"Good-bye, old chap," Grantly called fondly as his late prop departed, "when I'm as heavy as you, you won't cop me so easy--eh, what?" Eloquent took the boy firmly by the arm and led him in. His steps were uncertain and his speech was thick, but he was quite biddable, and brimming over with loving kindness for all the world. Eloquent took him into the sitting-room and placed him in a large arm-chair. Grantly pushed his hair off his forehead and gazed about the room in rather bewildered fashion, at the round table strewn with papers, at the tray with a glass of milk and plate of sandwiches standing on the bare little sideboard, at his pale, fagged host, who stood on the hearthrug looking down at him. As he met Eloquent's stern gaze he smiled sweetly at him, and he was so like Mary when he smiled that Eloquent turned his eyes away in very shame. It seemed sacrilege even to think of her in connection with anything so degraded and disgusting as Grantly's state appeared to him at that moment. His Nonconformist conscience awoke and fairly shouted at him that he should have interfered to prevent the just retribution that had overtaken this miserable misguided boy . . . but he was her brother; he was the son of that gracious lady who was set as a fixed star in the firmament of his admirations; he could not hold back when there was a chance of saving him from this disgrace. For to be charged with being "drunk and disorderly" in the Police Court appeared to Eloquent just then as the lowest depths of ignominy. "Now what in the world," he asked presently, "am I to do with you? You can't go home in that state." "Bed, my dear chap, bed's what I'm for, . . . so sleepy, can hardly hold up my head . . . any shake-down'll do----" Grantly's head fell back against the chair, and he closed his eyes in proof of his somnolence. "All right," said Eloquent, "you come with me." With some difficulty he got Grantly upstairs and into his own room. Before the meeting he had told the servants they need not sit up for him; his own was the only other bed made up in the house. Grantly lay down upon it, muddy boots and all, and turned sideways with a sigh of satisfaction; but just before he settled off he opened his eyes and said warningly: "I say, if I was you I wouldn't go about with young Rabbich--he's a wrong 'un--you may take it from me, he really is--he'll do you no good--Don't you be seen about with him." "Thank you," Eloquent said dryly, "I will follow your advice." "That's right," Grantly murmured, "never be 'bove taking advice." And in another minute he was fast asleep. Eloquent covered him with a railway rug, thinking grimly the while that it seemed to have become his mission in life to cover up prostrated Ffolliots.