He took to his bed in his terrible den, which
grew more terrible with his helplessness. He was
without kith or kin, a lonely old man, embittered
and pessimistic, fighting vermin the while and look
ing at Garibaldi, Engels, and Dan Burns gazing
down at him from the blood-bespattered walls.
No one came to see him in that crowded munici
pal barracks (he had made friends with none of
them), and he was left to rot.

But from the far-reaches of the East End came
a cobbler and his son, his sole friends. They
cleansed his room, brought fresh linen from home,
and took from off his limbs the sheets, grayish-
black with dirt. And they brought to him one of
the Queen s Bounty nurses from Aldgate.

She washed his face, shook up his couch, and
talked with him. It was interesting to talk with
him until he learned her name. Oh, yes, Blank
was her name, she replied innocently, and Sir
George Blank was her brother. Sir George Blank,
eh ? thundered old Dan Cullen on his death-bed;
Sir George Blank, solicitor to the docks at Cardiff,
who, more than any other man, had broken up the
Docker s Union of Cardiff, and was knighted ?
And she was his sister? Thereupon Dan Cullen
sat up on his crazy couch and pronounced anathema
upon her and all her breed; and she fled, to return
no more, strongly impressed with the ungrateful
ness of the poor.

[[161]]

p160 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p161w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p162

v?