Indeed he seemed hardly conscious that he had just escaped a grave peril.
He stood swaying to and fro in Jack’s grasp like some scarecrow that had come from a cornfield.
“Let me help you across,” said the boy.
Tuggs looked at him with lack-lustre eyes and stepped out as Jack pulled him along by the arm.
“Where are you going?” asked Jack, after he had landed him on the sidewalk.
“I don’t know,” said Tuggs, wearily.
“I guess you’d better go home, hadn’t you?” suggested the young messenger.
“Home?” muttered the old man, in an absent kind of way.
“Where do you live?” asked Jack, curiously.
The boy had to repeat the question before he learned that Tuggs was stopping at the Mills House—that haven for derelicts of all ages and conditions.