One of the windows in the second story of the cottage before which the cab had stopped, was aglow, and across the drawn shade a shadow passed, and passed again.
Adams shook the sleeper in the cab. Finally after a series of muffled grunts and grumblings that were like remonstrances, the man was gotten out.
"All right?" inquired the driver, gathering up the reins.
"All right," Adams replied; whereat the driver spoke to his horse, turned, and drove back down the squalid street.
Adams supported the tottering figure of the man to the door of the house and fumbled for the knob, which, when his fingers found it, turned in his hand and the door swung open. On a table in the room at the end of the narrow, bare, unlighted hallway, stood a lamp, turned low. As he half carried, half led the man into the room, Adams heard footsteps overhead. And as he cast his burden down upon a carpet-covered lounge, pushed back against the wall at the further end of the room, he heard a voice from above call:
"Iss dat you?"
"Come down," he answered.
There was a little frightened, feminine "Oh!" followed by quick, heavy footfalls on the bare stairs. The next instant the short, thick figure of a woman was framed by the doorway. The light of the lamp struck her face which was broad and kindly.
"Chon!" she exclaimed.
His eyes met hers and he smiled faintly. Then his gaze wandered to the lithograph of the Christ tacked to the wall, and to the couch beneath, and he said: