me to the workhouse door.  That was Wednesday.  Since the Sunday night preceding nothing had passed my lips save water from the public fountains,—­with the exception of a crust of bread which a man had given me whom I had found crouching at the root of a tree in Holland Park.  For three days I had been fasting,—­practically all the time upon my feet.  It seemed to me that if I had to go hungry till the morning I should collapse,—­there would be an end.  Yet, in that strange and inhospitable place, where was I to get food at that time of night, and how?

I do not know how far I went.  Every yard I covered, my feet dragged more.  I was dead beat, inside and out.  I had neither strength nor courage left.  And within there was that frightful craving, which was as though it shrieked aloud.  I leant against some palings, dazed and giddy.  If only death had come upon me quickly, painlessly, how true a friend I should have thought it!  It was the agony of dying inch by inch which was so hard to bear.

It was some minutes before I could collect myself sufficiently to withdraw from the support of the railings, and to start afresh.  I stumbled blindly over the uneven road.  Once, like a drunken man, I lurched forward, and fell upon my knees.  Such was my backboneless state that for some seconds I remained where I was, half disposed to let things slide, accept the good the gods had sent me, and make a night of it just there.  A long night, I fancy, it would have been, stretching from time unto eternity.

Having regained my feet, I had gone perhaps another couple of hundred yards along the road—­Heaven knows that it seemed to me just then a couple of miles!—­when there came over me again that overpowering giddiness which, I take it, was born of my agony of hunger.  I staggered, helplessly, against a low wall which, just there, was at the side of the path.  Without it I should have fallen in a heap.  The attack appeared to last for hours; I suppose it was only seconds; and, when I came to myself, it was as though I had been aroused from a swoon of sleep,—­aroused, to an extremity of pain.  I exclaimed aloud,

‘For a loaf of bread what wouldn’t I do!’

I looked about me, in a kind of frenzy.  As I did so I for the first time became conscious that behind me was a house.  It was not a large one.  It was one of those so-called villas which are springing up in multitudes all round London, and which are let at rentals of from twenty-five to forty pounds a year.  It was detached.  So far as I could see, in the imperfect light, there was not another building within twenty or thirty yards of either side of it.  It was in two storeys.  There were three windows in the upper storey.  Behind each the blinds were closely drawn.  The hall door was on my right.  It was approached by a little wooden gate.

The house itself was so close to the public road that by leaning over the wall I could have touched either of the windows on the lower floor.  There were two of them.  One of them was a bow window.  The bow window was open.  The bottom centre sash was raised about six inches.