In the lower hall he blundered against another man, who caught him by the arm, saying, roughly: "Hello! what are you running away like this for, eh?" "Don't you know me, Doctor Rowe? Come with me, for God's sake, into the street. I was looking out of the window, and saw a murder being done." They rushed into the street, but the little delay had enabled the murderer to make his escape. Nothing was to be seen of any human creature but that still form lying there in a drift of snow that had turned crimson with the blood that was spurting from his breast. With exclamations of pity and horror, they bent over him, the physician quickly feeling for his heart. "Is he dead?" asked Leroy Hill, his laughing dark eyes growing soft with pity. "Not yet; his heart beats faintly, but this flow of blood must be stopped at once. It is very fortunate we came to him so quickly," returned the old physician, tearing open Hawthorne's shirt-bosom and preparing to stanch the flow of blood. Several people came out of the house and joined them, and a crowd collected quickly, a policeman coming at last around the corner. Those who could assist the doctor did so, others plied each other with questions. "Who is he?" "Who killed him?" No one could answer either question. No cards nor letters were found on the stranger's person to prove his identity, and no one present recognized him. Leroy Hill could only tell that he had seen the encounter from an upper window, and that the assassin had escaped before he reached the street. Doctor Rowe looked up, asking: "Has any one 'phoned for an ambulance to take him to the hospital? His last chance of life will soon be gone if he has to lie here in the street." A bystander interposed, sarcastically: "And he won't have much chance of life among some of those brutal nurses at the hospital, neither." Mr. Hill's absent friend had come up a moment before, and the young man turned to him, saying, kindly: "Let's give the poor devil a chance for his life, Ralph. Can't we get a room in the house and hire a nurse for him?" "Why, certainly, Lee. Glad you thought of it! We will put him in my bedroom and I can sleep on the lounge in my study," returned Ralph Washburn who was an author, and had the kindest heart in the world. And so Harry Hawthorne found true friends among those jolly, big-hearted Westerners, and, under their faithful ministrations, he came back to the life that had used him so hardly. And then they found that he was inclined to throw a bit of a mystery around himself, for he was unwilling to answer questions about anything. "Don't think me ungrateful, boys," he said to Ralph and Lee, as they sat by his bed. "God only knows how grateful I am for your goodness, and I hope to prove it to you some day. I'm from the North; I don't belong in Chicago--I'll own that. I won't tell my name yet--call me Jack Daly; that will do as well as anything until the time comes when I can safely confess all."