look in
to-night, and if she does I'll ask her."

Hilliard allowed this suggestion to pass without remark. He was not
quite sure that he desired to know Miss Madeley's address.

But later in the evening, when, after walking for two or three hours
about the cold, dark roads, he came in to have his supper and go to
bed, Mrs. Brewer smilingly offered him a scrap of paper.

"There," she said, "that's where she's living. London's a big place,
and you mayn't be anywhere near, but if you happened to walk that way,
we should take it kindly if you'd just leave word that we're always
glad to hear from her, and hope she's well."

With a mixture of reluctance and satisfaction the young man took the
paper, glanced at it, and folded it to put in his pocket. Mrs. Brewer
was regarding him, and he felt that his silence must seem ungracious.

"I will certainly call and leave your message," he said.

Up in his bed-room lie sat for a long time with the paper lying open
before him. And when he slept his rest was troubled with dreams of an
anxious search about the highways and byways of London for that
half-sad, half-smiling face which had so wrought upon his imagination.

Long before daylight he awoke at the sound of bells, and hootings, and
whistlings, which summoned the Dudley workfolk to their labour. For the
first time in his life he heard these hideous noises with pleasure:
they told him that the day of his escape had come. Unable to lie still,
he rose at once, and went out into the chill dawn. Thoughts of Eve
Madeley no longer possessed him; a glorious sense of freedom excluded
every recollection of his past life, and he wandered aimlessly with a
song in his heart.

At breakfast, the sight of Mrs. Brewer's album tempted him to look once
more at the portrait, but he did not yield.

"Shall we ever see you again, I wonder?" asked his landlady, when the
moment arrived for leave-taking.

"If I am ever again in Dudley, I shall come here," he answered kindly.

But on his way to the station he felt a joyful assurance that fate
would have no power to draw him back again into this circle of fiery
torments.

CHAPTER V

Two months later, on a brilliant morning of May, Hilliard again awoke
from troubled dreams, but the sounds about him had no association with
bygone miseries. From the courtyard upon which his window looked there
came a ringing of gay laughter followed by shrill, merry gossip in a
foreign tongue. Somewhere i