er little girl--was I on the trace of her at that moment? Was this lost
child destined to be the innocent means of leading me back to the woman
I loved, in her direst need of sympathy and help? The more I thought of
it, the more strongly the idea of returning with the boy to the house
in which his mother's lodger lived fastened itself on my mind. The clock
struck the quarter past eleven. If my anticipations ended in misleading
me, I had still three-quarters of an hour to spare before the month
reached its end.

"Where do you live?" I asked.

The boy mentioned a street, the name of which I then heard for the first
time. All he could say, when I asked for further particulars, was that
he lived close by the river--in which direction, he was too confused and
too frightened to be able to tell me.

While we were still trying to understand each other, a cab passed slowly
at some little distance. I hailed the man, and mentioned the name of
the street to him. He knew it perfectly well. The street was rather
more than a mile away from us, in an easterly direction. He undertook
to drive me there and to bring me back again to Saint Paul's (if
necessary), in less than twenty minutes. I opened the door of the cab,
and told my little friend to get in. The boy hesitated.

"Are we going to the chemist's, if you please, sir?" he asked.

"No. You are going home first, with me."

The boy began to cry again.

"Mother will beat me, sir, if I go back without the medicine."

"I will take care that your mother doesn't beat you. I am a doctor
myself; and I want to see the lady before we get the medicine."

The announcement of my profession appeared to inspire the boy with a
certain confidence. But he still showed no disposition to accompany me
to his mother's house.

"Do you mean to charge the lady anything?" he asked. "The money I've
got on the ring isn't much. Mother won't like having it taken out of her
rent."

"I won't charge the lady a farthing," I answered.

The boy instantly got into the cab. "All right," he said, "as long as
mother gets her money."

Alas for the poor! The child's education in the sordid anxieties of life
was completed already at ten years old!

We drove away.

CHAPTER XXV. I KEEP MY APPOINTMENT.

THE poverty-stricken aspect of the street when we entered it, the dirty
and dilapidated condition of the house when we drew up at the door,
would have warned most men, in my position, to prepare themselves fo