We gave him cocoa, and cheese, and bacon, and butter and bread, and he ate a great deal, with his feet in Mr. Sandal's all-wool boots on the kitchen fender. The girls wrung the water out of his clothes, and hung them on the clothes-horse on the other side of the fire. 'I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you,' he said; 'real charity I call this. I shan't forget it, I assure you. I ought to apologise for knocking you up like this, but I'd been hours tramping through this precious marsh of yours wet to the skin, and not a morsel of food since mid-day. And yours was the first light I'd seen for a couple of hours.' 'I'm very glad it _was_ us you knocked up,' said Alice. 'So am I,' said he; 'I might have knocked at a great many doors before I got such a welcome. I'm quite aware of that.' He spoke all right, not like a labouring man; but it wasn't a gentleman's voice, and he seemed to end his sentences off short at the end, as though he had it on the tip of his tongue to say 'Miss' or 'Sir.' Oswald thought how terrible it must be to be out alone in the rain and the dark, with the police after you, and no one to be kind to you if you knocked at their doors. 'You must have had an awful day,' he said. 'I believe you,' said the stranger, cutting himself more bacon. 'Thank you, miss (he really did say it that time), just half a cup if you don't mind. I believe you! I never want to have such a day again, I can tell you. I took one or two little things in the morning, but I wasn't in the mood or something. You know how it is sometimes.' 'I can fancy it,' said Alice. 'And then the afternoon clouded over. It cleared up at sunset, you remember, but then it was too late. And then the rain came on. Not half! My word! I've been in a ditch. Thought my last hour had come, I tell you. Only got out by the skin of my teeth. Got rid of my whole outfit. There's a nice thing to happen to a young fellow! Upon my Sam, it's enough to make a chap swear he'll never take another thing as long as he lives.' 'I hope you never will,' said Dora earnestly; 'it doesn't pay, you know.' 'Upon my word, that's nearly true, though I don't know how _you_ know,' said the stranger, beginning on the cheese and pickles. 'I wish,' Dora was beginning, but Oswald interrupted. He did not think it was fair to preach at the man. 'So you lost your outfit in the ditch,' he said; 'and how did you get those clothes?' He pointed to the steaming gray suit. 'Oh,' replied the stranger, 'the usual way.' Oswald was too polite to ask what was the usual way of getting a gray suit to replace a prison outfit. He was afraid the usual way was the way the four-pound cake had been got. Alice looked at me helplessly. I knew just how she felt.