interior into which he passed was dark, odoriferous, bare of stock,
poverty-smitten. A woman, lean, hard-featured, with thin grey hair
disordered and unkempt, looked up quickly at his coming and as quickly
down again. Her face was perhaps too lifeless to express any emotion
whatsoever, but there might have been a shade of disappointment in the
swift withdrawal of her gaze. A customer would have been next door to a
miracle, but hope dies hard.

"You!" she muttered. "What are you bothering about?"

"I want David," Aaron Thurnbrein panted. "I have news! Is he behind?"

The woman moved away to let him pass.

"He is behind," she answered, in a dull, lifeless tone. "Since you took
him with you to Bermondsey, he does no work. What does it matter? We
starve a little sooner. Take him to another meeting, if you will. I'd
rather you taught him how to steal. There's rest in the prisons, at
least."

Aaron Thurnbrein brushed past her, inattentive, unlistening. She was
not amongst those who counted. He pushed open an ill-fitting door,
whose broken glass top was stuffed with brown paper. The room within
was almost horrible in its meagreness. The floor was uncarpeted, the
wall unpapered. In a three-legged chair drawn up to the table, with
paper before him and a pencil in his hand, sat David Ross. He looked up
at the panting intruder, only to glower.

"What do you want, boy?" he asked pettishly. "I am at work. I need
these figures. I am to speak to-night at Poplar."