"May I come back to tell you how I succeed?"

She only hesitated for a second.

"If you have time. If you care to take the trouble."

He carried away with him the look of her face--that filled his heart
with sunlight. In the hansom, into which he bundled his unkempt
companion, if only he had known enough Russian, he would have expressed
gratitude to him. Beggar or maniac, or whatever he was, had he not been
the means of procuring for George Brand that long-coveted,
long-dreamed-of smile of welcome?




CHAPTER XIV.

A RUSSIAN EPISODE.


"Is that the way you answer an appeal for help?" With that gentle
protest still lingering in his ear, he was not inclined to be hard on
this unfortunate wretch who was in the cab with him; and yet at the same
time he was resolved to prevent any repetition of the scene he had just
witnessed. At the last he discovered that the man had picked up in his
wanderings a little German. His own German was not first-rate; it was
fluent, forcible, and accurate enough, so far as hotels and
railway-stations were concerned; elsewhere it had a tendency to halt,
blunder, and double back on itself. But, at all events, he managed to