The Mark of Cain | Page 8

the blessed pins ain't froze."
Here he put his wet fingers in his mouth, blowing on them afterward,
and smacking his arms across his breast to restore the circulation.
The comrade addressed as Bill merely stared speechlessly as he stood
at the smoking head of the leader, and the other man tugged again at the
pin.
"It won't budge," he cried at last. "Just run into the Hit or Miss at the
corner, mate, and borrow a hammer; and you might get a pint o' hot
beer when ye're at it. Here's fourpence. I was with three that found a
quid in the Mac,* end of last week; here's the last of it."
* A quid in the Mac--a sovereign in the street-scrapings. called Mac
from Macadam, and employed as mortar in building eligible freehold
tenements.
He fumbled in his pocket, but his hands were so numb that he could
scarcely capture the nimble fourpence. Why should the "nimble
fourpence" have the monopoly of agility?
"I'm Blue Ribbon, Tommy, don't yer know," said Bill, with regretful
sullenness. His ragged great-coat, indeed, was decorated with the azure
badge of avowed and total abstinence.

"Blow yer blue ribbon! Hold on where ye are, and I'll bring the
bloomin' hammer myself."
Thus growling, Tommy strode indifferent through the snow, his legs
protected by bandages of straw ropes. Presently he reappeared in the
warmer yellow of the light that poured through the windows of the old
public-house. He was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand,
which he then thrust into the deeps of his pockets, hugging a hammer to
his body under his armpit.
"A little hot beer would do yer bloomin' temper a deal more good than
ten yards o' blue ribbon at sixpence. Blue ruin's more in my line,"
observed Thomas, epigram-matically, much comforted by his
refreshment. Aid with two well-directed taps he knocked the pins out of
their sockets, and let down the backboard of the cart.
Bill, uncomforted by ale, sulkily jerked the horses forward; the cart was
tilted up, and the snow tumbled out, partly into the shallow shore-water,
partly on to the edge of the slope.
"Ullo!" cried Tommy suddenly. "E're's an old coat-sleeve a sticking out
o' the snow."
"'Alves!" exclaimed Bill, with a noble eye on the main chance.
"'Alves! of course, 'alves. Ain't we on the same lay," replied the
chivalrous Tommy. Then he cried, "Lord preserve us, mate; there's a
cove in the coat!"
He ran forward, and clutched the elbow of the sleeve which stood up
stiffly above the frozen mound of lumpy snow. He might well have
thought at first that the sleeve was empty, such a very stick of bone and
skin was the arm he grasped within it.
"Here, Bill, help us to dig him out, poor chap!"
"Is he dead?" asked Bill, leaving the horses' heads.

"Dead! he's bound to be dead, under all that weight. But how the
dickens did he get into the cart? Guess we didn't shovel him in, eh;
we'd have seen him?"
By this time the two men had dragged a meagre corpse out of the snow
heap. A rough worn old pilot-coat, a shabby pair of corduroy trousers,
and two broken boots through which the toes could be seen peeping
ruefully, were all the visible raiment of the body. The clothes lay in
heavy swathes and folds over the miserable bag of bones that had once
been a tall man. The peaked blue face was half hidden by a fell of
iron-gray hair, and a grizzled beard hung over the breast.
The two men stood for some moments staring at the corpse. A
wretched woman in a thin gray cotton dress had come down from the
bridge, and shivered beside the body for a moment.
"He's a goner," was her criticism. "I wish I was."
With this aspiration she shivered back into the fog again, walking on
her unknown way. By this time a dozen people had started up from
nowhere, and were standing in a tight ring round the body. The
behavior of the people was typical of London gazers. No one made any
remark, or offered any suggestion; they simply stared with all their eyes
and souls, absorbed in the unbought excitement of the spectacle. They
were helpless, idealess, interested and unconcerned.
"Run and fetch a peeler, Bill," said Tommy at last.
"Peeler be hanged! Bloomin' likely I am to find a peeler. Fetch him
yourself."
"Sulky devil you are," answered Tommy, who was certainly of milder
mood; whereas Bill seemed a most unalluring example of the virtue of
Temperance. It is true that he had only been "Blue Ribbon" since the
end of his Christmas bout--that is, for nearly a fortnight--and Virtue, a
precarious tenant, was not yet comfortable