Had their appearance not cut short my discussion with the Dumpling, the issue of that discussion might have been disastrous to myself. The most difficult part of my task--to convince the Dumpling that I was sufficiently in sympathy with himself and with his projects, safely to be allowed at large--was all to come. In dealing with a madman, one never knows what sudden warp his cunning and his mania will take; and but for the interruption, it might have been my life, instead of the conversation, which was prematurely cut short. Another reason for my feeling thus stale and "cheap" on this particular morning was that the ardour with which I had taken up the hunting down of the Dumpling had considerably cooled. I am sympathetic by nature, and, mad though he was, this man's passionate denunciation of the wrongs of the poor, and the terrible and, I fear, only too true picture which he had drawn of their sufferings, had strangely moved me. The tragedy of poverty, the fact that a man's spirit could be so broken, that he could be brought to such infamy as to pawn his very manhood, to become, as the Dumpling had said, like bullocks and steers, and to bow his head to the yoke, for the sake of a roof to cover the heads of wife and children; the fact that women could be brought to such a pass as to be compelled to choose between starvation or the streets, had come home to me with new and awful significance. Even as out of the mouth of babes and sucklings God brings forth wisdom, so out of the mouth of a madman and a fanatic had some of the sternest and most terrible facts of life been brought to my realisation. When such things could be, it seemed to me that to be spending time and strength in playing at being a detective, and in writing what a newspaper once aptly described as "harmless little tales with titles that appal," was almost criminal. I was more than minded to throw the whole thing up, and to occupy myself, instead, in doing what little I could to relieve the suffering of my less fortunate fellow-creatures. With these thoughts still seething in my brain, I dressed, and after breakfasting, sallied out to make my report to Miss Clara. She received me with the same cordiality with which we had parted, and on learning that I had news to impart, sent word to that effect to Kate, who, she said, would be equally interested to hear it. I told my story, just as I have set it down in the previous chapter, omitting nothing, and giving the Dumpling's words in regard to the poor and their sufferings almost as those words had fallen from his lips.