oked well, and throughout the
subsequent perfunctory inquiry they were very justly held to be
incompetent, irrelevant, and improper persons, and they were never
questioned--in fact, their existence was even denied. But they knew
something of Merry.

They knew how he was hunted all about that rabbit warren, in and out, by
passages and traps and holes in the wall, upstairs and down. They knew
how he sought refuge through filth and dust and blows with the blind
cunning of a harried and flank-torn cur. How he got away at some turn.
How he dragged himself to some innermost recess of the place before he
collapsed. How he was found there at last, and how he found himself, in
a sense--though exactly why or by what dispensation these matters came
to pass, naturally the said witness never had any very clear idea.

They had few ideas about anything, beyond their daily plaint against
God, man, the cook, and the weather--which was undeniably an ample
source at that, you may say. They kept the story only as long as it was
new, like a scrap of ribbon, or a painted bangle or any other trifle
which circulates in common currency, soon to become faded, lost and
forgotten. But while it lasted their tale was precise enough, and it
certainly established beyond doubt that the girl with the pink
wristbands was the first thing Merry saw when he opened his eyes again,
when he filtered back toward consciousness with his head on her knee and
her quick, cool hands nursing him....

"More!" was Mr. Merry's greeting.

She set down the empty cup.

"We got no more," she said.

To him she must have seemed, she could have seemed at first, only a
figment of dreams. She crouched by the pallet to which she had dragged
him. The room was darkened; a candle struggled fitfully somewhere with
the rays of moonshine that came by the wide window. The light just
sufficed to show her small, pinched face, of a deathly pallidity under
its coil of heavy, dead hair, and her thin arms and figure loosely
covered by her loose-sleeved wrapper. It sufficed for him to recognize
her, as men, without start or surprise, absolutely and infallibly do
recognize and collogue with the creatures of their delirium.

"I have been looking for you," he said simply.

"You've been a long time about it," she answered, with the same
simplicity....

* * * * *

In truth, life and all issues had been pretty well simplified and fused
down for both these p