“'And when you find her—you will not kill her, surely!'
“'I will try to get her to come back to me.'
“He took passage in the steerage, and I do not know what happened to him after that.”
Each of us hid his emotions in his beer-mug. Then Max ordered fresh mugs, and said that Breffny's story recalled a somewhat similar thing that he had witnessed in Denver.
“When I was a reporter out there, I was standing one evening in front of a hotel. A crowd collected to see the body of a guest brought out and placed upon an ambulance.
“'Where are you taking him, and what is it?' I asked the driver.
“'To the lazaretto. Smallpox.'”
For a moment, while he was being lifted into the ambulance, the victim's face was visible. A loud cry was heard in the crowd. It came from a ragged, wild-looking man, whose unkempt beard made him look much older than I afterward found him to be. As the ambulance hurried off, he ran after it, shouting:
“'I must see that man! Stop! I must ask him something!'
“But he tripped upon a horse-car track, and when he had staggered to his feet, the ambulance was out of sight.