A man was making his way out of the city late, trying to get from one end of town to the other, when the fog and the gutters swallowed him for a while. He’d barely gone a mile when a gang jumped him — cuffs, boots, the whole ugly business. They stripped him, left him bleeding in the lane and gone.
By chance a respectable-looking physician came down that same road. Fine coat, neat hat, a light under his arm. He saw the man, looked hard, adjusted his collar, and crossed to the other side as if stepping around a puddle. He kept his lamp straight, walked on.
Then a clergyman in his Sunday best came by. He paused. He checked his watch, muttered something about business, and—very politely—kept walking. The man coughed and tried to call for help, but his voice was weak.
Later, from the deeper shadow came a figure folks had stories about: smaller than a man, quick as a rat, with a face you didn’t fully trust — Mr. Hyde. People liked to tell tales how he was dangerous, how respectable people avoided him. He stopped. He looked at the mess on the pavement, then at the battered traveler. Something like a decision crossed his twisted face.
Hyde stepped closer, grunting as he lifted the man. He checked the wounds the way a practical man checks anything — quick, efficient, not sentimental. He poured a little whisky from a cracked flask into the man’s mouth, tarred the wounds with whatever he had, and hoisted him up. He walked him as far as an inn on the edge of town, carried him inside, and laid him on a bed.
In the morning, the innkeeper came down to find Hyde already at the bedside, counting out two sovereigns. “Look after him,” Hyde said gruffly, “and if it costs more, I’ll come back and pay. And don’t you be holding my coin for a story; just mend him.”
People in the inn were shocked. Hyde — the one they’d whispered about, the one no proper society would touch — had done what the doctor and the cleric had not. The moral floated plain as daylight: being someone’s neighbor doesn’t mean sharing a class, a sermon, or a reputation. It means showing up when the chips are down.
So when someone asked, “Who proved himself a neighbor to the beaten man?” the answer was simple, and it made folks uneasy: the one they feared, the one they labeled worse than a sinner. Compassion turned out to be less about how a person looks in church and more about whether they stitch the wound and cover the bed.
