of yellow or of crimson, quivering,
lambent, seeming to snatch and devour and then fall back in satiety.
When a cluster of these fires shot forth together, the sky above became
illumined with a broad glare, which throbbed and pulsed in the manner
of sheet-lightning, though more lurid, and in a few seconds was gone.

She paused here for a moment, rather to rest after her climb than to
look at what she had seen so often, then directed her steps to one of
the houses within sight. She pushed the door, and entered a little
parlour, where a fire and a lamp made cheery welcome. By the hearth, in
a round-backed wooden chair, sat a grizzle-headed man, whose hard
features proclaimed his relation to Eve, otherwise seeming so
improbable. He looked up from the volume open on his knee--a Bible--and
said in a rough, kind voice:

"I was thinkin' it 'ud be about toime for you. You look starved, my
lass."

"Yes; it has turned very cold."

"I've got a bit o' supper ready for you. I don't want none myself;
there's food enough for me _here_." He laid his hand on the book.
"D'you call to mind the eighteenth of Ezekiel, lass?--'But if the
wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed----'"

Eve stood motionless till he had read the verse, then nodded and began
to take off her out-of-door garments. She was unable to talk, and her
eyes wandered absently.

CHAPTER XIX

After a week's inquiry, Hilliard discovered the lodging that would suit
his purpose. It was Camp Hill; two small rooms at the top of a house,
the ground-floor of which was occupied as a corn-dealer's shop, and the
story above that tenanted by a working optician with a blind wife. On
condition of papering the rooms and doing a few repairs necessary to
make them habitable, he secured them at the low rent of four shillings
a week.

Eve paid her first visit to this delectable abode on a Sunday
afternoon; she saw only the sitting-room, which would bear inspection;
the appearance of the bed-room was happily left to her surmise. Less
than a five-pound note had paid for the whole furnishing.
Notwithstanding the reckless invitation to Eve to share his fortunes
straightway, Hilliard, after paving his premium of fifty guineas to the
Birching Brothers, found but a very small remnant in hand of the money
with which he had set forth from Dudley some nine months ago. Yet not
for a moment did he repine; he had the value of his outlay; his mind
was stored with memor