‘Come along,’ cried the first. ‘Hi, mate! Don’t you go off to sleep, it’s dreadful bad for you. Take hold of my arm and come along. They won’t let you stay quiet here.’ John came up in time to hear some murmurings of this talk. He went forward briskly, with distinct determination to secure public order and quiet. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said, in a voice which, though it was peremptory, was too fresh and cheerful to be terrible. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘It’s my mate as is uneasy on his legs,’ explained a man, whose face was not visible, and who did not seem to have much greater command of his legs than his mate; and he added, hastily, ‘It ain’t drink. A man that likes his glass as well as ’ere another is my mate, but it’s strangeness like. He’s’--here he turned round, put his hand before his mouth, and whispered hoarsely, with alcoholic breath--‘he’s out o’----, out o’ quod after fourteen year. Lord bless us, it’s you!’ John, too, started a little as the blear face became visible to him in the wavering light of the lamp, which a brisk air was blowing about. He had nearly made the same exclamation. He stepped back a pace, and said, curtly, ‘Yes, it’s me: you had better move on, you and your mate, before the policeman comes.’ ‘Give us a bob,’ said the man, ‘for the sake o’ old times. Lor’, to think I should ha’ seen you so long ago, and al’ays when I was engaged in what ye may call a good work. Give us a bob, sir, for luck, and because what I’m doing is charity. He hasn’t got his legs, poor beggar. He’s dazed like, and a little drop o’ drink’s done for him. He couldn’t get no furder. Thinks he’s got home and a-going to turn in and make himself comfortable; that’s what he thinks.’ And there was a harsh laugh. Of all places to be taken for home, where a man might make himself comfortable, the steps leading up to that securely-closed door, to the empty and dark house in which there was nothing but business, no human habitation, not even the possible succour of a poor housekeeper--was about the most terrible and extraordinary. John looked at the almost unconscious figure of the man leaning up against the door, gaming a certain support from the recess it formed and the corner of the woodwork, with a pity in which there was a sort of derision, too. Could any wretchedness and friendlessness be greater than that which sought refuge in the doorway of an empty, black, and echoing office? The poorest cottage would have represented something more human. ‘Look here,’ said John, ‘you know as well as I do that he can’t stop here. Can’t you get him away? Don’t you live somewhere where you can take him--if--if he’s a friend of yours?’