And still he held on to her, held on until he got her underneath the street lamps, where he looked into her face. She was worn and haggard, but her dark, lustrous eyes were something to remember. "She must have been very beautiful," he thought, and wondered. "Look at me!" he said in a voice that startled her into consciousness; "you've got to trust me! I'm going to take you home----" "My home?" she cried feebly. "Yes. Where is your home?" The girl made no answer, but commenced to weep. At length, she said: "If I had a home, do you suppose I would have attempted what you have just prevented me from doing? Home? Let me go, please let me go!" and again she fell to sobbing. "Then I'll take you to my own home," he said; and added to himself: "I'm good for one more day there at any rate." "No, no, no!" she cried, trying to break away from him. "I want my father, just father--Oh, father...." "Don't fight against me. I'm going to help you to find your home, your father. Come, trust me!" And the girl, too weak to resist him any longer, allowed herself to be led away by him. * * * * * In a cheap hotel on this same East Side a man sat among other men of his own type, drinking with apparent gusto a huge glass of beer. Between sips he smoked a pipe. His clothes were soiled, stained with tobacco, they reeked with the odour of the place. He had just finished telling a story to an English sailor, who slapped his thigh and howled in glee. "That's a good 'un, matey!" cried the sailor. "But I arn't got one to match it, stow the luck!" The storyteller's last chuckles had subsided and he had drained his glass to the dregs, when suddenly a man entered the place and thrust himself into the group that sat around the table. This newcomer was of a different class from the others. He was tall, square, handsome, and his air and clothes and manner betokened one of the better classes. The genial storyteller set down his glass, grinned once more at the English sailor, and then following the sailor's glance, looked up at the stranger. He found the stranger was glancing down at him with an intentness that was disconcerting, to say the least. The stranger slowly extended his hand toward the group, his forefinger levelling itself in the direction of the genial storyteller. "I want to talk to you," he said. The man at whom he pointed faltered for an instant. His first instinct was to give the signal and get his cronies to bear down upon this stranger and throw him to the ground. The stranger--who was no other than Leech, an Assistant District Attorney of the County of New York, who had become famous chiefly as the lawyer who had sent Peter V. Wilkinson up for a ten-years' term--saw the look, interpreted it correctly, but he only laughed in the man's face. "There are three of my men outside," he whispered, bending down, and then straightened up once more. "Where can we talk?" he asked.