note; you'll be well paid--"

"I ain't askin' for that; you got me off easy once and gave me a lift,
arter I was let out--"

"Well, well!" Steele made a brusk gesture. "We all need a helping hand
sometimes," he said turning away.

And that was as near as he had come to attainment of his desires.

Summer passed; sometimes, the better to think, to plan, to keep himself
girded by constant exercise, he repaired to the park, now neglected by
fashion and given over to that nebulous quantity of diverse qualities
called the people. Where fine gentlemen and beaux had idled,
middle-class nurse-maids now trundled their charges or paused to
converse with the stately guardians of the place. Almost deserted were
roads and row; landau, victoria and brougham, with their varied
coats-of-arms, no longer rolled pompously past; only the occasional
democratic cab, of nimble possibilities, speeding by with a fare lent
pretext of life to the scene. True, the nomad appeared in ever
increasing numbers, holding his right to the sward for a couch as an
inalienable privilege; John Steele encountered him on every hand. Once,
beneath a great tree, where Jocelyn Wray and he had stopped their horses
to talk for a moment, the bleared, bloated face of what had been a man
looked up at him. The sight for an instant seemed to startle the
beholder; a wave of anger at that face, set in a place where imagination
had an instant before played with a picture altogether different, passed
over him; then quickly went.

As he strode forward at a swinging pace, his thoughts swept swiftly