Twelve o’clock, and the night before her, fresh and rested with her sleep, but no tangible plan in her head, no notion of what she meant to do. She trudged aimlessly through the streets. Once she passed a lighted music-hall, and thought of her first meeting with Cylmer, but with a curious distance, as if of a man long dead. Gradually, she left the thronged streets behind her, still unconscious where she was going, till at last she stood in an open square, and knew where she was. Round her were the lights of Onslow Square; at her very feet the steps of Lord Abbotsford’s house. What had drawn her to that dreadful place, alone in the night? What had guided her straying feet? She could see the windows of that little room where the dreadful thing had been done. They were in darkness, like the rest of the windows, but she knew them. Oh! why had she come here? Why was she wasting the priceless hours like this? She turned to run, sick and trembling, but something black on the door-step caught her eye. Ismay stooped down and peered at the shapeless bundle. It was a very little boy, a bootblack, asleep on the homeless stones. His box was clasped tight in his arms, and he sobbed in his sleep. The pity of the thing came home to the girl who had also nowhere to go, no shelter from the freezing rain that was beginning to fall. She had a shilling in her pocket besides what must pay for her breakfast, and surely it was her guardian angel that prompted her to give it to the boy. Very gently she touched his thin shoulder. He started up, awake at once, defiant, yet frightened, like a true London waif. “Let me alone,” he said. “I ain’t done nothing. Who are you, anyway?” “I’m sleeping out, like you,” she answered. “But I’m grown up, and you’re too little,” with a kind of reckless fellowship that reassured the boy, who was ready for a run. “Ain’t you got nowhere to go, either? Oh!” He stared at her with the uncanny wisdom of the streets. “Do you know anywhere to go if I give you a shilling?” she asked, more for the comfort of talking than for anything else. “I can go home if I’ve a bob. I daresent without any money. Mother’d lick me, and I’m sick. Will you give me a bob, honest? And no tracts, nor nothing?” She nodded, ashamed by this time of her impulse. What had made her such a fool, when she might starve to-morrow for want of that shilling? The boy stood up and stared resentfully at the dark house in front of them. “It’s no good staying here. The man won’t let me in. He kicked me down the steps last time I rung.” “Let you in!” She looked with wonder at the dirty, ragged mite. “What do you want to go in for?”