he men in the shelter
were clambering up to their bunks. In addition to the main apartment
there was a little room with a glass front which hung like a cage near to
the ceiling at one end and was entered by a circular iron stair. This was
the keeper's own sleeping place, and Jupe was making it ready for John,
while John himself sat waiting with the look of a crushed and humiliated
man, when the tumult in the street came nearer and at last drew up in
front of the house.

"Wot's thet?" the men asked each other, lifting their heads, and Jupe
came down and went to the door. When he returned his face was white, the
sweat hung on his forehead, and a trembling shook his whole body.

"For Gawd's sake, Father, leave the house at onct!" he whispered in great
agitation. "There's a gang outside as'll pull the place dahn if I keep
you."

There was silence for a moment, save for the shouting outside, and then
John said, with a sigh and a look of resignation, "Very well, let me out,
then," and he turned to the door.

"Not that wy, sir--this wy," said Jupe, and at the next moment they were
stepping into a dark and narrow lane at the back. "Turn to the left when
ye get ter the bottom, Father--mind ye turn ter the left."

But John Storm had scarcely heard him. His heart had failed him at last.
He saw the baseness and ingratitude of the people whom he had spent
himself to relieve and uplift and succour and comfort, and he repented
himself of the hopes and aims and efforts which had come to this
bankruptcy in the end.

"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

Yes, yes, that was it! It was not this poor vile race merely, this stupid
and ungrateful humanity--it was God! God used one man's ignorance, and
another man's anger, and another man's hatred, and another man's spite,
and worked out his own ends through it all. And God had rejected him,
refused him, turned a deaf ear to his prayer and his repentance, robbed
him of friends, of affection, of love, and cast him out of the family of
man!

Very well! So be it! What should he do? He would go back to prison and
say: "Take me in again--there is no room left for me in the world. I am
alone, and my heart is dead within me!"

He was at the end of the dark lane by this time, and forgetting Jupe's
warning, and seeing a brightly lighted street running off to his right,
he swung round to it and walked boldly along. This was Old Pye Street,
and he had come to the corner at which it ope