out. He had been bailed out, discharged with compliments, had slept in a cell, and not been fined! I smelt spirits too. It all made me miserable.
"You've been drunk and they locked you up," I reproached him. "Why do you lie to me?" The copious explanations that followed I hardly listened to. I lay in bed, saying nothing, but the warning of my visitor came back.
"I went down to the Evening Sun," Boyde said presently, when my silence made his explanations end of their own accord. "I've just come back with this. McCloy asked after you and sent it on account of the French stories." He handed me five dollars, in single bills, which we divided equally then and there.
He had been gone hardly ten minutes when the door opened again, and another visitor came in, an actor out of a job, Grant, an Englishman of perhaps twenty-five, one of the cricket team I had met in Staten Island a few weeks before. He had run across Boyde, he explained, and had heard I was ill. As one Englishman to another "in this awful city" he wanted to see if he could help in any way. He did then a wonderful thing. We had met but once, he scarcely knew me, he might never see me again, but when he realized the state of affairs he said he thought he could get a little money for me, and before I could say a word he vanished from the room. His shyness, his lame manner of speech, something hesitating and awkward about him generally, had embarrassed me as much as, evidently, he was embarrassed himself; and I was convinced his plea of getting money was only an excuse to disappear quickly. I rather hoped it was; certainly I thought it unlikely he would come back--which, nevertheless, he did, in about a quarter of an hour. He came in breathlessly, a shamefaced air about him; flung down some dollar bills on the bed, and vanished the second time. Three dollars lay on the counterpane. It was only a little later, as reflection brought up details, that I remembered he had worn an overcoat when he first came in, and that on his
second visit he wore none. He had pawned it. Another
