ted she might be there, and so they tramped straight
across towards the main street and turned into the "Pistol Shot." They
pushed their way unheeded through the idle, lounging, gossiping crowd
within, found their way behind the bar, and asked for Poniatovsky. The
little Pole came out of his back parlour and met them in the passage. He
listened to their story, his long pipe in one hand, his mouth open, and
his own vile whisky obscuring and clouding his brain.

"Wot! she haf run away?" he exclaimed, as Stephen paused; "and who is de
cause? Is it this shentleman here?" and he stared up at Talbot's slight,
tall figure, imposing in its furs, and at the finely-cut, determined
features that presented such a contrast to Stephen's weak boyish face.

"No, no," said the latter angrily; "she hasn't run away at all. She has
only come down here for an hour or so. I thought she might have come
here to see you."

"No," replied the Pole deprecatingly, shrugging his shoulders and
spreading out his hands, "I haf not seen her. If she come here, I shut
the door upon her. I say, 'I vil haf no runaway wives here.' My fren,
before you vos marrit did not I say, a truant daughter make a truant
wife. She haf left me first, now she haf left you."

He had taken Stephen by the front of his coat, and was pushing in his
words by the aid of a dirty forefinger.

Talbot abandoned Stephen to argue the matter out with his drunken
father-in-law, and strolled back through the passage, through the
bar-room, and then stood, with his gloved hands deep in his fur-lined
pockets, at the saloon door, looking up and down the street. Presently
one of the wrecks of the night came drifting by, a girl of nineteen or
so, with her cheeks blue and pinched in the terrible cold under their
coat of coarse paint. He signalled to her, and she drifted across to
him, and stood, with her hands thrust up her sleeves, in the light from
the "Pistol Shot."

"I expect you've seen the inside of most of the drinking-houses
to-night," he said, speaking in a kind voice, for the pitiful, cold face
of the girl touched him; "have you seen anything of Katrine Poniatovsky,
a girl who used to live here?"

"Wot's she like?" the girl asked sullenly. She was so hoarse that she
could hardly make the words audible.

"A tall girl, dark, and very handsome."

"Yes, I seed her, not more'n an hour ago, in the 'Cock-pit.' She's
a-makin' more money in there than I can make if I walk all night. Cu