Part 21 (2/2)

I thought a little, and recollected a man of that name, who had worked with us a year or two before--a great friend of a certain scatter-brained Irish lad, brother of Crossthwaite's wife.

”Well, I did once, but I have lost sight of him twelve months, or more.”

The old man faced sharp round on me, swinging the little gig almost over, and then twisted himself back again, and put on a true farmer-like look of dogged, stolid reserve. We rolled on a few minutes in silence.

”Dee yow consider, now, that a mon mought be lost, like, into Lunnon?”

”How lost?”

”Why, yow told o' they sweaters--dee yow think a mon might get in wi' one o' they, and they that mought be looking for un not to vind un?”

”I do, indeed. There was a friend of that man Porter got turned away from our shop, because he wouldn't pay some tyrannical fine for being saucy, as they called it, to the shopman; and he went to a sweater's--and then to another; and his friends have been tracking him up and down this six months, and can hear no news of him.”

”Aw! guide us! And what'n, think yow, be gone wi' un?”

”I am afraid he has got into one of those dens, and has p.a.w.ned his clothes, as dozens of them do, for food, and so can't get out.”

”p.a.w.ned his clothes for victuals! To think o' that, noo! But if he had work, can't he get victuals?”

”Oh!” I said, ”there's many a man who, after working seventeen or eighteen hours a day, Sundays and all, without even time to take off his clothes, finds himself brought in in debt to his tyrant at the week's end. And if he gets no work, the villain won't let him leave the house; he has to stay there starving, on the chance of an hour's job. I tell you, I've known half a dozen men imprisoned in that way, in a little dungeon of a garret, where they had hardly room to stand upright, and only just s.p.a.ce to sit and work between their beds, without breathing the fresh air, or seeing G.o.d's sun, for months together, with no victuals but a few slices of bread-and-b.u.t.ter, and a little slop of tea, twice a day, till they were starved to the very bone.”

”Oh, my G.o.d! my G.o.d!” said the old man, in a voice which had a deeper tone of feeling than mere sympathy with others' sorrow was likely to have produced. There was evidently something behind all these inquiries of his.

I longed to ask him if his name, too, was not Porter.

”Aw yow knawn Billy Porter? What was a like? Tell me, now--what was a like, in the Lord's name! what was a like unto?”

”Very tall and bony,” I answered.

”Ah! sax feet, and more? and a yard across?--but a was starved, a was a'

thin, though, maybe, when yow sawn un?--and beautiful fine hair, hadn't a, like a la.s.s's?”

”The man I knew had red hair,” quoth I.

”Ow, ay, an' that it wor, red as a rising sun, and the curls of un like gowlden guineas! And thou knew'st Billy Porter! To think o' that, noo.”--

Another long silence.

”Could you find un, dee yow think, noo, into Lunnon? Suppose, now, there was a mon 'ud gie--may be five pund--ten pund--twenty pund, by * * *--twenty pund down, for to ha' him brocht home safe and soun'--Could yow do't, bor'? I zay, could yow do't?”

”I could do it as well without the money as with, if I could do it at all.

But have you no guess as to where he is?”

He shook his head sadly.

”We--that's to zay, they as wants un--hav'n't heerd tell of un vor this three year--three year coom Whitsuntide as ever was--” And he wiped his eyes with his cuff.

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