act is exhibited before you
in all its hideousness."

"You should have had the man who sold those girls arrested," blurted
Grove Evans.

"I did," replied Mary quietly, "and _The Reporter_, in which you are a
part owner, suppressed publication of the fact. I had the man arrested
and Jim Edwards, the politician who holds the district in the hollow of
his hand, prevented the case from going to trial. That man walks the
streets of Chicago free and without bond."

The girl turned to Dr. Brattle again.

"Doctor," she said, "you are a clergyman. You are the shepherd of the
flock. Are you, too, deaf to the appeal that goes up daily from the sinks
of this city,--from hundreds of ruined girls? Do you, too, stand by while
wolves rend the lambs? Do you deny the existence of the wolf?"

"We can only strive to educate these women, to teach them the error of
their way," pleaded the shepherd.

"But, doctor, while you are educating one, the wolves are tearing down
twenty. They 'educate,' too, and their facilities are better than yours."

The girl stopped breathlessly and, stooping swiftly, kissed her aunt.
There were tears in her eyes.

"Don't worry about me," she said.

Then suddenly she crossed the room and threw open the door. The maid,
Anna, stood there with a satchel at her feet and Mary's cloak upon her
arm. Mary picked up the satchel and turned toward the street door.

"The time for theory alone is over," she said, addressing the company.
"Someone has got to go into action against the wolves."

The door swung behind her and she stepped out into the boulevard.

CHAPTER X

THE ADVENTURES OF A NEWSPAPER STORY

Great cities thrive on sensations. The yellow journal with its blatant
enthusiasms and its brazen effrontery finds a congenial habitat there,
not because it is brazen, nor even because it is enthusiastic, but
because it supplies a community need. The screaming headline is a mental
cocktail. Bellowed forth by a trombone-lunged newsboy, it crashes against
the eye, the ear and the brain simultaneously. It whips up tired nerves.
It keys the crowd to the keen tension necessary for the doing of the
city's business. And the crowd likes it. Fed hourly on mental stimulants,
it becomes a slave to its newspapers.

On the morning after Mary Randall's dramatic exit from her uncle's
mansion Chicago awoke and clutched at the morning papers with all the
eagerness of