Winnington looked at her with reverence. He knew all about her; so did many of the dwellers in the Maumsey neighbourhood. She had lived for half-a-century in the same little house in one of the back-streets of Latchford, a town of some ten thousand inhabitants. Through all that time her life had been given to what is called "rescue work"--though she herself rarely called it by that name. She loved those whom no one else would love--the meanest and feeblest of the outcast race. Every night her door stood on the latch, and as the years passed, thousands knew it. Scarcely a week went by, that some hand did not lift that latch, and some girl in her first trouble, or some street-walker, dying of her trade, did not step in to the tiny hall where the lamp burnt all night, and wait for the sound of the descending footsteps on the stairs, which meant shelter and pity, warmth and food. She was constantly deceived, sometimes robbed; for such things she had no memory. She only remembered the things which cannot be told--the trembling voices of hope or returning joy--the tenderness in dying eyes, the clinging of weak hands, the kindness of "her poor children." She had written--without her name--a book describing the condition of a great seaport town where she had once lived. The facts recorded in it had inspired a great reforming Act. No one knew anything of her part in it--so far as the public was concerned. Many persons indeed came to consult her; she gave all her knowledge to those who wanted it; she taught, and she counselled, always as one who felt herself the mere humble mouthpiece of things divine and compelling; and those who went away enriched did indeed forget her in her message, as she meant them to do. But in her own town as she passed along the streets, in her queer garb, blinking and absently smiling as though at her own thoughts, she was greeted often with a peculiar reverence, a homage of which her short sight told her little or nothing. Winnington especially had applied to her in more than one difficulty connected with his public work. It was to her he had gone at once when the Blanchflower agent had come to him in dismay reporting the decision of Miss Blanchflower with regard to the half-witted girl whose third illegitimate child by a quite uncertain father had finally proved her need of protection both from men's vileness, and her own helplessness. Miss Dempsey had taken the girl first into her own house, and then, persuading and comforting the old father, had placed her in one of the Homes where such victims are sheltered. Winnington briefly enquired after the girl. She as briefly replied. Then she added:--as other travellers got out and they were left to themselves. "So Miss Blanchflower wanted to keep her in the village?" Winnington nodded, adding-- "She of course had no idea of the real facts."