“But what makes you fancy that he can have taken shelter with such a man, and one who knows his secret?”

“It is but a chance:  but he may have done it from the mere feeling of loneliness—­just to hold by some one whom he knows in this great wilderness; especially a man in whose eyes he will be a great man, and to whom he has done a kindness; still, it is the merest chance.”

“We will take it, nevertheless, forlorn hope though it be.”

They took a cab to the hospital, and, with some trouble, got the man’s name and address, and drove in search of him.  They had some difficulty in finding his abode, for it was up an alley at the back of Drury Lane, in the top of one of those foul old houses which hold a family in every room; but, by dint of knocking at one door and the other, and bearing meekly much reviling consequent thereon, they arrived, “per modum tollendi” at a door which must be the right one, as all the rest were wrong.

“Does John Barker live here?” asks Thurnall, putting his head in cautiously for fear of drunken Irishmen, who might be seized with the national impulse to “slate” him.

“What’s that to you?” answers a shrill voice from among soapsuds and steaming rags.

“Here is a gentleman wants to speak to him.”

“So do a many as won’t have that pleasure, and would be little the better for it if they had.  Get along with you, I knows your lay.”

“We really want to speak to him, and to pay him, if he will—­”

“Go along!  I’m up to the something to your advantage dodge, and to the mustachio dodge too.  Do you fancy I don’t know a bailiff, because he’s dressed like a swell?”

“But, my good woman!” said Tom, laughing.

“You put your crocodile foot in here, and I’ll hit the hot water over the both of you!” and she caught up the pan of soapsuds.

“My dear soul!  I am a doctor belonging to the hospital which your husband goes to; and have known him since he was a boy, down in Berkshire.”

“You?” and she looked keenly at him.

“My name is Thurnall.  I was a medical man once in Whitbury, where your husband was born.”

“You?” said she again, in a softened tone, “I knows that name well enough.”

“You do?  What was your name, then?” said Tom, who recognised the woman’s Berkshire accent beneath its coat of cockneyism.

“Never you mind:  I’m no credit to it, so I’ll let it be.  But come in, for the old county’s sake.  Can’t offer you a chair, he’s pawned ’em all.  Pleasant old place it was down there, when I was a young girl; they say it’s grow’d a grand place now, wi’ a railroad.  I think many times I’d like to go down and die there.”  She spoke in a rough, sullen, careless tone, as if life-weary.

“My good woman,” said Major Campbell, a little impatiently, “can you find your husband for us?”

“Why then?” asked she sharply, her suspicion seeming to return.