The officer sauntered off to do his bidding. Michael and Sam began working over the unconscious girl, and the crowd stood idly round waiting until the ambulance rattled up. They watched with awe as the form of the woman was lifted in and Michael and Sam climbed up on the front seat with the driver and rode away; then they drifted away to their several beds and the street settled into its brief night respite.
The two young men waited at the hospital for an hour until a white-capped nurse came to tell them that Lizzie had recovered consciousness, and there was hope of her life. Then they went out into the late night together.
"Sam, you're coming home with me to-night!" Michael put his arm affectionately around Sam's shoulders, "You never would come before, but you must come to-night."
And Sam, looking into the other's face for an instant, saw that in Michael's suffering eyes that made him yield.
"I ain't fit!" Sam murmured as they walked along silently together. It was the first hint that Sam had ever given that he was not every whit as good as Michael; and Michael with rare tact had never by a glance let Sam know how much he wished to have him cleaner, and more suitably garbed.
"Oh, we'll make that all right!" said Michael fervently thankful that at last the time had come for the presentation of the neat and fitting garments which he had purchased some weeks before for a present for Sam, and which had been waiting for a suitable opportunity of presentation.
The dawn was hovering in the East when Michael led Sam up to his own room, and throwing wide the door of his own little private bath-room told Sam to take a hot bath, it would make him feel better.
While Sam was thus engaged Michael made a compact bundle of Sam's old garments, and stealing softly to the back hall window, landed them by a neat throw on the top of the ash barrel in the court below. Sam's clothes might see the alley again by way of the ash man, but never on Sam's back.
Quite late that very same morning, when Sam, clothed and in a new and righter mind than ever before in his life, walked down with Michael to breakfast, and was introduced as "my friend Mr. Casey" to the landlady, who was hovering about the now deserted breakfast table; he looked every inch of him a respectable citizen. Not handsome and distinguished like Michael, of course, but quite unnoticeable, and altogether proper as a guest at the respectable breakfast table of Mrs. Semple.