"I'd had a row with Dodwell about some money which he said I owed him; as you know, I owed pretty nearly everybody money, but I was quite sure I didn't owe him any. The way in which he made out that I did, did credit to something besides his financial genius. I had a suspicion that Draycott had had a row with him of the same kind. He had told me that he would be even with me for the position which I had taken up; and I began to see, afterwards, when I--I was looking for crusts in the gutter, that that lie he had told was his way of getting even, and I began to wonder if Draycott had backed it because Dodwell had got him under his thumb." He gave a great sigh, which was the most eloquent thing he had done yet; there was something about the matter-of-fact way in which he did it which showed that, at any rate, that was an habitual trick of his. The abomination of desolation which, it suggested, was in his very soul, moved the girl with a sudden pain which seemed to go right through her. "When, as I've said, I saw Dodwell hammering Draycott, the wild-cat idea came to me that, if I did Draycott a good turn, he might be disposed to do me another; Dodwell would have killed him if it hadn't been for me, so he did owe me something, if he was to owe me nothing more. If he would only own to me, between ourselves, that he hadn't seen me do what he said he had, that would be some satisfaction. I didn't like to feel that there was any possibility that he really believed that I was--that kind of thing; if he would admit to me, in private, that he had spoken in haste, that he might have been in error, I should have been a happier man. The reality surpassed all my expectations." A wintry smile passed over his face; he stood up straighter; but he continued to speak in the halftones of the man from whose life all the salt has gone. "Draycott turned out a perfect trump. We had a pretty tough time--the landlady here, who's a dear, good old soul, the doctor, and I between us--in pulling him through; Dodwell had used him cruelly, he will carry some of the scars with him to the grave--but it was a labour of love. I hadn't been so happy for I don't know how long; I had never thought I should be so happy again, as I was as I sat by Draycott's bedside, sometimes all night and sometimes all day, watching him, slowly, come back to life again. You see, it was the first thing I had done of which I hadn't cause to be ashamed for ever so long. Directly he was safe he told me the whole story, which I expect you heard to-night. He's behaved like a trump." "I suppose it doesn't strike you that, in any degree, or in any sense, you've behaved like a trump?"