The Return of Clubfoot

He cast an apprehensive glance at the window. I fitted the rough beam across the door and approached the couch. It was merely a bed of maize stalks.

"You're very ill, I'm afraid," I said pulling over one of the boxes and seating myself by the Englishman. "Have you seen a doctor?"

The vagrant waved his hand in a deprecatory manner.

"My dear fellow," he said--and again I noted the refinement in his voice,--"no sawbones can help me. I never held with them much anyway. Luisa got paid to-day--she washes at Bard's, you know (it was she who told me you were here)--and so I've got some medicine...."--he touched a little pannikin which stood on the floor at his side--"it's all that keeps me alive now that I can't get the 'snow!'"

I recognised the name which the drug traffic gives to cocaine.

The sick man was rent by