A BOATING PARTY OF TWO
I.
The prison gate opened, and Number 73 for a minute or so leaned against the wall to steady himself. The strange clamour of the streets smote upon his ear like dagger strokes into his heart, and his breath came in quick, short gasps.
Some one was speaking to him—a little, pale-faced, red-whiskered man with watery eyes—and Challoner, once “Number 73,” staring stupidly at him, tried to understand, but foiled. Then, sidling up to him, the little man took one of Challoner's gaunt and long hands between his own, and a stout, masculine female in a blue dress and poke bonnet and spectacles clasped the other and called him “brother.”
A dull gleam shone in his sullen eyes at last, and drawing his hands away from them, he asked—
“Who are you?”
The stout woman's sharp tongue clattered, and Challoner listened stolidly. Sometimes a word or two in the volley she fired would cause him to shake his head wearily—“happiness in the life heternal,” “washed in the blood of the Lamb,” and “cast yer sins away an' come an' be saved without money an' without price.”
Then he remembered who he was and who they were—the warders had told him of the Prison Gate Brigade. He turned to the man and muttered—