The shock and anger produced by the mention of Mrs. Birtwell’s name had passed off, and his thought was going out toward her in a vague, groping way, and in a sort of blind faith that through her help in his great extremity might come.  It was all folly, he knew.  What could she do for a poor wretch in his extremity?  He tried to turn his thought from her, but ever as he turned it away it swung back and rested in-this blind faith.

Raising his eyes at last, his mind still in a maze of doubt, he saw just before him an the table a small grinning head.  It was only by a strong effort that he could keep from crying out in fear and starting back from the table.  A steadier look obliterated the head and left a teacup in its place.

No time was now to be lost.  At any moment the enemy might be upon him.  He must go quickly, but where?  A brief struggle against an almost unconquerable reluctance and dread, and then, rising from the table, Mr. Ridley caught up his hat and ran down stairs, Ethel calling after him.  He did not heed her anxious cries.  It was for her sake that he was going.  She heard the street door shut with a jar, and listened to her father’s departing feet until the sound died out in the distance.

It was over an hour from this time when Mr. Ridley, forcing his way past the servant who had tried to keep him back, stood confronting Mr. Elliott.  A look of disappointment, followed by an angry cloud, came into his face.  But seeing Mrs. Birtwell, his countenance brightened; and stepping past the clergyman, he advanced toward her.  She did not retreat from him, but held out her hand, and said, with an earnestness so genuine that it touched his feeling: 

“I am glad to see you, Mr. Ridley.”

As he took her extended hand Mrs. Birtwell drew him toward a sofa and sat down near him, manifesting the liveliest interest.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” he replied, in a mournful voice—­“not for me.  I didn’t come for that.  But you’ll be good to my poor Ethel, won’t you, and—­and—­”

His voice broke into sobs, his weak frame quivered.

“I will, I will!” returned Mrs. Birtwell with prompt assurance.

“Oh, thank you.  It’s so good of you.  My poor girl!  I may never see you again.”

The start and glance of fear he now threw across the room revealed to Mr. Elliott the true condition of their visitor, and greatly alarmed him.  He had never been a witness of the horrors of delirium tremens, and only knew of it by the frightful descriptions he had sometimes read, but he could not mistake the symptoms of the coming attack as now seen in Mr. Ridley, who, on getting from Mrs. Birtwell a repeated and stronger promise to care for Ethel, rose from the sofa and started for the door.

But neither Mr. Elliott nor Mrs. Birtwell could let him go away in this condition.  They felt too deeply their responsibility in the case, and felt also that One who cares for all, even the lowliest and most abandoned, had led him thither in his dire extremity.