of tonic medicine which she was accustomed to take, and in which
she had fancied that a dose or more was still left, happened to be
empty. Isaac immediately volunteered to go to the chemist's and get
it filled again. It was as rainy and bleak an autumn night as on the
memorable past occasion when he lost his way and slept at the road-side
inn.

On going into the chemist's shop he was passed hurriedly by a
poorly-dressed woman coming out of it. The glimpse he had of her
face struck him, and he looked back after her as she descended the
door-steps.

"You're noticing that woman?" said the chemist's apprentice behind the
counter. "It's my opinion there's something wrong with her. She's been
asking for laudanum to put to a bad tooth. Master's out for half an
hour, and I told her I wasn't allowed to sell poison to strangers in
his absence. She laughed in a queer way, and said she would come back
in half an hour. If she expects master to serve her, I think she'll be
disappointed. It's a case of suicide, sir, if ever there was one yet."

These words added immeasurably to the sudden interest in the woman which
Isaac had felt at the first sight of her face. After he had got the
medicine-bottle filled, he looked about anxiously for her as soon as
he was out in the street. She was walking slowly up and down on
the opposite side of the road. With his heart, very much to his own
surprise, beating fast, Isaac crossed over and spoke to her.

He asked if she was in any distress. She pointed to her torn shawl, her
scanty dress, her crushed, dirty bonnet; then moved under a lamp so as
to let the light fall on her stern, pale, but still most beautiful face.

"I look like a comfortable, happy woman, don't I?" she said, with a
bitter laugh.

She spoke with a purity of intonation which Isaac had never heard before
from other than ladies' lips. Her slightest actions seemed to have the
easy, negligent grace of a thoroughbred woman. Her skin, for all its
poverty-stricken paleness, was as delicate as if her life had been
passed in the enjoyment of every social comfort that wealth can
purchase. Even her small, finely-shaped hands, gloveless as they were,
had not lost their whiteness.

Little by little, in answer to his questions, the sad story of the woman
came out. There is no need to relate it here; it is told over and over
again in police reports and paragraphs about attempted suicides.

"My name is Rebecca Murdoch," said the woman, a