He put his head between his hands and wept.
A man who had sat down beside him, but after him, having arrived late that evening, straightened up and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Wot’s the matter, hold chap?” he asked in a low voice, that their sleeping neighbours might not hear. “Wot’s the matter? Got a pine, or somethink, or are you ’omesick?”
In the dim light Burton could not distinguish the face, but the voice he would have known anywhere.
“London!” he cried, as he threw his arms about the astonished boy and hugged him like a child.
Then were a few moments of golden silence; then a few words of explanation.
When they spoke of home Burton’s first question was for Miss Vane.
“Hi left ’er with a ’eavy ’eart,” said Wilfred, “but still ’oping. Ho, Hi sy, ’ere is somethink she sent you.”
The boy produced his little pocket-book and Burton struck a match, for the shop lights were off and the street was in partial darkness. Presently the lad located a little torn piece of printed paper.
Burton took it curiously. “Why, that’s only a scrap of paper,” he said.
“That’s wot she sent. ‘Give ’im that,’ she said, ’an’ tell ’im hif ’e lives Hi look for ’im back to stand ’is trial.’”
“Hold a match!” cried Burton, excitedly. “Here, strike this and hold it.”
The flame sputtered for a moment, then grew into a steady little light, and Burton placed the scrap of paper where the rays fell to the best advantage. And his eyes rested on the printed words:
“Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by Life’s unchanging sea.”
“Oh, can I doubt the Power that leads You safe from zone to zone, Is mindful of the man He made In image of His own; That though we blindly breast the gale, Or skirt the shores of Time, Our Pilot knows the track we take, And guides from clime to clime?”
“When does the next train go east?” he demanded.
Wilfred produced a railway time-table, and after some study he found the page. “There’s one at midnight,” he said.
Burton glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to twelve.
“Good-bye, old man,” he said, seizing the hand of the Barnardo boy.