for I locked all up, as she bade me when we carried up her supper, and had the key in my pocket when you knocked. 'See the house safe,' says she, poor soul, with a voice could scarce be heared, 'and let no one disturb me, for I do feel most heavy with sleep.'"
Mr. Godwin passed into his wife's room and then into the next, looking about him in distraction.
"Lord! here's the sweet thing's nightgown," exclaims Mrs. Butterby, from the next room, whither she had followed Mr. Godwin. "But dear heart o' me, where's the ham gone?"
Mr. Godwin, entering from the next room, looked at her as doubting whether he or all the world had taken leave of their wits.
"And the pigeon pasty? " added Mrs. Butterby, regarding the table laid out beside her mistress's bed.
"And the cold partridge," adds she, in redoubled astonishment. "Why, here's nought left but my pudding, and that as cold as a stone."
Mr. Godwin, with the candle flaring in his hand, passed hastily by her, too wrought by fear to regard either the ludicrous or incomprehensible side of Mrs. Butterby's consternation; and so, going down the corridor away from the stairs, he comes to the door of the little back stairs, standing wide open, and seeming to bid him descend. He goes quickly down, yet trembling with fear that he may find her at the bottom, broken by a fall; but all he discovers is the bolt drawn and the door ajar. As he pushes it open a gust of wind blows out the light, and here he stood in the darkness, eager to be doing, yet knowing not which way to turn or how to act.
