His voice stumbled and broke. And clinging to the arm of the big man standing quietly beside her, potent in inertia as a lump of raw iron, Patrine realised that her anguish was a drop in the ocean of his. She took his hand and said in a tone he had never before heard from her: "Come, dear! We will go and speak to her now." So they went across to the telegraph-cabin, raw with unshaded electric light and littered with papers. The Chief was there, looking livid and careworn, leaning one elbow on the edge of the stand that supported the Wireless, and wearing the telephone head-band with the ear-pieces, as he dictated to the pallid clerk who occupied a Windsor chair at a stained deal desk, and wrote with a spluttering pen on a depleted paper-pad. At first sight there seemed to be nothing else in the place but a low voice speaking, a Railway Key instrument, a file for telegrams and an overpowering odour of rum. The odour of rum consolidated to Patrine’s view into a stocky thickset man with a square heavy yellow face set into a tragic mask of despair. It was Macrombie, ex-Petty Officer telegraphist, whom the Royal Navy had spat forth for being D.O.D. fifteen full years before. Sacked now from his civil employment, for the old glaring, unblinkable offence. The liquor had barely faded out in him; his breath came across the little cabin like a flaming sword, and his eyes under their beetling coal-black eyebrows looked burnt-out. He rose from the debilitated office-stool he had been sitting on, saluted Patrine stiffly and said: "Mem, this is no place for a leddy, wi’ a drucken wastrel like mysel’ in it. Ay! I hae lat ower a drap too mony, I am awa’ the noo wi’ my weicht o’ wyte. But no wi’oot a warstle have I yielded to the Enemy!" His anguish broke the flood-gates in a rumbling roar. "Like Job I hae cried oot in the nicht-watches to my Creator, speiring o’ Him why He made weak men an’ strong rum? He didna’ gie me ony answer—and I am ganging down the Broad Road’s fast as my bluidy thirrst can carry me—a disgraced and ruined man!" "Mr. Sherbrand will give you another chance. I know he will!—I’ll ask him!" came impetuously in the big warm womanly baritone. "You’re a grand woman to luik at, and the lad’ll gie in—an’ the haill deil’s dance to begin ance mair.... Na, na, my bonny leddy!" said Macrombie, "ye can never lippen to the promises o’ a drunkard. Best lat me gang my gait to muckle Hell. Ay! I’ll no’ be lonesome there for want o’ company.... Toch! what a regiment o’ Macrombies deid an’ damned will answer ’Present’ to auld Satan’s rollcall! Guid-nicht, my leddy, an’ thanks to ye a’ the same."