‘Come on, then, old son!’ said Abner, taking him by the arm. Strong as he was he found it difficult to steer a straight course. George, having once submitted to the direction of another will, now became somnolent. Abner almost had to carry him up the garden path. A light burned in the kitchen, and on the doorstep Mary stood waiting for them. She looked very frail and beautiful in the light of candles. From the first her eyes had taken in the situation, and she offered no spoken comment on it though her mouth showed that she was suffering the shame of the situation. ‘Give me a hand upstairs with him, please,’ she said. The excuses that Abner was ready to offer for his friend died on his lips. Between them they directed the steps of George upstairs. When he reached the bedroom he stared about him as though he had never been there before, and then, giving the problem up, lurched over on to the bed covering his head with his hands. ‘We’d best get his boots off,’ said Abner. He took the right and Mary the left. It was a strange thing how they had to wrestle with the leather laces and how tightly the boots stuck to his inanimate feet. ‘Now he’s all right,’ said Abner, when the job was finished. ‘He’ll come up like a daisy in the morning, never fear!’ She did not reply to him but stood with the candlestick in her hand staring at her husband’s body. ‘Will you come downstairs with me, please?’ she said. Abner had not bargained for this. He could not think what she wanted of him, but he could not very well refuse her, and so he followed her down the creaking stairs into the kitchen. She put the candle on the table and faced him silently from the other side. Then she said:— ‘Tell me all about it, please . . . everything.’ There was nothing to tell her. He said that he had found George leaning up against a wall in the avenue and helped him over the last lap. ‘Were you at the Pound House to-night?’ ‘Yes, I looked in just on closing time.’ ‘Then I’m sure that you know. Please tell me!’ ‘I’ve told you. I don’t know nothing.’ ‘I don’t believe you . . . not if you was at the Pound House. That’s where he gets it.’ ‘Well, you know more about it nor me then,’ said Abner. ‘Don’t talk to me like that! I know . . . I’m not a child.’ ‘It’s no good talkin’ like that. A chap must take a drop in and out. It’s human nature.’ ‘Oh, it isn’t the drink!’ she said. ‘He doesn’t go to that place only for the drink. I should have thought you being with him would keep him straight.’ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ‘Yes, you do,’ she said, striking the table with her clenched fist. ‘You know . . . you know. . . . It’s that woman!’ ‘I don’t know naught of George’s women,’ said Abner obstinately. ‘Then you’ve no eyes,’ she said, with a gesture of scorn. ‘The woman at the Pound House!’ She blazed with a white anger: ‘That dark-eyed devil that’s been after him these months, that Susie Hind . . .’