Nancy missed him sorely. She felt quite alone in the world. She managed to get through the day--work helped her; but at night she sat disconsolate and bewildered, and she was now beginning to doubt her own theory. For certainly, if all that money had been Joe Wylie's, he would hardly have left the country without it.
Now, the second evening after Michael's departure, she was seated in his room, brooding, when suddenly she heard a peculiar knocking next door.
She listened a little while, and then stole softly downstairs to her own little room.
Her suspicions were correct. It was the same sort of knocking that had preceded the phenomenon of the hand and bank-notes. She peeped into the kitchen and whispered, "Jenny--Polly--come here."
A stout washerwoman and the mite of a servant came, wondering.
"Now you stand there," said Nancy, "and do as I bid you. Hold your tongues, now. I know all about it."
The myrmidons stood silent, but with panting bosoms; for the mysterious knocking now concluded, and a brick in the chimney began to move.
It came out, and immediately a hand with a ring on it came through the aperture, and felt about.
The mite stood firm, but the big washerwoman gave signs of agitation that promised to end in a scream.
Nancy put her hand roughly before the woman's mouth. "Hold your tongue, ye great soft--" And, without finishing her sentence, she darted to the chimney and seized the hand with both her own and pulled it with such violence that the wrist followed it through the masonry, and a roar was heard.
"Hold on to my waist, Polly," she cried. "Jenny, take the poker, and that string, and tie his hand to it while we hold on. Quick! quick! Are ye asleep?"
Thus adjured, the mite got the poker against the wall and tried to tie the wrist to it.
This, however, was not easy, the hand struggled so desperately.
However, pulling is a matter of weight rather than muscle. And the weight of the two women pulling downward overpowered the violent struggles of the man; and the mite contrived to tie the poker to the wrist, and repeat the ligatures a dozen times in a figure of eight.
Then the owner of the hand, who had hitherto shown violent strength, taken at a disadvantage, now showed intelligence. Convinced that skill as well as force were against him, he ceased to struggle and became quite quiet.
The women contemplated their feat with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.
When they had feasted a reasonable time on the imprisoned hand, and two of them, true to their sex, had scrutinized a green stone upon one of the fingers, to see whether it was real or false, Nancy took them by the shoulders, and bundled them good-humoredly out of the room.
She then lowered the gas and came out, and locked the room up, and put the key in her pocket.
"I'll have my supper with you," said she. "Come, Jenny, I'm cook; and you make the kitchen as a body could eat off it, for I expect vicitors."
"La, ma'am," said the mite; "he can't get out of the chimbly to visit hus through the street door."
"No, girl," said Nancy. "But he can send a hambassador; so Show her heyes and plague her art, as the play says, for of all the dirty kitchens give me hers. I never was there but once, and my slipper come off for the muck, a sticking to a body like bird-lime."
There was a knock at Nancy's street door; the little servant, full of curiosity, was for running to it on the instant. But Nancy checked her.
"Take your time," said she. "It is only a lodging-house keeper."