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Each of the four walls had, at ground level, a narrow entrance, plastered without a trace of woodwork. This opened into a vestibule containing a dirt-encrusted staircase which spiraled upward. They were each labeled with one of the first four letters of the alphabet painted on the wall. Several large work-shops with weather-blackened skylights were scattered about the court.
With a great effort he forced open one of the dirt-encrusted sashes and looked out and in the same instant he drew in his head with a harsh groan. The window commanded a full view of the hall door and he had seen Prydale, and two other detectives, and the stranger from London whom he believed to be a detective, hurrying from their motorcar into the house. There was but one thing for it, now.
Overhead not a star was to be seen, and save an occasional drunkard staggering home, the two men were alone on the road. A short distance beyond the distillery the cooper-shop squatted beside the street, and the dim flicker of a candle cast its pitiful light through the dirt-encrusted window.
A "dip" calls a friendly "Hello, Dan" to the policeman in front of the drugstore and works his steps over the car tracks toward the drunk teetering against the window of the Jew's clothing store. The air is dust-filled. An intermittent baking gust from the river sends a cast-aside Journal fluttering aloft. A dirt-encrusted bum begs the price of a coffee.
The floor was of the bare earth, covered in patches with loose plank of various descriptions, and littered over with billets of 'lightwood, unwashed cooking utensils, two or three cheap stools, a pine settee made from the rough log and hewn smooth on the upper-side a full-grown blood-hound, two younger canines, and nine dirt-encrusted juveniles, of the flax-head species.
I would jog beside you, taking the strain a little from your aching shoulders; and we would walk nodding, our heads side by side, and you, remembering, should tell me of the fields where long ago you played, of the gallant races that you ran and won. And you, little pinched brats, with wondering eyes, looking from dirt-encrusted faces, I would take you in my arms and tell you fairy stories.
Presently, however, as Abner looked around the uninviting interior of his future abode, and then glanced at his young bride, he was sobered. "An empty hovel with unwhitewashed walls, stoneless hearth, and dirt-encrusted windows and floors, is certainly no fit welcome for you, my dearest," he said to her as they stood alone a moment, while Susan and Rache were taking a survey of the inner room.
That wretched apology of a creature stripped from me my dirt-encrusted shirt that I had worn since my entrance to solitary, and exposed my poor wasted body, the skin ridged like brown parchment over the ribs and sore- infested from the many bouts with the jacket. The examination was shamelessly perfunctory. "Will he stand it?" the Warden demanded. "Yes," Doctor Jackson answered.
Lizzie Stevens was there, steeping linen in a basin for the doctor, and another policeman, no one else. I forgot. Crouching in the farthest corner, and glaring in drunken stupor around her, was the poor dying child's wretched mother. A broken bottle tightly grasped in her hands, fragments of which lay about the dirt-encrusted floor, told the tale, alas! too plainly.
The swarthy face, turned skyward, seemed to be laughing; from beneath the upturned upper lip small close-set teeth were visible; the dim pupils of the half-closed eyes were hardly to be distinguished from the darkened whites; covered with bubbles of foam the dirt-encrusted hair spread out over the ground and laid bare the smooth forehead with the purplish line of the scar; the narrow nose rose up like a sharp, white streak between the sunken cheeks.
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