Chapter 10 - Page 2

into the narrow and steep street from which the court
of enclosure wherein the house stood opened, when another footstep
turned into it behind him, and so close upon his own that he was
jostled to the wall. As his mind was teeming with these thoughts,
the encounter took him altogether unprepared, so that the other
passenger had had time to say, boisterously, 'Pardon! Not my
fault!' and to pass on before the instant had elapsed which was
requisite to his recovery of the realities about him.

When that moment had flashed away, he saw that the man striding on
before him was the man who had been so much in his mind during the
last few days. It was no casual resemblance, helped out by the
force of the impression the man made upon him. It was the man; the
man he had followed in company with the girl, and whom he had
overheard talking to Miss Wade.

The street was a sharp descent and was crooked too, and the man
(who although not drunk had the air of being flushed with some
strong drink) went down it so fast that Clennam lost him as he
looked at him. With no defined intention of following him, but
with an impulse to keep the figure in view a little longer, Clennam
quickened his pace to pass the twist in the street which hid him
from his sight. On turning it, he saw the man no more.

Standing now, close to the gateway of his mother's house, he looked
down the street: but it was empty. There was no projecting shadow
large enough to obscure the man; there was no turning near that he
could have taken; nor had there been any audible sound of the
opening and closing of a door. Nevertheless, he concluded that the
man must have had a key in his hand, and must have opened one of
the many house-doors and gone in.

Ruminating on this strange chance and strange glimpse, he turned
into the court-yard. As he looked, by mere habit, towards the
feebly lighted windows of his mother's room, his eyes encountered
the figure he had just lost, standing against the iron railings of
the little waste enclosure looking up at those windows and laughing
to himself. Some of the many vagrant cats who were always prowling
about there by night, and who had taken fright at him, appeared to
have stopped when he had stopped, and were looking at him with eyes
by no means unlike his own from tops of walls and porches, and
other safe points of pause. He had only halted for a moment to
entertain himself thus; he immediately went forward, throwing the
end of his cloak off his shoulder as he went, ascended the unevenly
sunken steps, and knocked a sounding knock at the door.

Clennam's surprise was not so absorbing but that he took his
resolution without any incertitude. He went up to the door too,
and ascended the steps