The blanket of wet fog which had hung over the harbor with such exasperating tenacity lifted suddenly, late in the raw fall afternoon, and revealed to the wondering eyes of the girl who stood alone at the rail of the Joachim a confusion of mountainous shadows, studded with myriad points of light which glittered and shimmered beneath the gray pall. Across the heaving waters came the dull, ominous breathing of the metropolis. Clouds of heavy, black smoke wreathed about the bay. Through it shrieking water craft darted and wriggled in endless confusion. For two days the port of New York had been a bedlam of raw sound, as the great sirens of the motionless vessels roared their raucous warnings through the impenetrable veil which enveloped them. Their noise had become acute torture to the impatient tourists, and added bewilderment to the girl.

The transition from the primitive simplicity of her tropical home had not been one of easy gradation, but a precipitate plunge. The convulsion which ensued from the culmination of events long gathering about little SimitÍ had hurled her through the forest, down the scalding river, and out upon the tossing ocean with such swiftness that, as she now stood at the portal of a new world, she seemed to be wandering through the mazes of an intricate dream. During the ocean voyage she had kept aloof from the other passengers, partly because of embarrassment, partly because of the dull pain at her heart as she gazed, day after day, at the two visions which floated always before her: one, the haggard face of the priest, when she tore herself from his arms in far-off SimitÍ; the other, that of the dark-faced, white-haired old man who stood on the clayey river bank at wretched Llano and watched her, with eager, straining eyes, until the winding stream hid her from his earthly sight––forever. She wondered dully now why she had left them, why she had so easily yielded to the influences which had caused 4 the separation. They might have fled to the jungle and lived there in safety and seclusion. The malign influences which beset them all in SimitÍ never could have reached them in the trackless forest. And yet, she knew that had not Rosendo and JosÈ held out to her, almost to the last moment, assurances of a speedy reunion, she would not have yielded to the pressure which they had exerted, and to the allurements of life in the wonderful country to which they had sent her. Her embarrassment on the boat was due largely to a sense of awkwardness in the presence of women who, to her provincial sight, seemed visions of beauty. To be sure, the priest had often shown her pictures of the women of the outside world, and she had some idea of their dress. But that such a vast difference existed between the illustrations and the actualities, she had never for a moment imagined. Their gowns, their jewels, their coiffures held her in open-mouthed marvel, until Mrs. Reed, herself annoyed and embarrassed, remanded her to her cabin and bade her learn the impropriety of such manners.

Nor had the conduct of this lady throughout the voyage conduced to Carmen’s happiness. Mrs. Reed showed plainly that the girl was an awkward embarrassment to her; that she was tolerated because of reasons which pertained solely to her husband’s business; and she took pains to impress upon her fellow-travelers that, in view of the perplexing servant problem, this unmannered creature was being taken to the States to be trained as a maid, though, heaven knew! the training would be arduous, and the result uncertain.

Reed, though measurably kind, gave Carmen scant attention. Harris alone saved the girl from almost complete neglect. He walked the deck with her, regardless of the smiles of the other passengers. He taught her to play shuffle-board, checkers, and simple card games. He conducted her over the boat and explained the intricate machinery and the numberless wonders of the great craft. He sat with her out on the deck at night and told her marvelous stories of his experiences in frontier camps. And at the table he insisted that she occupy the seat next to him, despite the protestations of the chief steward, who would have placed her apart with the servants.

Carmen said little, but she clung to the man with an appeal which, though mute, he nevertheless understood. At Kingston he took her on a drive through the town, and bought post cards for her to send back to JosÈ and Rosendo. It consoled her immeasurably when he glowingly recounted the pleasure her loved ones would experience on receiving these cards; and thereafter the girl daily devoted hours to the preparation of additional ones to be posted in New York.

The lifting of the fog was the signal for a race among the stalled craft to gain the harbor entrance. The enforced retention of the vessels in the bay had resulted in much confusion in docking, and the Joachim was assigned to a pier not her own. The captain grumbled, but had no choice. At the pier opposite there docked a huge liner from Havre; and the two boats poured their swarming human freight into the same shed. When the gang plank dropped, Harris took charge of Carmen, while Reed and his wife preceded them ashore, the latter giving a little scream of delight as she spied her sister and some friends with a profusion of flowers awaiting her on the pier. She rushed joyfully into their arms, while Reed hastened to his equipage with a customs officer.

