afternoon. To-day he asked Amy to go with him, wishing, if possible, to
influence her for good by kind, brotherly talk. Whilst she was getting
ready he took John aside into the parlour, to impart a strange piece of
news he had brought from Clerkenwell.

'Mrs. Peckover has had a narrow escape of being poisoned. She was found
by one of her lodgers all but dead, and last night the police arrested
her daughter on the charge.'

'Mrs. Snowdon?'

'Yes. The mother has accused her. There's a man concerned in the
affair. One of the men showed me a report in to-day's paper; I didn't
buy one, because we shall have it in the Sunday paper to-morrow. Nice
business, oh?'

'That's for the old woman's money, I'll wager!' exclaimed Hewett, in an
awed voice. 'I can believe it of Clem; if ever there was a downright
bad 'un! Was she living in the Close?'

'Mrs. Snowdon wasn't. Somewhere in Hoxton. No doubt it was for the
money--if the charge is true. We won't speak of it before the children.'

'Think of that, now! Many's the time I've looked at Clem Peckover and
said to myself, "You'll come to no good end, my lady!" She was a fierce
an' bad 'un.'

Sidney nodded, and went off for his walk with Amy. . . .

It was a difficult thing to keep any room in the house orderly, and
Sidney, as part of his struggle against the downward tendency in all
about him, against the forces of chaos, often did the work of housemaid
in the parlour; a little laxity in the rules which made this a sacred
corner, and there would have been no spot where he could rest. With
some success, too, he had resisted the habit prevalent in working-class
homes of prolonging Saturday evening's occupations until the early
hours of Sunday morning. At a little after ten o'clock tonight John
Hewett and the children were in bed; he too, weary in mind and body,
would gladly have gone upstairs, but he lingered from one five minutes
to the next, his heart sinking at the certainty that he would find
Clara in sleepless misery which he had no power to allay.

Round the walls of the parlour were hung his own drawings, which used
to conceal the bareness of his lodging in Tysoe Street. It was three
years since he had touched a pencil; the last time having been when he
made holiday with Michael Snowdon and Jane at the farm-house by Danbury
Hill. The impulse would never come again. It was associated with
happiness, with hope; and What had his life to do with one or the
other? Could he