ss
again.

The following morning he managed with infinite labour to scrawl a few
lines:

'DEAR MAMMA,

'You will be surprised but not glad to get this letter. I'm done
for, and you will never see me again. I'm sorry for what I've done,
and how I've treated you, but it's no use saying anything now. If
Pater had only lived he might have kept me in order. But you were
too kind, you know. You've had a hard struggle these last six
years, and I hope Arthur and Dick will stand by you better than I
did, now they are growing up. Give them my love, and kiss little
Fannie for me.

'WILLIE.

'_Mrs. Hancock_----'

He got no further with the address.

III

By some turn of the wheel, Darkey gathered several shillings during the
next day or two, and, feeling both elated and benevolent, he called one
afternoon at the hospital, 'just to inquire like.' They told him the man
was dead.

'By the way, he left a letter without an address. Mrs. Hancock--here it
is.'

'That'll be his mother; he did tell me about her--lived at Knype,
Staffordshire, he said. I'll see to it.'

They gave Darkey the letter.

'So his name's Hancock,' he soliloquized, when he got into the street.
'I knew a girl of that name--once. I'll go and have a pint of
four-half.'

At nine o'clock that night Darkey was still consuming four-half, and
relating certain adventures by sea which, he averred, had happened to
himself. He was very drunk.

'Yes,' he said, 'and them five lil' gals was lying there without a
stitch on 'em, dead as meat; 's 'true as I'm 'ere. I've seen a thing or
two in my time, I can tell ye.'

'Talking about these Anarchists--' said a man who appeared anxious to
change the subject.

'An--kists,' Darkey interrupted. 'I tell ye what I'd do with that muck.'

He stopped to light his pipe, looked in vain for a match, felt in his
pockets, and pulled out a piece of paper--the letter.

'I tell you what I'd do. I'd--'

He slowly and meditatively tore the letter in two, dropped one piece on
the floor, thrust the other into a convenient gas-jet, and applied it to
the tobacco.

'I'd get 'em 'gether in a heap, and I'd--Damn this pipe!'

He picked up the other half of the letter, and relighted the pipe.

'After you, mate,' said a man sitting near, who was just biting the end
from a cigar.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's Tales of the Five Towns, by Arnold Benn