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 It touched him, like a tragedy. He brooded over the thought of Conroy wandering about those foul streets of the tenements, alone, or befriended only by a woman more unfortunate and unhappy than he. By contrast with Don's own happiness the picture was to him appalling. He remembered their boyish companionship in Coulton and the day that Conroy had brought Margaret to the little ravine. He foresaw another meeting that would bring Margaret to Conroy and insensibly reclaim the outcast and make him, in time, a part of a new life in which they three would be united as they had been once. And Don foresaw that meeting and its issue so vividly that he believed he had only to arrange it in order to make his most impossible hopes come true. He spoke of it to Bert Pittsey, and Pittsey shook his head. "I don't believe you can do anything for him unless you put new nerves into his stomach. I talked to him after you left us, that time. He knows what he's doing, but he can't stop. The craving's too strong for him. You had better leave him alone."

"But if we were to get him away from it? If we were to get him into a sanitarium?"

"If! If! How are you to do it? As soon as you try to interfere with him, he flies off the handle. He knows he can't help himself but he just has bull-headedness enough not to allow anyone else to help him."

Don thought it over. "If I can arrange a plan, will you join me?"

Pittsey nodded. "Sure enough. I'm game."

But Don could think of no practical plan. He could foresee a hundred different successful conclusions for his efforts, but not the details of a single method of