But as Harris and the bewildered Carmen pushed into the great crowd in the shed, the absent-minded man suddenly remembered that he had left a bundle of PanamÁ hats underneath his bunk. Dropping the girl’s hand, the impetuous fellow tore back up the gang plank and dived into the boat.

For a moment Carmen, stood in confusion, bracing herself against the swarming multitude, and clinging tenaciously to the small, paper-wrapped bundle which she carried. Her first impulse was to follow Harris. But the eager, belated crowd almost swept her off her feet, and she turned again, drifting slowly with it toward the distant exit. As she moved uncertainly, struggling the while to prevent being crushed against the wall, she felt some one grasp her hand.

“Oh, here you are!” sounded a gentle voice close to her ear. “Well, how fortunate! We thought we had lost you! Come, they are waiting for us up ahead.”

Carmen looked up at the speaker. It was a woman, comely of feature, and strikingly well dressed. The girl thought her beautiful. The anxious fears of a moment before vanished. “Is he up there––Mr. Reed?” she asked quickly.

“He? Oh, yes––Mr. Reed and the others are waiting for us. They sent me back to find you. The automobiles came for you all; but I presume the others have gone by this time. However, you and I will follow in mine. I am Auntie.”

“His aunt?” the girl asked eagerly, as the woman forced a way for them through the mass of humanity.

“Yes, dear. And I am so glad to see you. I have heard all about you.”

“Did he write to you––from SimitÍ?”

“Yes, long letters. And he told all about his little girl. He said your name was––”

“Carmen,” interrupted the girl, with a great surge of gladness, for here was one woman who did not avoid her.

“Yes, Carmen. It is a sweet name.”

“But––Mr. Harris!” cried Carmen, suddenly stopping as she remembered.

“Oh, did he wait? Well, he will come. He knows where to find the automobiles. I will leave word with the pier-master to tell him.”

By this time they had wormed their way clear of the crowd and gained the street. The woman, still retaining Carmen’s hand, went directly to a waiting automobile and pushed the unresisting girl through the open door. Carmen had never seen a conveyance like this, and her thought was instantly absorbed. She looked wonderingly for the horses. And then, sinking into the luxurious cushions, she fell to speculating as to how the thing was moved.

As the chauffeur reached back to close the door a policeman, who had been eying the party since they came out of the shed, stepped up and laid a hand on the car.

“Er––little girl,” he said, looking in and addressing Carmen, “you––you know this lady, do you?”

“Yes,” replied Carmen, looking up confidently into the woman’s smiling face. “She is Auntie, Mr. Reed’s aunt.” She thought his blue uniform and shining buttons and star gorgeously beautiful.

The officer stood hesitant a moment. Suspicion lurked in his eyes as he looked at the woman and then back again at the girl.

“She is a little girl who came up from the South with my nephew, Mr. Reed,” the woman explained easily. “But I don’t wonder you asked. I will give you my card, if you wish.”

Her air was supremely confident. The chauffeur, too, as he got out and leisurely examined his engine, served further to disarm suspicion. The officer raised up and removed his hand from the machine. The chauffeur slowly mounted the box and threw on his lever. As the car moved gently into the night the officer glanced at its number. “Hell!” he muttered, turning away. “What’s the use? The number would be changed anyway. What’s a fellow going to do in a case like this, I’d like to know––go with ’em?”

Some minutes later, Harris, wild and disheveled, followed by Reed and his party, emerged hurriedly into the street.

“What you looking for?” asked the officer, planting himself in front of Harris, and becoming vaguely apprehensive.

“Girl!” sputtered Harris, his eyes protruding and his long arms pawing the air. “Girl––so high––funny dress––big straw hat! Seen her?”

The officer gasped. “She’s gone! Aunt took her just now in an auto!”

“Aunt!” yelled Harris. “She’s got no aunt! She’s from the jungle!”

For a moment they all stood silent, big-eyed and gaping.

