Day by day he saw the depletion of his honor.  He was not a moralist, a saint, a sinner.  Need sweeps all theories aside; in need’s fierce crucible they are transmuted to concrete realities.  Those who have never known what it is to be thrown with Garrison’s handicap on the charity of a great city will not understand.  But those who have ever tasted the bitter crust of adversity will.  And it is the old blatant advice from the Seats of the Mighty:  “Get a job.”  The old answer from the hopeless undercurrent:  “How?”

There came a day when the question of honesty or dishonesty was put up to Garrison in a way he had not foreseen.  The line was drawn distinctly; there was no easy slipping over it by degrees, unnoticed.

The toilet facilities of municipal lodging-houses are severely crude and primitive.  For the sake of sanitation, the whilom lodger’s clothes are put in a net and fumigated in a germ-destroying temperature.  The men congregate together in one long room, in various stages of pre-Adamite costumes, and the shower is turned upon them in numerical rotation.

This public washing was one of the many drawbacks to public charity which Garrison shivered at.  As the warm weather set in he accordingly took full advantage of the free baths at the Battery.  On his second day’s dip, as he was leaving, a man whom he had noticed intently scanning the bathers tapped him on the arm.

He was shaped like an olive, with a pair of shrewd gray eyes, and a clever, clean-shaven mouth.  He was well-dressed, and was continually probing with a quill tooth-pick at his gold-filled front teeth, evidently desirous of excavating some of the precious metal.

“My name’s Snark—­Theobald D. Snark,” he said shortly, thrusting a card into Garrison’s passive hand.  “I am an eminent lawyer, and would be obliged if you would favor me with a five minutes’ interview in my office—­American Tract Building.”

“Don’t know you,” said Garrison blandly.

“You’ll like me when you do,” supplemented the eminent lawyer coolly.  “Merely a matter of business, you understand.  You look as if a little business wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Feel worse,” added Billy mildly, inspecting his crumpled outfit.

He was very hungry.  He caught eagerly at this quondam opening.  Perhaps it would be the means of starting him in some legitimate business.  Then a wild idea came to him, and slowly floated away again as he remembered that Mr. Snark had agreed that he did not know him.  But while it lasted, the idea had been a thrilling one for a penniless, homeless wanderer.  It had been:  Supposing this lawyer knew him?  Knew his real identity, and had tracked him down for clamoring relatives and a weeping father and mother?  For to Garrison his parents might have been criminals or millionaires so far as he remembered.

The journey to Nassau Street was completed in silence, Mr. Snark centering all his faculties on his teeth, and Garrison on the probable outcome of this chance meeting.