“You mustn’t come here!” he cried.

“I thought,” she stammered, “you might want some one?”

“I told—­” began Winthrop, and then stopped, and added—­“to take you away.  Where is he?”

Miss Forbes flushed slightly.

“He’s gone,” she said.

In trying not to look at Winthrop, she saw the fallen figure, motionless against the pillar, and with an exclamation, bent fearfully toward it.

“Can I do anything?” she asked.

The crowd gave way for her, and with curious pleased faces, closed in again eagerly.  She afforded them a new interest.

A young man in the uniform of an ambulance surgeon was kneeling beside the mud-stained figure, and a police officer was standing over both.  The ambulance surgeon touched lightly the matted hair from which the blood escaped, stuck his finger in the eye of the prostrate man, and then with his open hand slapped him across the face.

“Oh!” gasped Miss Forbes.

The young doctor heard her, and looking up, scowled reprovingly.  Seeing she was a rarely beautiful young woman, he scowled less severely; and then deliberately and expertly, again slapped Mr. Jerry Gaylor on the cheek.  He watched the white mark made by his hand upon the purple skin, until the blood struggled slowly back to it, and then rose.

He ignored every one but the police officer.

“There’s nothing the matter with him,” he said.  “He’s dead drunk.”

The words came to Winthrop with such abrupt relief, bearing so tremendous a burden of gratitude, that his heart seemed to fail him.  In his suddenly regained happiness, he unconsciously laughed.

“Are you sure?” he asked eagerly.  “I thought I’d killed him.”

The surgeon looked at Winthrop coldly.

“When they’re like that,” he explained with authority, “you can’t hurt ’em if you throw them off the Times Building.”

He condescended to recognize the crowd.  “You know where this man lives?”

Voices answered that Mr. Gaylor lived at the corner, over the saloon.  The voices showed a lack of sympathy.  Old man Gaylor dead was a novelty; old man Gaylor drunk was not.

The doctor’s prescription was simple and direct.

“Put him to bed till he sleeps it off,” he ordered; he swung himself to the step of the ambulance.  “Let him out, Steve,” he called.  There was the clang of a gong and the rattle of galloping hoofs.

The police officer approached Winthrop.  “They tell me Jerry stepped in front of your car; that you wasn’t to blame.  I’ll get their names and where they live.  Jerry might try to hold you up for damages.”

“Thank you very much,” said Winthrop.

With several of Jerry’s friends, and the soiled person, who now seemed dissatisfied that Jerry was alive, Winthrop helped to carry him up one flight of stairs and drop him upon a bed.

“In case he needs anything,” said Winthrop, and gave several bills to the soiled person, upon whom immediately Gaylor’s other friends closed in.  “And I’ll send my own doctor at once to attend to him.”