the hall to the dining-room.

Harriet went to the door and closed it. Then she turned to him. The
paper had slipped from his fingers and lay across his breast.

"What shall I get for your breakfast?" she asked. She moved round on
the other side of the bed, wondering if it was the yellow morning light
or his physical weakness that gave his face such a depressed, ghastly
look.

"What did you say?" He stared at her absently.

"What would you like for breakfast?"

He looked towards his coat that hung on the foot of his bed.

"Don't bother about me; I'm going to get up."

"No, you must not." She caught his wrist. "Look how you are
quivering; you ought not to have tried to read."

He raised the paper again, but it shook so that its rustling might have
been heard across the room. She took it from him, and laid it on a
chair by the bed. She looked away; the corners of his mouth were drawn
down piteously and his lips were twitching.

"Please hand me my coat," he said.

"You are not going to get up?" She sat down on the bed and put her
hand on his brow. Her face was soft and pleading. It held a
sweetness, a womanly strength he longed to lean upon.

He caught her hand and held it nervously.

"I don't believe I've got a single friend on earth," he said. "I don't
deserve any; I'm a bad man."

"Don't talk that way," she replied. There was something in his
plaintive tone that seemed to touch her deeply, for she took his hand
in both of hers and pressed it.

"I don't want to die, for your sake," he said, "for if I was to go
under, it would be awkward for your--your friend. He might really have
to swing for it."

She released his hand suddenly, a pained look in her face. "Did you
want to put your letter in your coat pocket?" she asked.

"Yes."

She took the coat from a chair, gave it to him, and then went back to
the fireplace. He thrust his hand into the pocket and took out Sally
Dawson's last letter, and put it and her mother's into the same
envelope. As he was putting them away he found in the same pocket a
folded sheet of paper. He opened it. It was a letter from John
Wambush to his son Toot. Then Westerfelt remembered the paper Harriet
had picked up and given him in the street after the fight. Hardly
knowing why he did so, he read it. It was as follows:

"DEAR TOOT,--Me an yore mother is miserable about you. We have prayed
for yore reform day and night, but the Lord seems to have turn