luck! and I'll be able to
walk.'

'No calling at the Grapes, mind you,' said the assistant 'You'd better
look in at the infirmary about eleven o'clock to-morrow.'

'I'll do that,' she answered. 'Will ye be lendin' me your shoulder as
far as the dure, young man? I'll be better in a minute.'

Paul did as she requested, but he crawled with repulsion beneath her
hand. The touch inspired him with loathing. He had lived a sheltered
life, and had never seen an open abandonment to shame. He wondered why
God allowed the degraded thing to live, and his heart ached with pity
at the same time. He led her to the door, and then across the road. The
assistant sent a curt 'Good-night' after him. He answered it, and the
door dosed.

'Can you walk alone now?' he asked.

'I'll try,' she said, and made a staggering attempt at it.

Paul caught her, or she would have fallen.

'Take my arm,' he said to her, hardening his heart with an effort.

He blessed the darkness and the quiet of the street, but before they had
gone a score of yards a door opened in a house he knew, and Armstrong
came out of it.

In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the old man would have gone by
dreaming, but he was alert enough at odd moments, and this chanced to be
one of them. He saw Paul arm-in-arm with a bandaged drunken woman, and
as he recognised his son the pair reeled together.

'Paul!' he cried. 'Good God!'

'I'm glad it's you, father,' said Paul. 'This poor creature fell at the
corner yonder and cut her head terribly. I fetched young Marley to her
from Dr. Hervey's, and he has seen to her. She wants to get home.'

'I'll take the other side,' said Armstrong, and the three lurched slowly
along in the dimness.

'Ye're good people,' Norah MacMulty said when they had brought her to
her door.

A slattern woman answered Armstrong's knock, heard the news with no
discernible emotion, and helped the arrival in as if she had been a
sack of coals. Armstrong and Paul went home with few words. 'Don't be
startled when you see me,' Paul said at the door. 'I helped to carry her
to the doctor's, and she bled horribly.'

It was not meant for an exaggeration, but he was unused to such scenes,
and the woman's language more than anything else had helped to scare him
from his self-possession. The hour was late already, reckoning by his
custom. He washed, and went upstairs, but not to bed. He threw the
window open and let in the soft, heavy night-air. Strange thou