Legacy of the Dead

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THE TWO WOMEN SAT HUDDLED TOGETHER IN THE small carriage, looking around them in dismay, staring at the filthy, closed-in street, the drunken old man sprawled in one of the doorways, the tall tenements ugly and bleak and perilously ill-kept. There was no grace here, only an air of despondency and gloom and poverty.

“It’s a horrible place!” one said at last. She was the elder, but not by much. They were both young and very frightened.

“Are you quite sure this is the street we want? I can’t believe—” Her companion, the reins lying in her lap, let the words die.

In answer, the passenger dug in her purse for the tattered piece of paper, pulled it out, and read it again. Her lips were trembling, and she felt cold, sick. “Look for yourself. Oh—” The paper slipped from her fingers, and she caught it just before it tumbled into the fetid running gutter beneath the wheel.

It was the street and the house they had searched over an hour to find.

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