“Look here, Mr. Officer,” said Reed, interposing. “My name’s Reed. The girl came up from South America with me. Describe the woman––”

“Reed!” cried the policeman excitedly, his eyes lighting. “That’s it! Said she was your aunt!”

“Lord Harry! You great, blundering boob!” cried the distracted Harris, menacing the confused officer. “And you let her nab the kid?”

Night had fallen, and a curious crowd was gathering around the excited, noisy group. Reed quickly signaled a taxicab and hustled the bewildered officer into it. “You, Harris, get the women folks home, and wait for me! I’ll go to central with this officer and report the case!”

“Not I!” exclaimed Harris wildly. “I’m going to visit every dance hall and dive in this bloomin’ town before I go home! I’m going to find that girl! And you, you blithering idiot,” shaking a fist at the officer, “you’re going to lose your star for this!”

Meantime, the car, in which Carmen lay deep in the soft cushions, sped through the dusk like a fell spirit. A confused jumble of shadows flew past, and strange, unfamiliar noises rose from the animated streets. The lights shimmered on the moist glass. It was confusing. The girl ceased trying to read any meaning in it. It all fused into a blur; and she closed her eyes and gave herself up to the novel sensations stimulated by her first ride in a carriage propelled––she knew not how.

At length came a creaking, a soft, skidding motion, and the big car rolled up against a curb and stopped.

“We are home now,” said the woman softly, as she descended and again took Carmen’s hand. They hurriedly mounted the white stone steps of a tall, gloomy building and entered a door that seemed to open noiselessly at their approach. A glare of light burst upon the blinking eyes of the girl. A negro woman softly closed the door after them. With a wondering glance, Carmen looked about her. In the room at her right she caught a glimpse of women––beautiful, they seemed to her––clad in loose, low-cut, gaily colored gowns. There were men there, too; and some one sat at a piano playing sprightly music. She had seen pianos like that in Cartagena, and on the boat, and they had seemed to her things bewitched. In the room at the end of the hall men and women were dancing on a floor that seemed of polished glass. Loud talk, laughter, and singing floated through the rooms, and the air was 8 warm and stuffy, heavy with perfume. The odor reminded her of the roses in her own little garden in SimitÍ. It was all beautiful, wonderful, fairy-like.

But she had only a moment for this appraisal. Seizing her hand again, the woman whisked her up the flight of stairs before them and into a warm, light room. Then, without speaking, she went out and closed the door, leaving the girl alone.

Carmen sank into a great, upholstered rocking chair and tried to grasp it all as she swayed dreamily back and forth. So this was his home, Mr. Reed’s. It was a palace! Like those JosÈ had described. She wondered if Harris dwelt in a place of such heavenly beauty; for he had said that he did not live with Reed. What would the stupid people of SimitÍ think could they see her now! She had never dreamed that such marvels existed in the big world beyond her dreary, dusty, little home town! JosÈ had told her much, ah, wonderful things! And so had Harris. But how pitifully inadequate now seemed all their stories! She still wondered what had made that carriage go in which she had come up from the boat. And what would one like it cost? Would her interest in La Libertad suffice to buy one? She speculated vaguely.

Then she rose and wandered about the room. She passed her hand over the clean, white counterpane of the bed. “Oh,” she murmured, “how beautiful!” She went dreamily to the bureau and took up, one by one, the toilet articles that lay there in neat array. “Oh, oh, oh!” she murmured, again and again. She glanced into the clear mirror. The little figure reflected there contrasted so oddly with the gorgeously beautiful ones she had glimpsed below that she laughed aloud. Then she went to the window and felt of the soft curtains. “It is heaven,” she murmured, facing about and sweeping the room, “just heaven! Oh, how beautiful even the human mind can be! I never thought it, I never thought it!”

Again she sat down in the big rocker and gave herself up to the charm of her surroundings. Her glance fell upon a vase of flowers that stood on a table near another window. She rose and went to them, bending over to inhale their fragrance. “How strange!” she exclaimed, as she felt them crackle in her fingers. Poor child, they were artificial! But she would learn, ere long, that they fittingly symbolized the life of the great city in which she was now adrift.

