whimsically, he had secured shelter,
though at an uncommon high price.

He heard a creak, and a door at the end of the room opened, revealing the
figure and the strong, haggard features of Henrietta Carden. Evidently
she had taken off a hood and cloak in an outer room, as there were rain
drops on her hair and her shoes were wet.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Kenton?" she asked.

"Full of aches and wonder."

"Both will pass."

She smiled, and, although she was not young, Harry thought her distinctly
handsome, when she smiled.

"I seem to have driven you out of your room and to have taken your bed
from you, Miss Carden," he said, "but I assure you it was unintentional.
I ran against something pretty hard, and since then I haven't been
exactly responsible for what I was doing."

She smiled again, and this time Harry found the smile positively winning.

"I'm responsible for your being here," she said.

Then she went back to the door and said to some one waiting in the outer
room:

"You can come in, Lieutenant Dalton. He's all right except for his
headache, and an extraordinary spell of curiosity."

Dalton stalked solemnly in, and regarded Harry with a stern and reproving
eye.

"You're a fine fellow," he said. "A lady finds you dripping blood from
the chin, and out of your head, wandering about the street in the
darkness and rain. Fortunately she knows who you are, takes you into her
own house, gives you an opiate or some kind of a drug, binds up your jaw
where some man good and true has hit you with all his goodness and truth,
and then goes for me, your guardian, who should never have let you out of
his sight. I was awakened out of a sound sleep in our very comfortable
room at the Lanham house, and I've come here through a pouring rain with
Miss Carden to see you."

"I do seem to be the original trouble maker," said Harry. "How did you
happen to find me, Miss Carden?"

"I was sitting at my window, working very late on a dress that
Mrs. Curtis wants to-morrow. It was not raining hard then, and I could
see very well outside. I saw a dark shadow in the street at the mouth of
the alley. I saw that it was the figure of a man staggering very much.
I ran out and found that it was you, Lieutenant Kenton. You were
bleeding at the chin, where apparently some one had struck you very hard,
and you were so thoroughly dazed that you did not know where you were or
who you were."

"Yes, he hit me very hard, just