Our Mutual Friend, page 179 by Charles Dickens
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eering at the ashes, trying with all his might to overhear what was said, but feigning abstraction as the 'Governors Both' glanced at him.
'You mentioned (twice, I think) a daughter of this Hexam's,' said Eugene, aloud. 'You don't mean to imply that she had any guilty knowledge of the crime?'
The honest man, after considering--perhaps considering how his answer might affect the fruits of the sweat of his brow--replied, unreservedly, 'No, I don't.'
'And you implicate no other person?'
'It ain't what I implicate, it's what Gaffer implicated,' was the dogged and determined answer. 'I don't pretend to know more than that his words to me was, "I done it." Those was his words.'
'I must see this out, Mortimer,' whispered Eugene, rising. 'How shall we go?'
'Let us walk,' whispered Lightwood, 'and give this fellow time to think of it.'
Having exchanged the question and answer, they prepared themselves for going out, and Mr Riderhood rose. While extinguishing the candles, Lightwood, quite as a matter of course took up the glass from which that honest gentleman had drunk, and coolly tossed it under the grate, where it fell shivering into fragments.
'Now, if you will take the lead,' said Lightwood, 'Mr Wrayburn and I will follow. You know where to go, I suppose?'
'I suppose I do, Lawyer Lightwood.'
'Take the lead, then.'
The waterside character pulled his drowned cap over his ears with both hands, and making himself more round-shouldered than nature had made him, by the sullen and persistent slouch with which he went, went down the stairs, round by the Temple Church, across the Temple into Whitefriars, and so on by the waterside streets.
'Look at his hang-dog air,' said Lightwood, following.
'It strikes me rather as a hang-MAN air,' returned Eugene. 'He has undeniable intentions that way.'
They said little else as they followed. He went on before them as an ugly Fate might have done, and they kept him in view, and would have bee