hat she was seeking.

Elsie's father had been a cutter for Fox & Otter, cloaks and furs,
on lower Broadway. He was an old man, with a slow and limping gait,
so a pot-hunter of a newly licensed chauffeur ran him down one day
when livelier game was scarce. They took the old man home, where he
lay on his bed for a year and then died, leaving $2.50 in cash and
a letter from Mr. Otter offering to do anything he could to help
his faithful old employee. The old cutter regarded this letter as a
valuable legacy to his daughter, and he put it into her hands with
pride as the shears of the dread Cleaner and Repairer snipped off
his thread of life.

That was the landlord's cue; and forth he came and did his part in
the great eviction scene. There was no snowstorm ready for Elsie
to steal out into, drawing her little red woollen shawl about her
shoulders, but she went out, regardless of the unities. And as for
the red shawl--back to Blaney with it! Elsie's fall tan coat was
cheap, but it had the style and fit of the best at Fox & Otter's.
And her lucky stars had given her good looks, and eyes as blue and
innocent as the new shade of note paper, and she had $1 left of the
$2.50. And the letter from Mr. Otter. Keep your eye on the letter
from Mr. Otter. That is the clue. I desire that everything be made
plain as we go. Detective stories are so plentiful now that they do
not sell.

And so we find Elsie, thus equipped, starting out in the world to
seek her fortune. One trouble about the letter from Mr. Otter was
that it did not bear the new address of the firm, which had moved
about a month before. But Elsie thought she could find it. She had
heard that policemen, when politely addressed, or thumbscrewed by an
investigation committee, will give up information and addresses. So
she boarded a downtown car at One Hundred and Seventy-seventh street
and rode south to Forty-second, which she thought must surely be the
end of the island. There she stood against the wall undecided, for
the city's roar and dash was new to her. Up where she had lived
was rural New York, so far out that the milkmen awaken you in the
morning by the squeaking of pumps instead of the rattling of cans.

A kind-faced, sunburned young man in a soft-brimmed hat went past
Elsie into the Grand Central Depot. That was Hank Ross, of the
Sunflower Ranch, in Idaho, on his way home from a visit to the East.
Hank's heart was heavy, for the Sunflower Ranch was a lonesome
pl