Time passed. She began to wonder why the woman did not return. Were not the Reeds anxious to know of her safe arrival? But perhaps they had visitors. Surely that was the case. It was a ball––but so different from the simple, artless 9 baile of her native town. Stray snatches of music drifted into the room from the piano below. It stimulated a hunger for more. She went to the door, thinking to open it a little and listen. The door was locked!

For a moment she stood reflecting. Then apprehension began to steal over her. She went hastily, instinctively, to a window and raised the curtain. There were iron bars in front of it! She remembered suddenly that prison windows were like that. She hurried to the other. It was likewise barred. Terror’s clammy hand gripped at her heart. Then she caught herself––and laughed. “How silly!” she exclaimed, sinking again into the rocker. “God is everywhere––right here!”

At that moment the door opened noiselessly and a woman entered. She was younger than the one who had met the boat. When she saw the girl she uttered an exclamation. “Lord! where did you get those clothes?”

Carmen glanced down at her odd attire and then smiled up at the woman. “Cartagena,” she said simply. “Mrs. Reed bought them for me. But are you her sister? You don’t look like her.”

The woman laughed, a sharp, unmusical laugh. The dry cosmetic plastered thick upon her cheeks cracked. She was not beautiful like the others, thought Carmen. Her cheeks were sunken, and her low-cut gown revealed great, protruding collarbones. “Come,” she said abruptly, “get out of those rags and into something modern.” She opened a closet door and selected a gown from a number hanging there. It was white, and there was a gay ribbon at the waist.

“It’ll have to be pinned up,” she commented to herself, holding it out before her and regarding Carmen critically.

The girl’s eyes danced. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “am I to wear that? How beautiful! Did Mrs. Reed give it to me? And is there a party down stairs?”

The woman returned no answer, but opened a bureau drawer and took from it several other garments, which she threw upon a chair, together with the dress.

“Into the whole lot of ’em,” she said sharply, indicating the garments. “And move lively, for supper’s waitin’ and there’ll be callers soon––gentlemen callers,” she added, smiling grimly.

She turned and faced Carmen. Their eyes met. The woman stopped abruptly and stood with arms akimbo, regarding the girl. Carmen gazed up at her with a smile of happy, trustful assurance.

The woman was the first to speak. “Where did you come from?” she demanded hoarsely.

Carmen told her. She mentioned SimitÍ, Padre JosÈ, and Rosendo. Her voice quavered a little; but she brightened up and concluded: “And Mr. Reed’s Auntie, she met us––that is, me. Oh, isn’t she a beautiful lady!”

The woman seemed to be fascinated by the child’s gaze. Then, suddenly, as if something had given way under great strain, she cried: “For God’s sake, don’t look at me that way! Who are you?” She dropped into a chair and continued to stare at the girl.

“Well, I’ve told you,” replied Carmen. “But,” she continued, going quickly to the woman and taking her hand, “you haven’t told me your name yet. And we are going to be such good friends, aren’t we? Yes, we are. And you are going to tell me all about this beautiful house, and that wonderful carriage I came here in. What did make it go, anyway? Do you ride often? Oh, I hope Mrs. Reed will take me out in it every day!”

The woman’s hand tightened over Carmen’s. She seemed to struggle with herself. Then, in a low voice:

“Your mother––is she living?”

“Madre Maria is,” returned Carmen. “But my mother, my own real mother, she died, long, long ago, on the banks of the great river. My father left her, and she was trying to follow him. Then I was born––”

“The same old story!” muttered the woman fiercely. “I’ve been there, girl, and know all about it. I followed the man––but it was my kid that died! God, if I could have laid my hands on him! And now you have come here––”

She stopped abruptly and swallowed hard. Carmen gently stole an arm about her neck. “It isn’t true,” she murmured, laying her soft cheek against the woman’s painted one. “No one can desert us or harm us, for God is everywhere. And no one really dies. We have got to know that. Padre JosÈ said I had a message for the people up here; and now you are the first one I’ve told it to. But that’s it: God is everywhere. And if we know that, why, nothing bad can ever happen to us. But you didn’t know it when your husband left you, did you?”

