidious, but he felt that the scowl on the man's brows boded little friendliness. Clare, however, who hardly knew what fear was, did not hesitate to go in, for he was drawn as with a cart-rope by the glow of the fire, and the sparks which, as they gazed, began, like embodied joys, to fly merrily from the iron. Tommy followed, keeping Clare well between him and the black-browed man, who rained his blows on the rosy iron in his pincers, as if he hated it.

"What do you want, gutter-toads?" he cried, glancing up and seeing them approach. "This ain't a hotel."

"But it's a splendid fire," rejoined Clare, looking into his face with a wan smile, "and we're so cold!"

"What's that to me!" returned the man, who, savage about something, was ready to quarrel with anything. "I didn't make my fire to warm little devils that better had never been born!"

"No, sir," answered Clare; "but I don't think we'd better not have been born. We're both cold, and n.o.body but Tommy knows how hungry I am; but your fire is so beautiful that, if you would let us stand beside it a minute or two, we wouldn't at all mind."

"Mind, indeed! Mind what, you preaching little humbug?"

"Mind being born, sir."

"Why do you say _sir_ to me? Don't you see I'm a working man?"

"Yes, and that's why. I think we ought to say _sir_ and _ma'am_ to every one that can do something we can't. Tommy and I can't make iron do what we please, and you can, sir! It would be a grand thing for us if we could!"

"Oh, yes, a grand thing, no doubt!--Why?"

"Because then we could get something to eat, and somewhere to lie down."

"Could you? Look at me, now! I can do the work of two men, and can't get work for half a man!"

"That's a sad pity!" said Clare. "I wish I had work! Then I would bring you something to eat."

The man did not tell them why he had not work enough--that his drunkenness, and the bad ways to which it had brought him, with the fact that he so often dawdled over the work that was given him, caused people to avoid him.

"Who said I hadn't enough to eat? I ain't come to that yet, young 'un!

What made you say that?"

"Because when I had work, I had plenty to eat; and now that I have nothing to do, I have nothing to eat. It's well I haven't work now, though," added Clare with a sigh, "for I'm too tired to do any. Please may I sit on this heap of ashes?"

"Sit where you like, so long 's you keep out o' my way. I 'ain't got nothing to give you but a bar of iron. I'll toast one for you if you would like a bite."

"No, thank you, sir," answered Clare, with a smile. "I'm afraid it wouldn't be digestible. They say toasted cheese ain't. I wish I had a try though!"

"You're a comical shaver, you are!" said the blacksmith. "You'll come to the gallows yet, if you're a good boy! Them Sunday-schools is doin'

a heap for the gallows!--That ain't your brother?"

By this time Tommy had begun to feel at home with the blacksmith, from whose face the cloud had lifted a little, so that he looked less dangerous. He had edged nearer to the fire, and now stood in the light of it.

"No," answered Clare, with an odd doubtfulness in his tone. "I ought to say _yes_, perhaps, for all men are my brothers; but I mean I haven't any particular one of my very own."

"That ain't no pity; he'd ha' been no better than you. I've a brother I would choke any minute I got a chance."

While they talked, the blacksmith had put his iron in the fire, and again stood blowing the bellows, when his attention was caught by the gestures of the little red-eyed imp, Tommy, who was making rapid signs to him, touching his forehead with one finger, nodding mysteriously, and pointing at Clare with the thumb of his other hand, held close to his side. He sought to indicate thus that his companion was an innocent, whom n.o.body must mind. In the blacksmith Tommy saw one of his own sort, and the blacksmith saw neither in Tommy nor in Clare any reason to doubt the hint given him. Not the less was he inclined to draw out the idiot.

"Why do you let him follow you about, if he ain't your brother?" he said. "He ain't nice to look at!"

"I want to make him nice," answered Clare, "and then he'll be nice to look at. You mustn't mind him, please, sir. He's a very little boy, and 'ain't been well brought up. His granny ain't a good woman--at least not very, you know, Tommy!" he added apologetically.

"She's a d.a.m.ned old sinner!" said Tommy stoutly.

The man laughed.

"Ha, ha, my chicken! you know a thing or two!" he said, as he took his iron from the fire, and laid it again on the anvil.

But besides the brother he would so gladly strangle, there was an idiot one whom he had loved a little and teazed so much, that, when he died, his conscience was moved. He felt therefore a little tender toward the idiot before him. He bethought himself also that his job would soon be at a stage where the fewer the witnesses the better, for he was executing a commission for certain burglars of his acquaintance. He would do no more that night! He had money in his pocket, and he wanted a drink!

"Look here, cubs!" he said; "if you 'ain't got nowhere to go to, I don't mind if you sleep here. There ain't no bed but the bed of the forge, nor no blankets but this leather ap.r.o.n: you may have them, for you can't do them no sort of harm. I don't mind neither if you put a shovelful of slack and a little water now and then on the fire; and if you give it a blow or two with the bellows now and then, you won't be stone-dead afore the mornin'!--Don't be too free with the coals, now, and don't set the shed on fire, and take the bread out of my poor innocent mouth. Mind what I tell you, and be good boys."

"Thank you, sir," said Clare. "I thought you would be kind to us! I've one friend, a bull, that's very good to me. So is Jonathan. He's a horse. The bull's name is Nimrod. He wants to gore always, but he's never cross with me."

The blacksmith burst into a roar of laughter at the idiotic speech. Then he covered the fire with coal, threw his ap.r.o.n over Clare's head, and departed, locking the door of the smithy behind him.

The boys looked at each other. Neither spoke. Tommy turned to the bellows, and began to blow.

"Ain't you warm yet?" said Clare, who had seen his mother careful over the coals.

"No, I ain't. I want a blaze."

"Leave the fire alone. The coal is the smith's, and he told us not to waste it."

"He ain't no count!" said Tommy, as heartless as any grown man or woman set on pleasure.

"He has given us a place to be warm and sleep in! It would be a shame to do anything he didn't like. Have you no conscience, Tommy?"

"No," said Tommy, who did not know conscience from copper. The germ of it no doubt lay in the G.o.d-part of him, but it lay deep. Tommy--no worse than many a boy born of better parents--was like a hill full of precious stones, that grows nothing but a few little dry shrubs, and shoots out cold sharp rocks every here and there.

"If you have no conscience," answered Clare, "one must serve for both--as far as it will reach! Leave go of that bellows, or I'll make you."

Tommy let the lever go, turned his back, and wandered, in such dudgeon as he was capable of, to the other side of the shed.

"h.e.l.lo!" he cried, "here's a door!--and it ain't locked, it's only bolted! Let's go and see!"