The street was deserted. Other than himself, the only visible living entity was a small dog that had settled nearby. He found its presence comforting, and though they were strangers to each other he knew (for he knew dogs) that it had settled there out of some instinct to serve him. He muttered to it, reached out a hand to it, then, troubled by its stillness, looked harder and saw that it was one of his bags. He crawled to it. It was the smaller bag, and beyond it, a yard or two, lying on its lid, was the fiddle case. Had they been disturbed? A window thrust up on its sash, the approach of a carriage? He looked for the larger bag, looked hopefully, but there was no sign of it. So, goodbye to the boat cloak, his buckskin breeches, his shirts, his only pair of spare boots. He could not quite remember what was in the smaller bag—he had repacked everything on the Jenny—but he feared it was the less useful part of what he had carried.

I am being punished, he thought. Then, after a dozen seconds during which he considered the wisdom of being sick, he thought, no, but this is how I learn.

Learn what?

He made himself as comfortable as he could against the railings. It was hard to tell how much damage they had done, what might be broken. It was hard to attend to anything at all other than the ringing in the air, a sound like a wetted finger around the rim of a glass. And he was drifting into a type of sleep, into blankness, when a voice spoke from a column of night somewhere above and to the right of him. A measured voice. A voice you might imagine belonging not so much to the Good Samaritan as to the Good Samaritan’s lawyer.

“Is the man muntered, or is he hurt?”

Lacroix raised his head, looked up. Silhouetted against the line of gas lamps (they burned more feebly now; the pressure was dropping), two men were standing over him. He tensed himself for more kicks but they did not come. Instead, one of the men leaned down with a dark lantern. When he opened the shutter the light shoved at Lacroix’s eyes and he turned his head away.

“Can you stand?” asked the man.

“What?”

“Can you stand?”

But before he could answer, before he could make the attempt, he felt hands slide under his shoulders and he was raised up.

“Are you the watch?” asked Lacroix.

“We’re the new police,” said the man who had lifted him. “We patrol about the place. We help if we can.”

“I have been . . . attacked,” said Lacroix. His voice was thick and to his own ears not entirely familiar. “They took my boots. And my bag.”

“You had another bag?”

“My money was in my boots.”