Then he reached a deep lane leading to the village, and was soon at his own door.
As he climbed the wooden ladder leading to the one bedroom where he, his wife, and his four children slept, his wife sprang up in bed.
"Jim, you must be perished--such a night as 't is.

Oh, Jim--where ha' you bin ?" She was a miserable figure in her coarse nightgown, with her grizzling hair wild about her, and her thin arms nervously outstretched along the bed.

The room was freezing cold, and the moonlight stealing through the scanty bits of curtains brought into dismal clearness the squalid bed, the stained walls, and bare uneven floor.

On an iron bedstead, at the foot of the large bed, lay Willie, restless and coughing, with the elder girl beside him fast asleep; the other girl lay beside her mother, and the wooden box with rockers, which held the baby, stood within reach of Mrs.Hurd's arm.
He made her no answer, but went to look at the coughing boy, who had been in bed for a week with bronchitis.
"You've never been and got in Westall's way again ?" she said anxiously.
"It's no good my tryin' to get a wink o' sleep when you're out like this." "Don't you worrit yourself," he said to her, not roughly, but decidedly.
"I'm all right.

This boy's bad, Minta." "Yes, an' I kep' up the fire an' put the spout on the kettle, too." She pointed to the grate and to the thin line of steam, which was doing its powerless best against the arctic cold of the room.
Hurd bent over the boy and tried to put him comfortable.