"Now, Tommy," he said, "you may take off your clothes, and get in on
the other side of me."

Tommy did not need a second invitation, and in a moment they were all
fast asleep. A few months, even a few days before, it would have been
a right painful thing to Clare to lie so near a boy like Tommy, but
suffering had taken the edge off nicety and put it on humanity. The
temple of the Lord may need cleansing, but the temple of the Lord it
is. Clare had in him that same spirit which made _the_ son of man go
beyond the healingly needful, and lay his hand--the Sinaitic
manuscript says his _hands_--upon the leper, where a word alone would
have served for the leprosy: the hands were for the man's
heart. Repulsive danger lay in the contact, but the flesh and bones
were human, and very cold.



Chapter XXV.

A new quest.


Though as comfortable as one could be who so sorely lacked food, Clare
slept lightly. His baby was heavy on his mind, and he woke very
early--woke at once to the anxious thought of a boy without food,
money, or friends, and with a hungry baby. He woke, however, with a
new train of reasoning in his mind. Babies could not work; babies
always had their food given them; therefore babies who hadn't food had
a right to ask for it; babies couldn't ask for it; therefore those who
had the charge of them, and hadn't food to give them, had a right to