“Husband!” ejaculated the woman. Then she looked up into the girl’s deep, wondering eyes and checked herself. “Come,” she said abruptly, rising and still holding her hand. “Never mind the clothes.” A grim look settled over her features. “We’ll go down to supper now as you are.”

Carmen’s companion led her down the stairs and through the hall to a brightly lighted room at the rear, where about a long table sat a half dozen women. There were places for as many more, but they were unoccupied. The cloth was white, 11 the glass shone, the silver sparkled. And the women, who glanced up at the girl, were clad in gowns of such gorgeous hues as to make the child gasp in amazement. Over all hung the warm, perfumed air that she had thought so delicious when she had first entered the house.

The noisy chatter at once ceased. The woman led her to a chair next to the one she herself took. Carmen looked around for the lady who had met her at the boat. She was not there. The silence and the steady scrutiny of the others began to embarrass her. “Where––where is Auntie?” she asked timidly, looking up at her faded attendant.

A titter ran around the table. One of the women, who swayed slightly in her chair, looked up stupidly. “Who’s Auntie?” she muttered thickly. A burst of laughter followed this remark, and Carmen sat down in confusion.

“Where’s the Madam, Jude?” asked one of the younger women of Carmen’s attendant.

“Dining alone in her room. Headache,” was the laconic reply.

“She landed a queen this time, didn’t she?” looking admiringly at Carmen. “Gets me, how the old girl does it! What’s your name, kiddo?”

“Carmen,” replied the girl timidly, looking questioningly about the room.

“That’s a good handle. But what’s the rest?” put in another.

“Carmen Ariza,” the child amended, as her big, wondering eyes swept the group.

“Wow! That’s a moniker for you!” laughed one. “Where do you hail from, angel-face?”

The girl looked uncomprehendingly at her interlocutor.

“Your home, you know. I see your finish, all right. But where’d you begin?”

“Tell them where you lived, child,” said the woman called Jude in a low voice.

“SimitÍ,” replied Carmen, tears choking her words.

“SimitÍ!” echoed around the table. “New York? Ohio? Or Kansas?” A burst of mirth punctuated the question.

“Do the women vote there?”

“Long way from Paris, judging by the fashions.”

“Where is SimitÍ, kidlet?”

Carmen answered in a scarcely audible voice, “South America.”

Low exclamations of astonishment encircled the table, while the women sat regarding the girl curiously.

“But,” continued Carmen in a trembling voice, “where is 12 Mrs. Reed? And isn’t Mr. Harris here? Why don’t they come? Don’t they know I am here?”

She looked appealingly from one to another. Her beautiful face wore such an expression of mingled fear, uncertainty, and helplessness as to throw a hush upon the room. One of the women rose. “God!” she muttered, “it’s a shame!” She looked for a moment uncertainly into the big, deep eyes of the girl, and then turned and hastily left the room.

The silence which followed was broken by a pallid, painted creature at the end of the table.

“What an old devil the Madam is! My God! One look into those eyes would have been enough for me!”

“What’s the idea, Jude?” asked another, nodding toward the girl. “Does she stay here?”

The woman addressed as Jude shook her head. “This is only a recruiting station for the regular army. She’ll go over to French Lucy’s; and the Madam will get a round price for the job.”

“Old Lucy’ll get rich off of her! But she needs the money. Ames owns her house, too, doesn’t he?”

“Sure thing!” replied Jude, brightening under the stimulus of her wine. “He owns every house in this block, they say. Got long leases for ’em all. And the rents––suffering Moses! The Madam rolls on the floor and cusses for a week straight every time she pays hers. But just the same, if you’ve ever noticed, the houses that Ames owns are never raided by the coppers. Ames whacks up with the mayor and the city hall gang and the chief of police. That means protection, and we pay for it in high rents. But it’s a lot better’n being swooped down on by the cops every few weeks, ain’t it? We know what we’re expected to pay, that way. And we never do when we keep handin’ it out to the cops.”

“That’s right,” approved some one.

“It sure is. That’s what the collector says. And he’s got a new collector, fellow from the Ketchim Realty Company. They’re the old man’s agents now for his dive-houses. He can’t get anybody else to handle ’em, so the collector tells me.”

“Belle Carey’s place was pulled last night, I hear,” said one of the women, pushing back her plate and lighting a cigarette.

