She wanted to rise and flee, but she was half stuck in the trunk and her wobbly legs would not lift her out, so she said shakily: "I did it be--because that's my trunk. I--I am Grace Krowl, your niece who came from Camden Center, Kansas, to help you keep your store. But I won't, I won't stay a moment. I'll never, never, never help a thief!" "You?" The bearded man's face was a study. Surprise, mortification registered themselves on his face. "Grace Krowl, my niece," he murmured. "Her trunk! It is her trunk! A thief it is she says I am--I, Nicholas Fischer, who never stole a penny! Tell me, what is all this?" He stared from face to face as if expecting an answer. But no answer came. And then a slow smile overspread his face. "Now I begin to understand," he murmured. "It is all a mistake, a terrible mistake! "Ladies," he said, turning pleading eyes on the group of customers, "will you please put back into that little trunk everything you have taken out? And if any have paid for a thing, I will repay. It is my niece's trunk. It is one terrible mistake." He began rocking backwards and forwards like one in great pain. "A thief, she said," he murmured. "But who would not have thought it?" His eyes took in the half-empty trunks all about him, then he murmured again, "Who would not have thought it?" Four hours later, just after darkness had fallen, this same girl, Grace Krowl, found herself walking the most unusual street in America, Maxwell Street in Chicago. She found it interesting, amusing, sometimes a little startling, and always unspeakably sad, this place where a strange sort of bedlam reigns. Here, as she passed along, fat Jewish women held up flimsy silk stockings to her view, screaming, "Buy, Miss, buy now! The price goes up! Cheap! Cheap!" Here a man seized her rudely by the shoulder, turned her half around and all but shoved her into a narrow shop, where gaudy dresses were displayed. This made her angry. She wanted to fight. "I fight?" She laughed softly to herself. "I, who have always lived in Camden Center! A sort of madness comes over one in such a place as this, I guess." Recalling her fight earlier in the day, her cheeks crimsoned, and she hurried on. "What a jumble!" she exclaimed aloud as she turned her attention once more to Maxwell Street. "Shoes, scissors, radios, geese, cabbages, rags and more rags, rusty hardware, musical instruments. Where does it all come from, and who will buy it?" She paused to look at a crate of cute white puppies with pink noses. They, too, were for sale. Then, of a sudden, her face clouded. "Can I do it?" she muttered. "Can I? I--I must! But other people's things? So often the little treasures they prized! How can I?"