The moon was hidden now. Tom had difficulty in seeing and following the beaten path; and was unduly startled by a fellow-waif, who suddenly stood before him in the darkness.
“Got the time about yer, guv’nor?” said a high, hoarse voice.
“No, I—I don’t possess a watch,” stammered Tom, taken as much aback by the question as by the questioner. And he grasped the repeater in one pocket, and doubled the other fist.
“Ha! I see you don’t,” rejoined the other, as the moon shone forth at that moment. “No ’arm done, I ’ope. We can’t all be real swells, can we?”
And Tom was left shuddering from a single moonlight glimpse of a horrible face horribly disfigured: disease had razed the nose to the level of the stubbly, shrunken cheeks; the very eyes were more prominent, but wolfish, unsteady, and little better to see. His own required the lotion of long star-gazing when the man had gone his way. But the sight would have remained longer in an emptier mind; that of the youth was full of the final kindness of the world, of the instinct for better things in even a Blaydes, and the divine possibilities of human nature as exemplified by the deep, full, true and tender love of a girl like Claire for a scapegrace like himself. And so he came back to his own unworthiness, and made as many honest resolutions as there were stars in the sky, and felt strength and virtue leaping in his warm and humble heart. Yet all this time was but twenty minutes at most; and he was still in the fields between the Finchley Road and Haverstock Hill, though descending now and in sight of the latter thoroughfare.
