s scarf-wrapped head.

The cockney's address begins, "O my brothers ..." but I do not attend:
I want to get Margarita out of the growing crowd, listless, but lifted
for a moment from their sordid treadmill of existence by the light and
the muffled, rhythmic crush and the high-pitched sing-song. They must
have followed for a long way, for they are churnings from the very
dregs of London and alien to Trafalgar Square, and the officer on his
beat looks at them suspiciously enough.

"Won't you give us a song, lieutenant?" says the speaker suddenly,
"pipe h'up there, friends--many a sinner's saved his soul with a
song--w'y not some o' you? Are you ready, lieutenant?"

I can see her so plainly, the pretty, worn little creature; pale as
death and in no condition for street singing, evidently, but plucky
and borne along by the very zeal of the Crusaders. The other woman,
who cannot sing, shakes the tambourine, a great, burly fellow, some
rescued navvy, thuds at the drum, and her sweet, thin little voice
rises, shrill, but wonderfully appealing, through the night.

_"I need Thee every hour,
Most gracious Lord!"_

It is not difficult now to see why the crowd followed; her voice is
like a child's lost in the wood, but brave, and sure of ultimate
protection; it has a curious effect of the country and the hedgerows.
They listen eagerly, they like it.

"Come, Margarita, I think we ought to get away--the crowd is getting
thicker. People are staring at us."

"No, no, Jerry, let me alone! Oh, see the poor woman, she is too ill
to sing! She has lost her voice--do you know it?"

And so she has. With a clutch at her throat and a pathetic turn of her
eyes to the speaker, the little lieutenant shakes her head at him and
is dumb. He seats her deftly on a camp stool by the drummer, pats her
shoulder, sends a friendly gutter-rat with the face of a sneak-thief
for water, and turns to the crowd.

"Come now, friends, the lieutenant 'ere 'as lost 'er voice along o'
you, an' tryin' to save yer! Can't you pipe up, some o' you? If some
of you'd sing a bit with us, now, maybe we'd be able to take back
_one_ soul to Christ with us to-night. Can't one o' yer sing?"

"I will sing!" says some one near me--and it is Margarita!

I clutch her cape fiercely, but it slips off in my hand and she is at
the drum, and the lane that opened for her closes for me, and I fight
in vain to reach her--Oh, it must be a dream!

"I _need_ Thee ever