"Guess you'd better go see him and surprise him like. He won't be expecting you. He's just down here a little piece. Come on, if you are going, I can't fool around all day," the man urged, an ugly gleam getting into his eyes and his face showing its coarsest lines. "John wouldn't like hit ef I'd go ther' wher' he is," she responded. "I hain't got no business a goin' down ther'. I'd be erbleeged ef ye'd tell 'im----" "Tell him nothing," gruffly rejoined the man. "Come along, it's not far, he'll be all right; he's a good fellow and not going to make any fuss--come on. I'll stand between you and all danger--come on." "I don't wanter go, an' I haint er goin', an' ye mought as well quit er talkin'," she almost doggedly replied, taking a step or two back from him. He followed her with a devilish leer in his eyes. The street was a disreputable one and there was a narrow alley near where they stood. "He's not caring any thing about you now; you needn't be so shy, I'm not going to do you any harm. I'm the best friend you've got." Her strange, troubled face brightened a little. "Then, ef ye'r' my friend," she quickly said, "go an' tell 'im at I wush he'd please kem home." The man laughed, looked at her quizzically for a time, and then in a tone, half of vexation and half of amusement, said: "Well, if you aren't the dangedest curiosity I ever saw! You ought to travel with Barnum." He gazed at her intently from head to foot, his face softening. "You've no business trotting around loose in these suburbs," he muttered, more to himself than to her, then quite _solus_ he added: "She's cracked: she's an idiot." Her vague troubled look now appealed to the other side of the man's nature. "Do you know where you are? This is no place for you; where do you live?" He put his inquiries in a voice so different from that half-wheedling, half brutal one hitherto used, that she instantly looked up with a gleam of trust in her eyes. "Where is your home?" he continued. "Over to the tother side o' the mounting, at Mr. White's," she frankly answered. "Well, what are you doing down here among these saloons and dives? Why don't you go home and stay with your mother? This is a bad place for you." "I hain't er feared," she said; "I er a goin' down yer ter pap's cyart. Pap an' me we kem ter town tergether. I jist stopped ter ask yer ef ye'd seed John, that wer' all I keered about ye. Ye needn't er be a frettin' yerself 'bout me." The man chuckled in a puzzled way and walked on, muttering to himself something about the "dangedest prettiest idiot" that he ever saw. He looked back a time or two to watch Milly as she carelessly strolled along, her petite form showing its lithe, wild grace, with every movement and her wisp of yellowish hair shining under her hat and straying down over the back of her loose cotton gown. His eyes had something of the wistful glare with which a cat gazes at an escaped bird.