good-natured;
sometimes even with a word of chaff for the costermonger whom they
ordered to move on, him and his barrow.

These not very anxious experiments, and quite idle speculations about
the uses of various forms of labour, might have gone on indefinitely
but for the very certain fact that Douglas's small stock of money was
being slowly but surely exhausted. Slowly, it is true; for he had
wholly given up tobacco; his dinner was a roll or a biscuit eaten in
the street; and as his landlady charged him sixpence for each
scuttleful of coals, he preferred to keep himself warm on these now
bitterly cold evenings by tramping about outside and looking at the
shops. That good woman, by the way, was sorely disappointed in this
new lodger, out of whom she could make no indirect profit; and she had
a waspish tongue. John Douglas regarded her taunts--almost amounting
to open insult--with a patient and mild curiosity. It was a little bit
of psychological study, and more interesting than book-keeping by
double entry. Meantime, things were becoming very serious; with all
his penuriousness, he had arrived at his last half-sovereign.

CHAPTER III.

A FELLOW-SUFFERER.

One night, a few minutes after nine, Douglas was returning home along
one of the badly-lit little thoroughfares in the Borough, when he saw
the figure of a woman slowly subside on to the pavement in front of
him. She did not fall; she trembled on to her knees as it were, and
then lay prone--near a doorstep. Well, he had grown familiar with the
sights of London streets; but even if the woman were drunk, as he
imagined, he would lift her up, until some policeman came along.

He went forward. It was not a woman, but a young girl of about
seventeen or so, who did not seem a drunken person.

'My lass, what is the matter with ye?' he said, kneeling down to get
hold of her.

'Oh, I am so ill--I am so ill!' the girl moaned, apparently to herself.

He tried to raise her. She was quite white, and almost insensible.
Then she seemed to come to; she struggled up a bit, and sought to
support herself by the handle of the door.

'I shall be all right,' she gasped. 'I am quite well. Don't tell
them. I am quite well--it was my knees that gave way----'

'Where do ye live, my lass?' said he, taking hold of her arm to support
her; for he thought she was going to sink to the ground again.

'Number twelve.'

'In this street?'

She did not answer,

'Come,