I met him at the mission with which I was associated in Paddington, and seeing his friendlessness asked him to my humble home for Sunday dinner and tea. And thus our friendship grew and ripened until I was able to render him the service aforesaid, thinking as I did that he was on the verge of starvation. To my intense surprise long afterwards, when I was bewailing to him my parlous plight, he took me to the garret-chamber which he occupied with all the paraphernalia of his business, and going to his box produced a bagful of sovereigns, out of which he asked me to take what would satisfy my urgent needs. Of course in a work of fiction I should have refused with many high falutin' words, but being cast in a lower mould I accepted, after I had got over my amazement that he should have any money at all, much less all that, for there was well over £100 in the bag. But I must not make this chapter too long, and so I will leave over for the commencement of the next my dealings with my dear friend, Emanuel Hauri, whose end was peace. CHAPTER XIX CONCLUSION This loving stranger in a strange land was consumptive, racked with an awful cough, and lived like a dog--aye, worse than many dogs I know. By all theories he should not have lived a year, for in addition to his dreadfully disabling disease and his manner of living, he worked like an over-powered machine. He was never in bed after three in the morning, and I have known him to trundle a barrow containing a cartload of bedding plants from Covent Garden to Kilburn before beginning his work at six o'clock. And he was never fretful, never captious. The only criticism I ever heard him make was once when he told me he had employed a young Englishman to help him at a big job of work at a gentleman's garden which he was reconstructing. "He stand an' vatch me wile I do de vork, he vants 'is beer efery few minutes, he don't know dis and he von't know dat, an' at last I gif him his day's money an' dell 'im to go, for I can get on better vithout 'im. Dese people in dis country do not seem to know vat vork is!"