lodging. You know what kind of weather we've been having, an old-fashioned winter, the best skating we've had for years. I don't know how I've lived through it, but I have. And there are thousands who've been no better off than I have, men, women, and children; I've herded with them. What a world! And for what I've suffered I have to thank you."

"That's not true."

"That's a lie. I'm eating your food--I can't help eating it, I've got to that--but don't you fancy that I'm under any obligation to you because of it. I owe everything I've had to bear to you, and I'll pay you for it. I've told myself that I would over and over again, and I will."

"You talk nonsense; would you rather I had let you go to gaol?"

"What do you mean?"

"Have you forgotten that when I first had the honour of meeting you I saved you from the police? I came on the scene in the very nick of time. In another minute they'd have laid you by the heels and marched you to the station."

He laid down his knife and fork.

"So I was right."

"About what?"

"It's all been a haze; something must have happened to me, something must have cracked in here." He laid his hand on his head. "I don't seem to remember anything beyond a certain point. I don't remember how it was I came to meet you. I know you took me to your house, and dosed and drugged me, and dyed my hair and painted my face, and that while I was still more than half stupefied by your drugs you made a catspaw of me to enable you to bring off some swindle--what it was I've never understood--and that then you left me in the street, as if I were carrion that you were throwing to the dogs; but how I first came to get into your house I have never been able to make out."

"I have upstairs the watch, chain and purse of which you relieved an old gentleman in Hyde Park, just before I came upon the scene. There's his name inside the watch. I only have to communicate with the owner--I know all about him--and you'll be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, during which you'll suffer much worse things than anything you've had to bear because of me."

"Is that true, that I did what you say?"

"Perfectly, honestly; do 

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