The wretched woman, awed by Philip's tone, complied. Perhaps, also, she obeyed, half in fear of the policeman, who had stepped up to join the gentlemen, and half in hope of getting more silver to spend on more drink.
Before half an hour was over Alick Carnegy was found. It was a terrible shock to the captain to recognise his boy in the squalid, dirty, delirious sufferer tossing wearily on a heap of sacks, on the grimy floor of an attic at the top of an evil-smelling, dilapidated house, to which the crone stumblingly conducted them.
'Merciful powers!' he groaned in dismayed horror.
'Hush!' enjoined Philip. 'Be as calm as you can. I believe the poor little chap is off his head; but, if there's a gleam of consciousness, it would send him over the precipice again to witness your agitation.'
There was small fear of the captain doing any further mischief; he was stunned into helplessness, and stood mute, trying to force himself to believe that the huddled heap of squalid misery was his very own son—smart, manly-looking Alick Carnegy. Though the captain was thus helpless, Philip Price seemed to know exactly what to do, and how to do it.
Getting the address of a doctor, he rushed off, in the first place, to fetch him. Then a bedstead and clean bedding were hired in. In an hour or two more the grimy room was swept and tidied as far as possible; the window propped up to stay open; the hapless, dirty sufferer cleansed and made straight; and beside his bed sat a gentle-faced, trained nurse, whose wholesome presence seemed to transform the room.
'Now, captain,' cheerily said Philip, who looked another man in the excitement, 'you are going to take a bit of advice from me, I hope. You will go straight back to Brattlesby by the night train. Your invalid at home must not be forgotten; anxiety is not the best sort of tonic for her. And I mean to remain here with your boy.'
'God bless you, Price!' The old sailor's voice trembled as he wrung Philip's hand. 'I never knew it was in you! Man, how one can be deceived! I thought your head was in the clouds, and that you didn't know your right hand from your left, practically speaking. Yes, yes! I'll run down to-night, and to-morrow I can return. I can trust my boy to you. Let nothing be spared; there's my purse. The doctor seemed a downright good sort of chap and she is worth a gold-mine!' He pointed to the nurse, who was deftly bathing Alick's burning brow.
'What a splendid lad that Price is! He's the very salt of the earth!' murmured the old captain, as he threaded his way later through the unsavoury streets, now ablaze with lights that enticed and beckoned forth misery to stalk out from every dark corner. 'He is a true Christian—that's what it is! To think how my boys have ill-treated him, and here he is caring for Alick so tenderly that the poor boy's mother couldn't have done more, had she been spared! That's what you call returning good for evil, with a vengeance! Well, well, please God, I'll mend my own ways too! If I have my girl and my boy both restored to me, I'll be a different father to them from what I have been.'
It had been borne in upon the captain's mind, during the cloud of sorrow overshadowing his home, that he had, somehow, failed in his duty. And, with the courage that belongs only to the brave heart, he admitted his shortcomings.