Syles stared at him blankly. “What do you know of her?” he said.
“I met some one,” the priest answered, “while on my way to the States, who begged me, if I ever came this way, to find such a woman and give her a message from him. Is she here?”
“Dead,” said Syles briefly.
“She had a husband. Where is he?”
“Next door with a madman. We leave him alone such times.”
“No, no, Parson,” said a lounger near by. “Where’ve ye been that ye haven’t heard? Doctor’s out of his fit to-day, and Reuben’s got his school again. I’ll take ye there, stranger. It’s a sight we’re proud of in Gomorrah.”
Out of the tavern into the filthy street, followed by a dozen or more wretches, the priest went sadly with a load upon his heart. The horrors he had seen already were enough
to sicken him; he wondered what new evils he would meet with now of which Gomorrah was proud.
“They’re used to spectators,” said his guide. “We watch ’em as we like. Door or window—’tan’t no difference to them; we an’t particular here.”
It was a bare, small room, with a table and some benches, an empty fireplace, beside it a powerfully-built man trembling and crying by himself, like one unnerved by some long illness; on one wall was a print of the Blessed Babe and the Holy Mother, and below this was a crucifix. Facing these was a band of twenty little children in soiled and ragged garments, but with clean hands and faces, too absorbed by what was being said to them to heed what passed without. All eyes were fixed on a small man with a great fresh cut across his forehead and a bruised and very simple face.