“Yes,” returned Jude, “and why? Cause the house is owned by Gannette––swell guy livin’ up on Riverside Drive––and he don’t divvy with the city hall. Belle don’t pay no such rent as the Madam does––at least so old Lucy tells me.”

The half-intoxicated woman down the table, who had stirred their laughter a few minutes before, now roused up heavily. 13 “Ol’ Lucy––huh! Used to work for her m’self. Caught a pippin for her once––right off the train––jus’ like this li’l hussy. Went to th’ depot in a hack. Saw th’ li’l kid comin’ an’ pretended to faint. Li’l kid run to me an’ asked could she help. Got her to see me safe home––tee! hee! She’s workin’ f’r ol’ Lucy yet, sound’s a dollar.”

She fixed her bleared eyes upon Carmen and lapsed back into her former state of sodden stupidity.

The girl rose hastily from her chair. The policeman’s words at the pier were floating confusedly through her thought. The strange talk of these women increased the confusion. Perhaps a mistake had been made. She turned beseechingly to Jude. “Isn’t this––Mr. Reed’s house?” she asked.

Another of the women got up hurriedly and left the table. “I haven’t the nerve for another sob-scene,” she commented as she went out.

“Where am I? Where am I?” pleaded Carmen, turning from one to another.

Jude reached out and seized her hand tightly. “Pleasant job for me!” she commented ironically, looking at the others. Then, to Carmen:

“You are in a––a hotel,” she said abruptly.

“Oh––then––then it was a mistake?” The girl turned her great, yearning eyes upon the woman. Jude shrank under them. “Sit down, and finish your supper,” she said harshly, pulling the girl toward the chair.

“No!” replied Carmen loudly. “You must take me to Mr. Reed!”

The maudlin woman down the table chuckled thickly. The negro waitress went quickly out and closed the door. Jude rose, still holding the girl’s hand. “Come up stairs with me,” she said, leading her away.

“Poor old Jude!” commented one of the women, when the two had left the room. “She’s about all in. This sort of business is getting her nerve. But she’s housekeeper, and that’s part of her job. And––the poor little kid! But ain’t she a beauty!”

Jude took the girl into her own room and locked the door. Then she sank wearily into a chair. “God!” she cried, “I’m sick of this––sick of the whole thing!”

Carmen went quickly to her. “Don’t!” she said. “Don’t! It was all a mistake, and we can go.”

“Go!” echoed the woman bitterly. “Where––and how?”

“Why, you said this was a hotel––”

“Hotel! God, it’s hell! And you are in forever!”

Carmen gazed at the excited woman with a puzzled expression on her face.

“Now listen,” said Jude, bracing herself, “I’ve got something to tell you. You have been––good God! I can’t––I can’t! For God’s sake, child, don’t look at me that way! Who are you? Where do you come from?”

“I told you,” replied Carmen quietly.

“Your face looks as if you had come down from the sky. But if you did, and if you believe in a God, you had better pray to Him now!”

“Why––I am not afraid. God is everywhere––right here. I was afraid––a little––at first. But not now. When we stop and just know that we love everybody, and that everybody really loves us, why, we can’t be afraid any more, can we?”

The woman looked up at the child in blank amazement. Love! That warped, twisted word conveyed no meaning to her. And God––it was only a convenient execrative. But––what was it that looked out from that strange girl’s eyes? What was it that held her fascinated there? What was emerging from those unfathomable depths, twining itself about her withered heart and expanding her black, shrunken soul? Whence came that beautiful, white life that she was going to blast? And could she, after all? Then what stayed her now?

“Look here,” she cried sharply, “tell me again all about yourself, and about your friends and family down south, and what it was that the Madam said to you! And be quick!”

Carmen sat down at her feet, and taking her hand, went again over the story. As the child talked, the woman’s hard eyes widened, and now and then a big tear rolled down the painted cheek. Her thought began to stray back, far back, along the wreck-strewn path over which she herself had come. At last in the dim haze she saw again the little New England farm, and her father, stern, but honest and respected, trudging behind the plow. In the cottage she saw her white-haired mother, every lineament bespeaking her Puritan origin, hovering over her little household like a benediction. Then night fell, swiftly as the eagle swoops down upon its prey, and she awoke from a terrible dream, stained, abandoned, lost––and seared with a foul oath to drag down to her own level every innocent girl upon whom her hands might thereafter fall!

