Entering the room in his stockinged feet, he stepped softly to the bedside, and rested his hand lightly and tenderly on Pollypod's neck. The bed being against the wall, and Pollypod sleeping inside, he could not kiss her without disturbing his wife. The child slept peacefully, and Jim Podmore gazed lovingly at the pretty picture, and leaned forward to feel the sweet breath, pure as an angel's whisper, that came from her parted lips. His supper was laid for him on the table, and he sat down to it, Snap standing at his feet in patient eagerness waiting for such scraps and morsels as he thought fit to give. Jim did not forget his dog; Snap fared well, and when supper was finished the dog stretched himself on the ground, and with half-closed eyes watched his master's face. Snap blinked and blinked, but although occasionally his eyes were so nearly closed that only the thinnest line of light could be seen, the dog never relaxed his watchful gaze. Jim sat in his chair, pipe in mouth, and smoked and dozed, and thought of Dick Hart and his wife and children, and of his own wife and Pollypod, till they all became mixed up together in the strangest way, and in the phantasmagoria of his fancy changed places and merged one into the other in utter defiance of all probability. Thus, as he leaned forward to catch the sweet breath that came from Pollypod's lips, the child's face became blurred and indistinct, and in her place Dick Hart appeared, crouching upon the rail way platform in an agony of despair. The platform itself appeared, with its throng of anxious faces, with its sound of hurried feet and cries of pain, with a light in the air that belonged to neither night nor day, sensitive with a tremor which was felt, but could not be seen or described, and which spoke of hopes for ever crushed out, and of lives of fair promise blighted by the act that lay in one fatal moment's neglect or helplessness. "If I don't go to bed," murmured Jim with a start, whereat all these things vanished into nothingness, "I shall fall asleep." And still he sat, and murmured, "Poor Dick!"