candies and the little presents from the country louts had completed it; and here she was, still very young, with a heart still kind and with a nature not yet warped and brutalized,--a danger to any community in which she lived, the deliberate spreader of something so frightful that science and civilization stood abashed in her presence. Vanity has much to answer for, and out of nature spring many plants whose tempting berries are filled with poison. It was in the bed of this wretched little woman that the unconscious Peter slept that night. It was ten o'clock in the morning when the weary girl faced another day. She didn't grumble at the fact that she had been frequently disturbed and had watched many of the hours go by while she attended to Peter with something of the spirit of a Magdalen. She kept repeating to herself: "Poor boy! Poor boy! I wonder what his mother would say if she saw him like this." She bathed his head, listened with astonishment to his babbling, and tried to piece together his incoherent pleading with Ranken Townsend and his declarations to Betty of his everlasting love. She listened with acute interest to the broken sentences which showed her that this great big man-boy was endeavoring to stir up his father to do something which seemed to him to be urgent and vital, and she wondered who Graham was, and Nicholas. The first thing that she did when she was dressed and had put the kettle on her gas stove to boil, was to hunt through Peter's pockets to find out who he was. It was obvious to her that he was not so much a customer as a patient. She was a little afraid of accepting the whole responsibility of his case. The only letter she found was one signed "Graham," headed with the address of an office in Wall Street. In the corner of it was printed a telephone number. Graham, it was plain to her, was a Christian name. She could find no suggestion of the surname of the writer or of the man who lay so heavily in the next room. "I dunno," she said to herself. "Something has got to be done. That boy's in a bad way. 'E's as 'ot as a pancake and I shouldn't think 'e's used to drink by the way 'e takes it. Suppose hanything should 'appen to 'im 'ere. I should look funny. What 'ad I better do?"