ce horror of the pawnshop. She had never put her feet in
such a place, and she declared she never would--she would rather
starve first.

But she had said nothing when there had occurred the gradual
disappearance of various little possessions she knew that Bunting
valued, notably of the old-fashioned gold watch-chain which had been
given to him after the death of his first master, a master he had
nursed faithfully and kindly through a long and terrible illness.
There had also vanished a twisted gold tie-pin, and a large mourning
ring, both gifts of former employers.

When people are living near that deep pit which divides the secure
from the insecure--when they see themselves creeping closer and
closer to its dread edge--they are apt, however loquacious by
nature, to fall into long silences. Bunting had always been a
talker, but now he talked no more. Neither did Mrs. Bunting, but
then she had always been a silent woman, and that was perhaps one
reason why Bunting had felt drawn to her from the very first moment
he had seen her.

It had fallen out in this way. A lady had just engaged him as
butler, and he had been shown, by the man whose place he was to
take, into the dining-room. There, to use his own expression, he
had discovered Ellen Green, carefully pouring out the glass of port
wine which her then mistress always drank at 11.30 every morning.
And as he, the new butler, had seen her engaged in this task, as he
had watched her carefully stopper the decanter and put it back into
the old wine-cooler, he had said to himself, "That is the woman for
me!"

But now her stillness, her--her dumbness, had got on the
unfortunate man's nerves. He no longer felt like going into the
various little shops, close by, patronised by him in more prosperous
days, and Mrs. Bunting also went afield to make the slender purchases
which still had to be made every day or two, if they were to be
saved from actually starving to death.

Suddenly, across the stillness of the dark November evening there
came the muffled sounds of hurrying feet and of loud, shrill shouting
outside--boys crying the late afternoon editions of the evening
papers.

Bunting turned uneasily in his chair. The giving up of a daily
paper had been, after his tobacco, his bitterest deprivation. And
the paper was an older habit than the tobacco, for servants are
great readers of newspapers.

As the shouts came through the closed windows and the thick damask
curtains