rriedly as she
had appeared. It was all over in a moment: the vivid impression of a
face maddened by fear, and of a cry for help, that was all. In that
moment Barton had seized his hat, and sped, as hard as he could run,
after the girl. He found her breaking through a knot of loafers in the
bar, who were besieging her with questions. She turned and saw Barton.

"Come, doctor, come!" she screamed again, and fled out into the night,
crossing another girl who was apparently speeding on the same errand.
Barton could just see the flying skirts of the first messenger, and hear
her footfall ring on the pavement. Up a long street, down another, and
then into a back slum she flew, and, lastly, under a swinging sign of
the old-fashioned sort, and through a doorway. Barton, following,
found himself for the first time within the portals of _The Old English
Bun-house_.

The wide passage (the house was old) was crowded with girls, wildly
excited, weeping, screaming, and some of them swearing. They were
pressed so thick round a door at the end of the hall, that Barton could
scarcely thrust his way through them, dragging one aside, shouldering
another: it was a matter of life and death.

"Oh, she's been at the drink, and she's killed her! she's killed her!
I heard her fall!" one of the frightened girls was exclaiming with
hysterical iteration.

"Let me pass!" shouted Barton; and reaching the door at last, he turned
the handle and pushed. The door was locked.

"Give me room," he cried, and the patrons of _The Bun-house_ yielding
place a little, Barton took a little short run, and drove with all the
weight of his shoulders against the door. It opened reluctantly with a
crash, and he was hurled into the room by his own impetus, and by the
stress of the girls behind him.

What he beheld was more like some dreadful scene of ancient tragedy than
the spectacle of an accident or a crime of modern life.

By the windy glare of a dozen gas-jets (red and shaken like the flame
of blown torches by the rainy gusts that swept through a broken pane),
Barton saw a girl stretched bleeding on the sanded floor.

One of her arms made a pillow for her head; her soft dark hair,
unfastened, half hid her, like a veil; the other arm lay loose by her
side; her lips were white, her face was bloodless; but there was blood
on the deep-blue folds about the bosom, and on the floor. At the further
side of this girl--who was dead, or seemingly dead--sat, on a l