The butler happened to be in the room.  I spoke to him.

‘Peter, what is the matter in the street?  Go and see.’

He went and saw; and, presently, he returned.  Peter is an excellent servant; but the fashion of his speech, even when conveying the most trivial information, is slightly sesquipedalian.  He would have made a capital cabinet minister at question time,—­he wraps up the smallest petitions of meaning in the largest possible words.

’An unfortunate individual appears to have been the victim of a catastrophe.  I am informed that he is dead.  The constable asserts that he is drunk.’

‘Drunk?—­dead?  Do you mean that he is dead drunk?—­at this hour!’

’He is either one or the other.  I did not behold the individual myself.  I derived my information from a bystander.’

That was not sufficiently explicit for me.  I gave way to a, seemingly, quite causeless impulse of curiosity, I went out into the street, just as I was, to see for myself.  It was, perhaps, not the most sensible thing I could have done, and papa would have been shocked; but I am always shocking papa.  It had been raining in the night, and the shoes which I had on were not so well suited as they might have been for an encounter with the mud.

I made my way to the point of interest.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

A workman, with a bag of tools over his shoulder, answered me.

’There’s something wrong with someone.  Policeman says he’s drunk, but he looks to me as if he was something worse.’

‘Will you let me pass, please?’

When they saw I was a woman, they permitted me to reach the centre of the crowd.

A man was lying on his back, in the grease and dirt of the road.  He was so plastered with mud, that it was difficult, at first, to be sure that he really was a man.  His head and feet were bare.  His body was partially covered by a long ragged cloak.  It was obvious that that one wretched, dirt-stained, sopping wet rag was all the clothing he had on.  A huge constable was holding his shoulders in his hands, and was regarding him as if he could not make him out at all.  He seemed uncertain as to whether it was or was not a case of shamming.

He spoke to him as if he had been some refractory child.

‘Come, my lad, this won’t do!—­Wake up!—­What’s the matter?’

But he neither woke up, nor explained what was the matter.  I took hold of his hand.  It was icy cold.  Apparently the wrist was pulseless.  Clearly this was no ordinary case of drunkenness.

’There is something seriously wrong, officer.  Medical assistance ought to be had at once.’

‘Do you think he’s in a fit, miss?’

’That a doctor should be able to tell you better than I can.  There seems to be no pulse.  I should not be surprised to find that he was—­’

The word ‘dead’ was actually on my lips, when the stranger saved me from making a glaring exposure of my ignorance by snatching his wrist away from me, and sitting up in the mud.  He held out his hands in front of him, opened his eyes, and exclaimed, in a loud, but painfully raucous tone of voice, as if he was suffering from a very bad cold,