m. "Miss Mildare, the Dop Doctor was only
another nickname for the Town Drunkard. And now you know what you should
have known before if I had not been a coward and a knave."

She turned her eyes softly upon him, and they could not rest, it seemed to
her, upon a man of braver and more lofty bearing.

"I _was_ the Town Drunkard," Saxham went on, in the cold, clear voice that
cut like a knife to the intelligence. "Known in every liquor-saloon, and
familiar to every constable, and a standing butt for the clumsy jests that
the most utter dolt of a Police Magistrate might splutter from the Bench."
His jarring laugh hurt her. "The Man in the Street, and the Woman of the
Street, for that matter--pardon me if I offend your ears, but the truth
must be told--were my godfather and my godmother, and they gave me that
name between them. You are trembling, Miss Mildare. Sit down upon that
balk, and I will finish."

There was a remnant of timber lying near that had been used in the
construction of a gun-mounting. She moved to it and sat down, and the
Doctor went on:

"I am not going to weary you with the story of how I came to be--what I
have told you. But that I had lived a clean and honourable and temperate
life up to thirty years of age--when my world caved in with me--I swear is
the very truth!"

She said gently: "I can believe it, Dr. Saxham."

"Even if you could not it would not alter the fact. And then, at the
height of my success, and on the brink of a marriage that I dreamed would
bring me the fulfilment of every hope a man may cherish, one impulse of
pity and charity towards a wretched little woman brought me ruin, ruin,
ruin!"

Pity for a wretched woman had brought it all about. She was glad to see
the Saxham of her knowledge in that Saxham whom she had not known. He
folded his great arms upon his broad breast and went on:

"Nothing was left to me. Everything was gone. Rehabilitation in the eyes
of the Law--for I gained that much--did not clear me in the eyes of
Society--that hugs the guilt-stained criminal to its heart in the full
consciousness of what his deeds are, and shudders at the innocent man upon
whom has once fallen the shadow of that grim and bloody Idol that
civilisation misnames Justice. I was cast out. Even by the brother I had
trusted and the woman I had loved. I had in a vague way believed in God
until then; I know I used to pray to Him to bless those I loved, and help
me to achieve great things for