CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
AN ANGEL UNAWARES.
In a wretched garret of a house in Storr Alley, near Euston, at the sick-bed of his old enemy, Jeffreys reached a turning-point in his life.
How he conveyed the half-drowned Jonah on the night of the rescue from the canal bank to his lodgings he scarcely knew.
The hand of a friend is often near when it is least expected.

So Jonah had found, when he believed all hope and life to be gone; and so Jeffreys had found, when, with his poor burden in his arms, he met, beside a barge at daybreak, a dealer in vegetables for whom he had sometimes worked at Covent Garden, and who now, like a Good Samaritan, not only gave the two a lift in his cart, but provided Jeffreys with an opportunity of earning a shilling on the way.
This shilling worked marvels.

For both Trimble and Jeffreys were on the verge of starvation; and without food that night rescue would have been but a farce.
It was soon evident that Jonah had far more the matter with him than the mere effects of his immersion.

He was a wreck, body and soul.

The dispensary doctor who called to see him gave him a fortnight to live, and the one or two brave souls who penetrated, on errands of mercy, even into Storr Alley, marked his hollow cough and sunken cheeks, and knew that before long one name more would drop out of their lists.
It was slowly, and in fragments only, that Jeffreys heard his story.
Jonah was for ever reproaching him with what had happened on the canal bank.
"Why couldn't you have left a fellow alone?
I know, you wanted to gloat over me.