At last a passer-by, feeling something wet beneath his feet, looked down, and found that he was standing in a pool of blood, and, looking to see where it came from, found that it flowed in a thick, dark stream from the step on which the dog was lying.

Then he stooped down and examined the dog, and the dog opened its eyes sleepily and looked at him, gave a grin which may have implied pleasure, or may have implied irritation at being disturbed, and died.

A crowd collected, and they turned the dead body of the dog over on its side, and saw a fearful gash in the groin, out of which oozed blood, and other things.  The proprietor of the shop said the animal had been there for over an hour.

I have known the poor to die in that same grim, silent way—­not the poor that you, my delicately-gloved Lady Bountiful and my very excellent Sir Simon DoGood, know, or that you would care to know; not the poor who march in processions with banners and collection-boxes; not the poor that clamour round your soup kitchens and sing hymns at your tea meetings; but the poor that you don’t know are poor until the tale is told at the coroner’s inquest—­the silent, proud poor who wake each morning to wrestle with Death till night-time, and who, when at last he overcomes them, and, forcing them down on the rotting floor of the dim attic, strangles them, still die with their teeth tight shut.

There was a boy I came to know when I was living in the East End of London.  He was not a nice boy by any means.  He was not quite so clean as are the good boys in the religious magazines, and I have known a sailor to stop him in the street and reprove him for using indelicate language.

He and his mother and the baby, a sickly infant of about five months old, lived in a cellar down a turning off Three Colt Street.  I am not quite sure what had become of the father.  I rather think he had been “converted,” and had gone off round the country on a preaching tour.  The lad earned six shillings a week as an errand-boy; and the mother stitched trousers, and on days when she was feeling strong and energetic would often make as much as tenpence, or even a shilling.  Unfortunately, there were days when the four bare walls would chase each other round and round, and the candle seem a faint speck of light, a very long way off; and the frequency of these caused the family income for the week to occasionally fall somewhat low.

One night the walls danced round quicker and quicker till they danced away altogether, and the candle shot up through the ceiling and became a star and the woman knew that it was time to put away her sewing.

“Jim,” she said:  she spoke very low, and the boy had to bend over her to hear, “if you poke about in the middle of the mattress you’ll find a couple of pounds.  I saved them up a long while ago.  That will pay for burying me.  And, Jim, you’ll take care of the kid.  You won’t let it go to the parish.”