r mistook the time.

She had gone up the street as far as the place where the stone pavement
began, when she saw the green door open and slam quickly to again, as a
bare-headed, half-dressed servant-girl ran out. Immediately after, a man
came out in similar haste, and through the door which he left standing
open behind him, a number of people, with and without hats, streamed out
on to the steps.

Something was the matter!

Now a window was also opened, or rather hammered open, so that the pane
clashed down on to the pavement.

Probably some drunken man or other, who could not stand any longer--it
was Saturday evening, you know--and who was making a row, and must be
taken by the police.

She had often seen such sights before, and was quite accustomed to them.
She was not anxious about her father either: he never interfered in such
matters.

But why did he not come out? Every one else had come out.

A faint, slanting gleam of evening light had fallen in through the empty
square of window. Her father generally sat at the table just inside; he
always kept the same place. And she went up and peered in between the
flower-pots,--some half-stifled, dirty geraniums and hydrangeas,
saturated with public-house effluvia.

Who was that--that man who was lying on the dirty counter, with his
necktie and shirt unfastened and one arm hanging down--was it her
father?

"If only some one had a lancet!--he moved just now--a lancet!"

What more they said on the steps she did not notice, except that some
wanted to deny her entrance, and others again said that she was Holman's
daughter.

She awoke, as if after a fall from a great height during which she had
lost consciousness, to find herself sitting by the counter supporting
her father's head. She thought she remembered clinging to his neck and
begging him to answer her: but there was no rattling in his throat now.

They had placed an old, worn sofa-pillow and the seat of a chair under
his head. Behind stood quart and pint measures, dram-glasses, tin
funnels and beer-bottles pushed right up to the wall to make room. His
wide-open eyes stared up at the once white-washed beams of the ceiling,
and one side of his face was drawn up into a grin, which made him look
as if he were unspeakably disgusted with the dirty ceiling.

A big man sat at the door. Silla knew him: he was the public-house bear,
as he was called; he who turned people out for Mrs. Selvig. He was
sitting silent on