wife, poor creature, whimpered on her mattress.  It was not a pleasant vigil.  It lasted till the grey dawn crept in, pitilessly intensifying the squalor of the room, and until the dawn was broadening into daylight.  Then two of Campion’s men from Barbara’s Building arrived to relieve us.  Before we went, however, the neighbour who had taken charge of the children came in to help the slatternly wife light a fire and make some tea.  I have enjoyed few things more than the warm, bitter stuff which I drank out of the broken mug in that strange and depressing company.

I went out into the street with racked head and nerves and muscles.  Campion kept his cloth cap in his hand, allowing the morning wind to ruffle his shaggy black hair, and drew a long breath.

“I think the worst is over now.  As soon as he can be moved, I’ll get him down to the annexe at Broadstairs.  The sea air will pull him round.”

“Isn’t it rather hopeless?” I asked.

He turned on me.  “Nothing’s hopeless.  If you once start the hopeless game down here you’d better distribute cyanide of potassium instead of coals and groceries.  I’ve made up my mind to get that man decent again, and, by George, I’m going to do it!  Fancy those two weaklings producing healthy offspring.  But they have.  Two of the most intelligent kids in the district.  If you hold up your hands and say it’s awful to contemplate their upbringing you’re speaking the blatant truth.  It’s the contemplation that’s awful.  But why contemplate when you can do something?”

I admitted the justice of the remark.  He went on.

“Look at yourself now.  If you had gone in with me last night and just stared at the poor devil howling with D.T. in that filthy place, you’d have come out sick and said it was awful.  Instead of that, you buckled to and worked and threw off everything save our common humanity, and have got interested in the Judds in spite of yourself.  You’ll go and see them again and do what you can for them, won’t you?”

I was not in a merry mood, but I laughed.  Campion had read the intention that had vaguely formulated itself in the back of my mind.

“Of course I will,” I said.

We walked on a few steps down the still silent, disheartening street without speaking.  Then he tugged his beard, half-halted, and glanced at me quickly.

“See here,” said he, “the more sensible people I can get in to help us the better.  Would you like me to hand you over the Judd family en bloc?”

This was startling to the amateur philanthropist.  But it is the way of all professionals to regard their own business as of absorbing interest to the outside world.  The stockbroking mind cannot conceive a sane man indifferent to the fluctuations of the money market, and to the professional cricketer the wide earth revolves around a wicket.  How in the world could I be fairy godfather to the Judd family?  Campion took my competence for granted.