"The books--they had been stolen from our store," Nida went on after a time. "A detective was put on my trail. The little old man disappeared. A--a house detective, with eyes like steel blades, accused me of stealing the books!" "I think I know him," Grace broke in. "He looked into Frank Morrow's shop one night." "Yes--yes, that was the man! He calls himself J. Templeton Semp." Nida's eyes were wild for an instant. "He made me sign a paper," she went on. "I learned later it was a confession. They discharged me. I went to other places and asked for work, many places. Everywhere the answer was the same: "'You worked at K----'s. We cannot employ you.' "You see--" Her voice broke. "I had been put on the black list. I--I wouldn't do that to anyone! "Well," she sighed at last, "that's all. Good old Frank Morrow took me in spite of the list. And here I am." She forced a smile. Five minutes later Nida was gone. Grace sat staring at the curious reflector on the wall. "That," she whispered, "is Nida's story. And all the time she was talking someone was looking, listening. I am sure of that. I wonder how? Television? I wonder what that really is?" Finding herself enshrouded in a cloud of gloom, she drew on her coat and, taking up a basket filled with small boxes, she went out on Maxwell Street. Moving along from door to door, she made brief Christmas Eve calls on the simple, kindly people she had learned to love. The small boxes contained homemade candy. She left one at every door. She found Mamma Lebed busy decorating a tiny tree for her two dark-haired little ones. "It's not much we can give them," she beamed. "But the dear ones, how they will dance and prattle when morning comes!" She brushed a tear from her broad cheek. "Merry Christmas!" Grace whispered. "Same to you!" Mamma Lebed gripped her hand hard. Grossmuter Schmalgemeire was filling stockings. There was no fireplace in her tiny home back of the shop, but a straight-backed chair did as well. "He said a mouse would come in through the hole in the toe, Hans did," she laughed. "But I told him an orange would fill it up. And so it shall. I found one in the street that is not too bad." And so Grace found them, these friends, on every hand. Poor, but making much of the little they had, and all filled to overflowing with the spirit of Christmas. When she returned to her rooms, her cheeks were glowing. "Tonight," she whispered, "I am like the moon, filled with light. The light of happiness. It is reflected happiness, but happiness all the same." And then, into her mind there flashed questions that had grown old, but were ever new: "Who is the Whisperer? Where is he? Why does he want Nida's story?" CHAPTER XXII THE WARNING In the meantime tremendous things were doing in the little house where Captain Burns had spent his childhood.