“What are you? Where did you work last? How did you get into this condition? Are you married? How many children? Why don’t you apply to the proper authorities? I have money, and you have none; it is my right to ask these questions.” “I am a lost dog.” “But I have no work for you; if you are really hungry I can give you sixpence; I can also refer you to a Society who will examine your affairs, but if they find you a man for whom life has been too much, they will tell me so, and warn me not to help you. Is that what you want?” “I am a lost dog.” “I dare say; but what can I do? I can’t make work! I know nothing about you, I daren’t recommend you to my friends. No man gets into the condition you are in without the aid of his own folly. You say you fell ill; yes, but you all say that. Why couldn’t you look ahead and save some money? You see now that you ought to have? And yet you come to me! I have a great many calls--societies, old people, and the sick; the rates are very high--you know that--partly on your account!” “I am a lost dog.” “Ah! but I am told daily by the just, the orderly, the practical, who have never been lost or hungry, that I must not give to casuals. You know yourself it would be pure sentiment; you know yourself it would be mere luxury. I wonder you can ask me!” “I am a lost dog.” “You have said that before. It’s not as if I didn’t know you! I have seen and talked with you--with dozens of you. I have found you asleep on the Thames Embankment. I have given you sixpence when you were shambling empty away after running a mile behind a cab. One night, don’t you remember, in the Cromwell Road--well, not you, but your twin brother--we talked together in the rain, and the wind blew your story against the shuttered windows of the tall, closed houses. Once you were with me quite six weeks, cutting up a dead tree in my garden. Day after day you sat there, working very slowly to keep the tree from coming to an end, and showing me in gratitude each morning your waistbelt filling out. With the saw in your hand and your weak smile you would look at me, and your eyes would say, ‘You don’t know what a rest it is for me to come here and cut up wood all day.’ At all events, you _must_ remember how you kept yourself from whiskey until I went away, and how you excused yourself when I returned and found you speaking thickly in the morning: ‘I can’t _help_ rememberin’ things!’ It was not you, you say? No; it was your double.” “I am a lost dog.”