“Sounds as if it might be Hamar and Curtis,” Kelson remarked.

“That’s it!” the man ejaculated. “’Amar.  I heard the other fellow call him by that name.”

“How long ago is it since they were here?” Kelson asked.

“I can’t say, perhaps ten minutes.  I’ve lost count of time and everything else, since I’ve slept out here.  They talked of going to the Serpentine.”

“We had better try and find them,” Kelson said.

“If you had the money couldn’t you get shelter for the night,” Lilian Rosenberg said.  “It must be awful to lie out here in the cold, feeling ill and hungry.”

“I dare say some place would take me in,” the man muttered, “only I couldn’t walk—­at least no distance.”

“Well! here’s five shillings,” Lilian Rosenberg said, “put it somewhere safe—­and try and hobble to the gates.  If they haven’t closed them, you will be all right.”

“Five shillings!” the man gasped; “that’s—­it’s no good—­I can’t count.  I’ve no head now.  Thank you, missy!  God bless you.  I’ll get something hot—­something to stifle the pain.”  He struggled on to his knees, and Lilian Rosenberg helped him to rise.

“How could you be so foolish as to touch him,” Kelson said, as they started off down a path, they hoped would take them to the Serpentine.  “You may depend upon it, he was swarming with vermin—­tramps always are.”

“Very probably, but I run just as much risk in a ’bus, the twopenny tube, or a cinematograph show.  Besides, I can’t see a human being helpless without offering help.  Listen! there’s some one else groaning!  The Park is full of groans.”

What she said was true—­the Park was full of groans.  From every direction, borne to them by the gently rustling wind, came the groans of countless suffering outcasts—­legions of homeless, starving men and women.  Some lay right out in the open on their backs, others under cover of the trees, others again on the seats.  They lay everywhere—­these shattered, tattered, battered wrecks of humanity—­these gangrened exiles from society, to whom no one ever spoke; whom no one ever looked at; whom no one would even own that they had seen; whose lot in life not even a stray cat envied.  Here were two of them—­a man and a woman tightly hugged in each other’s embrace—­not for love—­but for warmth.  Lilian Rosenberg almost fell over them, but they took no notice of her.  Every now and then, one of them would emerge from the shelter of the trees, and cross the grass in the direction of the distant, gleaming water, with silent, stealthy tread.  Once a tall, gaunt figure, suddenly sprang up and confronted the two adventurers; but the moment Kelson raised his stick, it jabbered something wholly unintelligible, and sped away into the darkness.

“A scene like this makes one doubt the existence of a good God,” Lilian Rosenberg said.

“It makes one doubt the existence of anything but Hell,” Kelson said.  “Compared with all this suffering—­the suffering of these thousands of hungry, hopeless wretches—­the bulk of whom are doubtless tortured incessantly, with the pains of cancer and tuberculosis, to say nothing of neuralgia and rheumatism—­Dante’s Inferno and Virgil’s Hades pale into insignificance.  The devil is kind compared with God.”