How long she sat there she did not know.  She tried once or twice to go to the house, but the lights seemed so far off that she gave it up and sat quiet, unconscious except of the damp stones her head leaned on and the stretch of muddy road.  Some time, she knew not when, there was a heavy step beside her, and a rough hand shook hers where she stooped feebly tracing out the lines of mortar between the stones.  It was Knowles.  She looked up, bewildered.

“Hunting catarrhs, eh?” he growled, eying her keenly.  “Got your father on the Bourbons, so took the chance to come and find you.  He’ll not miss me for an hour.  That man has a natural hankering after treason against the people.  Lord, Margaret! what a stiff old head he’d have carried to the guillotine!  How he’d have looked at the canaille!”

He helped her up gently enough.

“Your bonnet’s like a wet rag,”—­with a furtive glance at the worn-out face.  A hungry face always, with her life unfed by its stingy few crumbs of good; but to-night it was vacant with utter loss.

She got up, trying to laugh cheerfully, and went beside him down the road.

“You saw that painted Jezebel to-night, and”—­stopping abruptly.

She had not heard him, and he followed her doggedly, with an occasional snort or grunt or other inarticulate damn at the obstinate mud.  She stopped at last, with a quick gasp.  Looking at her, he chafed her limp hands,—­his huge, uncouth face growing pale.  When she was better, he said, gravely,—­

“I want you, Margaret.  Not at home, child.  I want to show you something.”

He turned with her suddenly off the main road into a by-path, helping her along, watching her stealthily, but going on with his disjointed, bearish growls.  If it stung her from her pain, vexing her, he did not care.

“I want to show you a bit of hell:  outskirt.  You’re in a fit state:  it’ll do you good.  I’m minister there.  The clergy can’t attend to it just now:  they’re too busy measuring God’s truth by the States’-Rights doctrine or the Chicago Platform.  Consequence, religion yields to majorities.  Are you able?  It’s only a step.”

She went on indifferently.  The night was breathless and dark.  Black, wet gusts dragged now and then through the skyless fog, striking her face with a chill.  The Doctor quit talking, hurrying her, watching her anxiously.  They came at last to the railway-track, with long trains of empty freight-cars.

“We are nearly there,” he whispered.  “It’s time you knew your work, and forgot your weakness.  The curse of pampered generations.  ’High Norman blood,’—­pah!”

There was a broken gap in the fence.  He led her through it into a muddy yard.  Inside was one of those taverns you will find in the suburbs of large cities, haunts of the lowest vice.  This one was a smoky frame standing on piles over an open space where hogs were rooting.  Half a dozen drunken Irishmen were playing poker with a pack of greasy cards in an out-house.  He led her up the rickety ladder to the one room, where a flaring tallow-dip threw a saffron glare into the darkness.  A putrid odor met them at the door.  She drew back, trembling.