Then he stepped to the saloon, and after a sharp, decided knock by way of announcement, entered. "Does the girl lying outside belong to anyone here? She is nearly frozen." A couple of men stepped to the door and peered out. "It's Dam Crow's girl. She was in here a huntin' him." "Where is her father?" "That's him," pointing to a man lying on a bench behind the stove. "Guess he's asleep," said the man, smiling broadly. "Wake him, and hurry about it," said the gentleman. But Damon Crowley was not in a sleep that could be easily broken. Like a beast he lay. The spittle oozed from his mouth and spread over his dirty beard in true drunkard fashion. When told that his daughter was just outside freezing, he could only grunt. "Where is his home?" "Small use to take her there," one man observed, recounting part of the interview that had taken place a short time before. But no one knew where he lived. The muffled man left the saloon abruptly, evidently much disgusted. Stepping into the street he called a cab just passing. After having had the half-dead girl placed in the vehicle, the gentleman followed, slamming the door. Then he took off his great coat and threw it over her tattered garments. Judge Thorn was a tender-hearted man. CHAPTER II. THE THORNS AT HOME. The Thorn homestead, like the family whose name it bore, was magnificent and substantial in an unassuming way. Its gray gables seemed to look with a frown on the gingerbread style of architecture that had grown up around it. Under the trees on its lawn, three generations of Thorns had grown to man's estate, and every one of them had become a lawyer. It had been the hope of the present occupant that when he left the estate he might leave it in the hands of a son, but this was not to be. After a short married life his wife died, leaving him childless. Some years later he married a second time. When his first child was born and he was told it was a daughter, he was disappointed. When the second child came and was also a girl, his disappointment verged on resentment. Through the hours of anxious waiting that preceded the arrival of the third child, he walked the floor in a state of mind alternating between hope and fear, and when at last the suspense was over and he looked upon the tiny features of a son, his joy knew no bounds. He hurried out to break the news to the two little sisters whom he imagined would be as pleased as he was. He found them in the yard, Vivian swinging with her doll and Jean digging a hole in a pile of sand. When the important announcement was made, the black-haired Vivian clapped her hands for joy, but the other little girl kept right on digging, just as if she had not heard. When she had passed the critical point in the process of excavating she paused and looked up. The expression in her father's face was something new to her, and she studied him in silence a moment, then said, solemnly: "Are boys any better than girls, father?"