"
The room in question was at the top of the house. It proved to be
quite bare of furniture. On a bundle of straw in one corner was
lying a woman, to all appearances _in extremis_. She lay looking up
to the ceiling, her face distorted into the most ghastly anguish,
her lips foaming; her whole frame shivered incessantly.
"Ha, I thought so," exclaimed Abraham as he entered. "Are you going
to pay anything this week?"
The woman seemed to be unconscious.
"Have you got the rent?" asked Mr. Woodstock, turning to the child,
who had crouched down in another corner.
"No, we ain't," was the reply, with a terribly fierce glare from
eyes which rather seemed to have looked on ninety years than nine.
"Then out you go! Come, you, get up now; d' you hear? Very well;
come along, Waymark; you take hold of that foot, and I'll take this.
Now, drag her out on to the landing."
They dragged her about half-way to the door, when suddenly Waymark
felt the foot he had hold of withdrawn from his grasp, and at once
the woman sprang upright. Then she fell on him, tooth and nail,
screaming like some evil beast. Had not Abraham forthwith come to
the rescue, he would have been seriously torn about the face, but
just in time the woman's arms were seized in a giant grip, and she
was flung bodily out of the room, falling with a crash upon the
landing.
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