e held a match to the candle, and in a moment or two a faint circle of
light fell on the pale aguish heads that started out of the shadow like
the heads of nocturnal animals.

"Mary's over there," someone said; and Mr. Miles, taking the bottle in
his hand, passed behind the table. Charity followed him, and they stood
before a mattress on the floor in a corner of the room. A woman lay on
it, but she did not look like a dead woman; she seemed to have fallen
across her squalid bed in a drunken sleep, and to have been left lying
where she fell, in her ragged disordered clothes. One arm was flung
above her head, one leg drawn up under a torn skirt that left the other
bare to the knee: a swollen glistening leg with a ragged stocking rolled
down about the ankle. The woman lay on her back, her eyes staring up
unblinkingly at the candle that trembled in Mr. Miles's hand.

"She jus' dropped off," a woman said, over the shoulder of the others;
and the young man added: "I jus' come in and found her."

An elderly man with lank hair and a feeble grin pushed between them. "It
was like this: I says to her on'y the night before: if you don't take
and quit, I says to her..."

Someone pulled him back and sent him reeling against a bench along the
wall, where he dropped down muttering his unheeded narrative.

There was a silence; then the young woman who had been lolling against
the table suddenly parted the group, and stood in front of Charity.
She was healthier and robuster looking than the others, and her
weather-beaten face had a certain sullen beauty.

"Who's the girl? Who brought her here?" she said, fixing her eyes
mistrustfully on the young man who had rebuked her for not having a
candle ready.

Mr. Miles spoke. "I brought her; she is Mary Hyatt's daughter."

"What? Her too?" the girl sneered; and the young man turned on her with
an oath. "Shut your mouth, damn you, or get out of here," he said;
then he relapsed into his former apathy, and dropped down on the bench,
leaning his head against the wall.

Mr. Miles had set the candle on the floor and taken off his heavy coat.
He turned to Charity. "Come and help me," he said.

He knelt down by the mattress, and pressed the lids over the dead
woman's eyes. Charity, trembling and sick, knelt beside him, and tried
to compose her mother's body. She drew the stocking over the dreadful
glistening leg, and pulled the skirt down to the battered upturned
boots. As she did so, she loo