“And I have just had to know,” Carmen concluded, “every minute since I left SimitÍ, that God was everywhere, and that He would not let any harm come to me. But when we really know that, why, the way always opens. For that’s prayer, right prayer; the kind that Jesus taught.”

The woman sat staring at the girl, an expression of utter blankness upon her pallid face. Prayer! Oh, yes, she had been taught to pray. Well she remembered, though the memory 15 now cut like a knife, how she knelt at her beautiful mother’s knee and asked the good Father to bless and protect them all, even to the beloved doll that she hugged to her little bosom. But God had never heard her petitions, innocent though she was. And He had let her fall, even with a prayer on her lips, into the black pit!

A loud sound of male voices and a stamping of feet rose from below. The woman sprang to the door and stood listening. “It’s the boys from the college!” she cried in a hoarse whisper.

She turned and stood hesitant for a moment, as if striving to formulate a plan. A look of fierce determination came into her face. She went to the bureau and took from the drawers several articles, which she hastily thrust into the pocket of her dress.

“Now,” she said, turning to Carmen and speaking in a low, strained voice, “you do just as I say. Bring your bundle. And for God’s sake don’t speak!”

Leaving the light burning, she stepped quickly out with Carmen and locked the door after her. Then, bidding the girl wait, she slipped softly down the hall and locked the door of the room to which the girl had first been taken. Both keys she dropped into her pocket. “Now follow me,” she said.

Laughter and music floated up from below, mingled with the clink of glasses. The air was heavy with perfume and tobacco smoke. A door near them opened, and a sound of voices issued. The woman pulled Carmen into a closet until the hall was again quiet. Then she hurried on to another door which she entered, dragging the girl with her. Again she locked the door after her. Groping through the darkness, she reached a window, across which stood a hinged iron grating, secured with a padlock. The woman fumbled among her keys and unfastened this. Swinging it wide, and opening the window beyond, she bade the girl precede her cautiously.

“It’s a fire-escape,” she explained briefly. She reached through the window grating and fastened the padlock; then closed the window; and quickly descended with the girl to the ground below.

Pausing a moment to get her breath, she seized Carmen’s hand and crept swiftly around the big house and into a dark alley. There she stopped to throw over her shoulders a light shawl which she had taken from the bureau. Then she hurried on.

Their course lay through the muddy alley for several blocks. When they emerged they were in a dimly lighted cross street. The air was chill, and the thinly clad woman shivered. Carmen, 16 fresh from the tropics, felt the contrast keenly. A few moments’ rapid walking down the street brought them to a large building of yellow brick, surrounded by a high board fence. The woman unfastened the gate and hurried up to the door, over which, by the feeble light of the street lamp, Carmen read, “The Little Sisters of the Poor.”

A black-robed woman admitted them and went to summon the Sister Superior. Carmen marveled at her strange attire. A moment later they were silently ushered into an adjoining room, where a tall woman, similarly dressed, awaited them.

“Sister,” said Jude excitedly, “here’s a little kid––you got to care for her until she finds her friends!”

The Sister Superior instantly divined the status of the woman. “Let the child wait here a moment,” she said, “and you come with me and tell your story. It would be better that she should not hear.”

In a little while they appeared again. Carmen was drowsing in her chair.

“She’s chock full of religion,” the woman was saying.

“But you,” the Sister replied, “what will you do? Go back?”

“God, no!” cried the woman. “They would murder me!”

“Then you will stay here until––”

“No, no! I have friends––others like myself––I will go to them. I––I couldn’t stay here––with her,” nodding toward the girl. “But––you will take care of her?”

“Surely,” returned the Sister in a calm voice.

Jude looked at Carmen for a moment. She made as if she would speak. Then she turned abruptly and went swiftly out into the chill night.

“Come,” said the Sister to Carmen, extending a hand. “Poor little thing!” she murmured as they mounted the stairs. “Poor little thing!”