hand into my pocket, I left it to God to suggest the amount.

And then, as I say, I returned, with a deal of expectancy in my mind. Moxon was putting out my slippers with Dandy looking on—Dandy assuring him, with expressions of contempt for his intelligence, that it was not a bit of good.

"There's some one with him," sniffed Dandy. "We shall have to sit up till they go," and he looked back again into the fire.

I remained there for a moment watching him, really waiting to hear what Moxon had to say. He stood up then, and as he said it, upon my soul, I came to the conclusion that I had never had such respect for diplomacy before.

"Is there anything more, sir?" he asked, and had there been a conscience to prick me, I swear to Heaven I should have begged his pardon for having asked so much. As it was, I smiled serenely when I looked back into his face.

"No—I think that's enough," said I.

And when he replied, "Yes, sir," it was intended to convey that he entirely agreed with me.

I let him get to the door and there he stopped, looking round the room once more, to see if I had forgotten anything on my own account; then as he was departing, I called him back. It might have been enough for him; it was a gross misrepresentation to say that it was enough for me.

"Do you mean to say, Moxon," I began, "that you wouldn't help a woman if she was in trouble?"

"I was not aware, sir," he replied, "that I had said anything about any woman."

I had to swallow that as best I could and begin again on a fresh score.

"Well," I continued, "if a woman had asked you to give her her cab fare home—a woman drenched to the skin, sheltering in a doorway, shivering in the cold at one o'clock at night—what would you do?"

"Naturally—if you put it that way, sir—but it's against my principles, and, what's more, I'm never out at one o'clock at night, I make a point of being in by half-past eleven."

This was too evasive for me. So far as his principles are concerned, I know all about them. A man who supports his mother and two sisters out of his earnings has every right to talk about it being against his principles to help a woman in distress; but there is no special call upon 

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