ng myself once---_you_ know, Walters, when I got the sack from the
'Morning Star' Mine for plugging the English manager when he called me a
'damned colonial lout.'"

The fat-faced doctor looked steadily at him for a moment or two. Then he
reached out his hand.

"You're a good fellow, Mr. Harrington. I'll take a sovereign or two.
Come in here with me."

III

Harrington followed him into an adjoining room, where, upon a
wicker-work couch was reclining the figure of a young girl. Standing
beside her was the police-sergeant's wife, who, as soon as the two men
came in, quietly drew aside.

"Now, here I am back again, my dear child," said the doctor
good-humouredly, "and here is a very old friend of mine, Mr. Jack
Harrington; and we have come to cheer you up and tell you that you have
two or three good friends. And we won't let any women or parsons come
to you and worry you, and tell you that you have been a wicked girl,
and ought to have thrown yourself upon God's mercy and all that sort of
thing. So just drink that coffee, and then by and by we will take you to
some people I know well, and you shall come and tell us in a day or two
how sorry you are for being so foolish."

The girl's dark hazel eyes looked steadily at them both; then she put
out a thin white hand.

"You are very kind to me. I know it was very wicked to try and kill
myself, but I was so lonely, and... and I had not eaten anything since
Wednesday... and I wanted to die." Then she covered her face and sobbed
softly, whilst the doctor patted her on the shoulder and said--

"Don't worry, little girl; you are in good hands now. Never mind Mrs.
Thornton and her un-kindness. You are better away from her--isn't she,
Mr. Harrington?"

Mr. Harrington, knowing nothing about Mrs. Thornton, promptly said "Oh,
most certainly," and the girl's eyes met his for a second, and a faint
smile flushed upon her pale lips. The tall, bearded, and brown-faced
man's face seemed so full of pity.

"Now you must go to sleep for an hour or two," said the doctor
imperatively; "so now then, little girl, 'seepy-by, beddy-bo.' That's
what _my_ mother used to say to me."

Harrington followed the doctor out into the sergeant's room, where
Inspector Walters, with his heels upon the table, was falling asleep.

"Sit down a moment, Mr. Harrington," said Dr. Parsons, taking up a book
which the sergeant had left upon the table; "this is a sad case. Here
is a girl, Nellie Alleyne