d. 'I heard the water squelching in his boots.'

'What'll happen if we don't let him in?' said Dicky.

'He'll be caught and taken back, like the soldiers,' said Oswald. 'Look
here, I'm going to chance it. You others can lock yourselves into your
rooms if you're frightened.'

Then Oswald put his brave young head out of the window, and the rain
dripped on to the back of his bold young neck off the roof, like a
watering-pot on to a beautiful flower, and he said:

'There's a porch to the side door. Just scoot round there and shelter,
and I'll come down in half a sec.'

A resolve made in early youth never to face midnight encounters without
boots was the cause of this delay. Oswald and Dicky got into their boots
and jackets, and told the girls to go back to bed.

Then we went down and opened the front-door. The stranger had heard the
bolts go, and he was outside waiting.

We held the door open politely, and he stepped in and began at once to
drip heavily on the doormat.

We shut the door. He looked wildly round.

'Be calm! You are safe,' said Oswald.

'Thanks,' said the stranger; 'I see I am.'

All our hearts were full of pity for the outcast. He was, indeed, a
spectacle to shock the benevolent. Even the prison people, Oswald
thought, or the man he took the cake from, would have felt their
fierceness fade if they could have seen him then. He was not in prison
dress. Oswald would have rather liked to see that, but he remembered
that it was safer for the man that he had found means to rid himself of
the felon's garb. He wore a gray knickerbocker suit, covered with mud.
The lining of his hat must have been blue, and it had run down his face
in streaks like the gentleman in Mr. Kipling's story. He was wetter than
I have ever seen anyone out of a bath or the sea.

'Come into the kitchen,' said Oswald; 'you can drip there quite
comfortably. The floor is brick.'

He followed us into the kitchen.

'Are you kids alone in the house?' he said.

'Yes,' said Oswald.

'Then I suppose it's no good asking if you've got a drop of brandy?'

'Not a bit,' said Dicky.

[Illustration: '"Come into the kitchen," said Oswald, "you can drip
there quite comfortably."'--Page 52]

'Whisky would do, or gin--any sort of spirit,' said the smeared stranger
hopefully.

'Not a drop,' said Oswald; 'at least, I'll look in the medicine
cupboard. And, I say, take off your things and put them in the sink.
I'll get you some other clothes.