It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when I set out with
Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond town, we found a heavy mist out, and
it fell wet and thick. The turnpike lamp was a blur, quite out of the
lamp's usual place apparently, and its rays looked solid substance on
the fog. We were noticing this, and saying how that the mist rose with a
change of wind from a certain quarter of our marshes, when we came upon
a man, slouching under the lee of the turnpike house.
"Halloa!" we said, stopping. "Orlick there?"
"Ah!" he answered, slouching out. "I was standing by a minute, on the
chance of company."
"You are late," I remarked.
Orlick not unnaturally answered, "Well? And you're late."
"We have been," said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late performance,--"we
have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellectual evening."
Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about that, and we all
went on together. I asked him presently whether he had been spending his
half-holiday up and down town?
"Yes," said he, "all of it. I come in behind yourself. I didn't see you,
but I must have been pretty close behind you. By the by, the guns is
going again."
"At the Hulks?" said I.
"Ay! There's some of the birds flown from the cages. The guns have been
going since dark, about. You'll hear one presently."
In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when the
well-remembered boom came towards us, deadened by the mist, and heavily
rolled away along the low grounds by the river, as if it were pursuing
and threatening the fugitives.
"A good night for cutting off in," said Orlick. "We'd be puzzled how to
bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night."
The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought about it in
silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the evening's tragedy,
fell to meditating aloud in his garden at Camberwell. Orlick, with his
hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my side. It was very dark,
very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed along. Now and then, the sound
of the signal cannon broke upon us again, and again rolled sulkily along
the course of the river. I kept myself to myself and my thoughts. Mr.
Wopsle died amiably at Camberwell, and exceedingly game on Bosworth
Field, and in the greatest agonies at Glastonbury. Orlick sometimes
growled, "Beat it out, beat it out,--Old Clem! With a clink for the
stout,--Old Clem!" I thought he had been drinking, but he was not drunk.