en unconscious, he concluded, it had been but
momentary. For as he groped about in search of his hat, dazed and
bruised, he found himself still alone and unmolested. Creeping through
the apartment-house cellar, and out past the door of the snoring and
still undisturbed janitor, he crouched for a waiting moment or two
behind an overloaded garbage-can, in the area.

Hearing nothing, he staggered up the narrow stairs to the level of the
sidewalk, wet and ragged and disheveled, blackened and soiled and
begrimed. The street seemed deserted.

He felt sick and faint and shaken, but he would not give up. He
half-stumbled, half-staggered along, splashing through little pools of
rain held in depressions of the stone sidewalk, supporting himself on
anything that offered, hoping, if this were indeed the end, that he
might crawl away into some dark and secluded corner of the city, to
hide the humiliating ignominy of it all.

In front of a Chinese laundry window he saw that he could go no
further. His first impulse was to creep inside, and make an effort to
bribe his way to secrecy, although he knew that within another quarter
of an hour the tightening cordon of the police would entirely surround
the block.

As he swayed there, hesitating, he heard the thunder of hoofs and the
rumble of wheel-tires on the soggy asphalt. His first apprehensive
thought was that it would prove to be a patrol-wagon, with police
reserves from some neighboring precinct. But as he blinked through the
darkness he made out a high-platformed Metropolitan Milk Company's
delivery-wagon swinging down toward him.

He staggered, with a slow and heavy wading motion, out to the centre of
the street, a strange and spectral figure, with outstretched arms,
uttering a sharp and halting cry or two.

The driver pulled up, thirty long and dreary feet past him.

"What in hell d'you want?" he demanded irately, raising his whip to
start his team once more, as he caught a clearer view of the seemingly
drunken figure.

"I'll give you a fiver," said Durkin thickly, "if you'll gi' me a lift!"

He held the money in his hand, as he stumbled and panted to the
wagon-step. That put an end to all argument.

"Climb in, then--quick!" cried the big driver, as he caught his
passenger by a tattered coat sleeve and helped him up into the
high-perched seat.

"But for the love o' God, who's been doin' things to you?" he went on,
in amazement, as he saw the bruised and blee