These not very anxious experiments, and quite idle speculations about the uses of various forms of labour, might have gone on indefinitely but for the very certain fact that Douglas's small stock of money was being slowly but surely exhausted. Slowly, it is true; for he had wholly given up tobacco; his dinner was a roll or a biscuit eaten in the street; and as his landlady charged him sixpence for each scuttleful of coals, he preferred to keep himself warm on these now bitterly cold evenings by tramping about outside and looking at the shops. That good woman, by the way, was sorely disappointed in this new lodger, out of whom she could make no indirect profit; and she had a waspish tongue. John Douglas regarded her taunts--almost amounting to open insult--with a patient and mild curiosity. It was a little bit of psychological study, and more interesting than book-keeping by double entry. Meantime, things were becoming very serious; with all his penuriousness, he had arrived at his last half-sovereign. CHAPTER III. A FELLOW-SUFFERER. One night, a few minutes after nine, Douglas was returning home along one of the badly-lit little thoroughfares in the Borough, when he saw the figure of a woman slowly subside on to the pavement in front of him. She did not fall; she trembled on to her knees as it were, and then lay prone--near a doorstep. Well, he had grown familiar with the sights of London streets; but even if the woman were drunk, as he imagined, he would lift her up, until some policeman came along. He went forward. It was not a woman, but a young girl of about seventeen or so, who did not seem a drunken person. 'My lass, what is the matter with ye?' he said, kneeling down to get hold of her. 'Oh, I am so ill--I am so ill!' the girl moaned, apparently to herself. He tried to raise her. She was quite white, and almost insensible. Then she seemed to come to; she struggled up a bit, and sought to support herself by the handle of the door. 'I shall be all right,' she gasped. 'I am quite well. Don't tell them. I am quite well--it was my knees that gave way----' 'Where do ye live, my lass?' said he, taking hold of her arm to support her; for he thought she was going to sink to the ground again. 'Number twelve.' 'In this street?' She did not answer, 'Come, I will help ye home, then.' 'No, no!' she said, in the same gasping way; 'I will sit down here a few minutes. I shall be all right. I--I am quite well----' 'Ye are not going to sit down on a doorstep on a night like this,' he said, severely. 'Come, pull yourself together, my lass. If it is number twelve, you have only a few yards.' He half-dragged and half-carried her along. He knocked loudly at the door. There came to it a tall, black-a-vised woman, who, the moment she saw the girl, cried out-- 'Oh, Mary Ann, are you took bad again?'