“What’s here to do?” gruffly inquires a policeman, coming up with an air of indifference.  The stranger says the woman is dying.  The policeman stoops down, lays his hand upon her temples, then mechanically feels her arms and hands.

“And I-must die-die-die in the street,” whispers the woman, her head falling carelessly from the policeman’s hand, in which it had rested.

“Got her a bit below, at the Work’ouse door, among them wot sleeps there, eh?”

The stranger says he did.

“A common enough thing,” pursues the policeman; “this a bad lot.  Anyhow, we must give her a tow to the station.”  He rubs his hands, and prepares to raise her from the ground.

“Hold! hold,” interrupts the other, “she will die ere you get her there.”

“Die,—­ah! yes, yes,” whispers the woman.  The mention of death seems to have wrung like poison into her very soul.  “Don’t-don’t move me-the spell is almost broken.  Oh! how can I die here, a wretch.  Yes, I am going now-let me rest, rest, rest,” the moaning supplicant mutters in a guttural voice, grasps spasmodically at the policeman’s hand, heaves a deep sigh, and sets her eyes fixedly upon the stranger.  She seems recognizing in his features something that gives her strength.

“There-there-there!” she continues, incoherently, as a fit of hysterics seize upon her; “you, you, you, have-yes, you have come at the last hour, when my sufferings close.  I see devils all about me-haunting me-torturing my very soul-burning me up!  See them! see them!—­here they come-tearing, worrying me-in a cloud of flame!” She clutches with her hands, her countenance fills with despair, and her body writhes in agony.

“Bring brandy! warm,—­stimulant! anything to give her strength!  Quick! quick!—­go fetch it, or she is gone!” stammers out the stranger.

In another minute she calms away, and sinks exhausted upon the pavement.  Policeman shakes his head, and says, “It ’ont do no good-she’s done for.”

The light of the “Trumpeter’s Arms” still blazes into the street, while a few greasy ale-bibbers sit moody about the tap room.

The two men raise the exhausted woman from the ground and carry her to the door.  Mine host of the Trumpeter’s Arms shrugs his shoulders and says, “She can’t come in here.”  He fears she will damage the respectability of his house.  “The Work-house is the place for her,” he continues, gruffly.

A sight at the stranger’s well-filled purse, however, and a few shillings slipped into the host’s hand, secures his generosity and the woman’s admittance.  “Indeed,” says the host, bowing most servilely, “gentlemen, the whole Trumpeter’s Arms is at your service.”  The woman is carried into a lonely, little back room, and laid upon a cot, which, with two wooden chairs, constitutes its furniture.  And while the policeman goes in search of medical aid, the host of the Trumpeter’s bestirs himself right manfully in the forthcoming of a stimulant.  The stranger, meanwhile, lends himself to the care of the forlorn sufferer with the gentleness of a woman.  He smoothes her pillow, arranges her dress tenderly, and administers the stimulant with a hand accustomed to the sick.