It was all so vivid, so unaltered, so sharply set in Christopher's mind that he had to look down at his own immaculate blue suit and unpatched boots to reassure himself he was not waiting for Martha's shrill order to "come up out of the dirt." But assured once more of his own present personality he could not resist exploring further, and went right up to the foot of the iron staircase and looked up. It was all just as sordid and dirty and unlovely as ever, though he had not known before the measure of its undesirableness. Leaning over the railing of the top landing was an untidy-looking woman in a brown skirt and half-fastened blouse. She looked over into the yard and shouted in a voice that made Christopher jump. "Jim, come up out of the dirt, you little varmint!" And Christopher, erstwhile Jim, leant against the wall and felt his head was whirling round. Then he inspected himself again, but at that moment a shock-headed dirty mite of four years brushed past him and began to clamber up the stairs, pushing his way through the horde of small babies on each landing and squealing shrilly, "I'm coming, Mammie." Christopher went too. He could not possibly have resisted the impulse, for assuredly it was Martha's voice that called--called him back willy nilly to the past that after all was not so far past except in a boy's measure of time. A dark-eyed, decent-looking woman passed him on the stair and looked at him curiously; further on a man, smoking a pipe, took the trouble to follow him to the next floor in a loafing fashion. The small Jim, out of breath and panting with the exertion of the climb, was being roughly dusted by an undoubted Martha when Christopher reached the topmost landing. She was stouter than of yore, and her hair was no longer done up in iron curlers as of old, also a baby, younger than Jim, was crawling out of the room on the right. But it was Martha Sartin, and Christopher advanced a friendly hand. Mrs. Sartin gazed at the apparition with blank amazement. She could connect the tall, pleasant-faced boy in his spotless suit and straw hat with nothing in her memory. He did not look as if he could belong to the theatre at which she was a dresser, but it seemed the only solution. "Are you come from Miss Vassour?" she asked doubtfully. "Don't you know me, Mrs. Sartin?" "Know ye? No. How should I?" "I'm Jim Hibbault." "Garn!" "Yes, I am really." Poor Christopher began to feel embarrassed and a little disappointed. He _was_ Jim Hibbault at that moment and he felt queerly lonely and stranded. Martha pulled down her sleeves and went to the inner door. "Jessie, come out 'ere," she screamed.