"Where is Norah, Moleskin?" I cried. "Tell me what that woman said. I'm sick of waiting day after day. What did Gourock Ellen tell you, Joe?"
"I saw Norah Ryan, too," was Moleskin's answer.
"Thank you, Moleskin!" I cried impetuously. "You're a real good sort----"
A look at Joe's face damped my enthusiasm. Why the agitation and faltering voice? Presentiments of bad tidings filled my mind and my voice trembled as I put the next question.
"In that woman's house!" I gasped involuntarily, for I had not rid myself of the fugitive disgust with which I had regarded that woman when first I met her. "That's not the house for Norah! What took her there?"
"Gourock Ellen found Norah lyin' on the streets hurted because some hooligans treated her shameful," said Joe, in a low and almost inaudible voice. "For the last six weeks she has watched over your girl, day and night, when there was not another friend to help her in all the world. And now Norah Ryan is for death. She'll not live another twenty-four hours!"
To me existence has meant succeeding reconciliations to new misfortunes, and now the greatest misfortune had happened. Moleskin's words cut through my heart as a whiplash cuts through the naked flesh. Fate, chance, and the gods were against me, and the spine of life was almost broken.
"Our years pass like a tale that is told badly."
The darkness had long since fallen over the tumbledown rookeries of the Glasgow alley wherein this story is to end, but the ragged children still played in the gutters and the old withered women still gossiped on the pavements. Two drunken men fought outside a public-house and another lay asleep on the dirty kerbstone. When Moleskin and I came to the close which was well known to my mate we had to step over the drunken man in making an entrance.
We passed through a long arched passage and made our way up a flight of rickety wooden stairs, which were cracked at every step, while each crack was filled with the undisturbed dirt of months.
"In there," said Joe, pointing to a splintered door when we gained the top landing. "I'm goin' to stop outside and wait till you come back again."
I rapped on the door, but there was no response. I pushed against the handle and it opened inwards. An open door is a sure sign of poverty. It is a waste of time to lock a door on an empty house. Here where the wealth of men was not kept, the purity of women could not be stolen. Probably Death had effected his entrance before me, but he is one whom no door can hold. I looked into the room.
