both of them,
and the gold passed through his fingers day by day, an endless shower.
The magistrates had declined to sentence him, but the shame--and he was
never strong. Brooks saw the card made out for that little cottage at
Hastings, and enclosed with the railway ticket Owston was picking up
fast there--and smiled faintly. He saw the girl on her breathless way
home with the good news, saw her wet face heaven turned for the first
time for many a month. There were men and women in the world with
hearts then. They were not all puppets of wood and stone, even as those
bank directors. Then, too, she would believe again that there might be
a God.

Ghosts! They were plentiful enough. There was the skin-dresser--his
fingers still yellow with the dye of the pith. Things were bad in
Bermondsey. The master had gone bankrupt, the American had filched away
his trade. No one could find him work. He was sober enough except at
holiday time and an odd Saturday--a good currier--there might be a
chance for him in the country, but how was he to get there? And in any
case now, how could he? His wife had broken down, lay at home with no
disease that a hospital would take her in for, sinking for want of good
food, worn out with hard work, toiling early and late to get food for
the children until her man should get a job. There was the workhouse,
but it meant separation, perhaps for ever, and they were man and wife,
as much needed the one by the other, perhaps more, as their prototype in
the world of plenty. Again Brooks smiled. He must have seen Flitch, a
capital chap Flitch, making up that parcel in the grocery department and
making an appointment for three days' time. And Menton, too, the young
doctor, as keen on the work as Brooks himself, but paid for his evenings
under protest, overhears the address--why, it was only a yard or two.
He would run back with the man and have a look at his wife. He had some
physic--he felt sure it was just what she wanted. So out into the
street together, and no wonder the yellow-stained fingers that grasped
the string of the parcel shook, and the man felt an odd lump in his
throat, and a wave of thankfulness as he passed a flaring public-house
when half-an-hour ago he had almost plunged madly in to find pluck for
the river--devil's pluck. The woman. Nothing the matter with her but
what rest and good food would cure. Another case for that little
cottage. Lucky there were others being made ready.

"What