promised that if the child should reappear he would make further and
more patient efforts to elicit some information from him. And then quite
casually one afternoon Sergeant Brennan appeared in Room 18, with a
bundle of rags under his arm.

"Here he is for you, Miss," he announced, waving away her
acknowledgments with a stout blue arm before he removed his helmet and
dried his heated brow. "I seen him several times since you spoke about
him, but never run him down until now."

Again the child was thinner, and his likeness to a hunted animal was
clearer, more heart-breaking. "And how should he be otherwise?"
reflected Constance Bailey as she realized that, partly through her
bidding, he actually had been persistently hunted throughout the past
weeks.

After three o'clock when the First Readers, including the loudly
objecting Board of Monitors, had been sent home, Miss Bailey secured
every exit save the door into the hall, established the new boy in one
of the front row of seats, locked the hall door upon her own retreat,
and sought Mr. Eissler.

"The Russian child has turned up again," she told him. "I've had him in
the class since lunch time, and I never knew of so disturbing an
element. A band in the street, a piano organ, even the passing of a
fire engine, would have left those babies calmer than his mere presence
did. Did you ever see a poultry yard when a hawk was perched in a
neighboring tree? Well, there you have my class as long as that boy is
in the room. Brainless! Stupid! Huddled in their seats! I declare I
hardly knew them. And he, he hardly looked at one of us."

"He'll look at me," said Mr. Eissler, picking up a brass-bound ruler.
"By-laws may be by-laws----"

"No, no," cried Teacher, "not that. I don't think I could bear it. And
as for him, he would either kill or die. He's almost spent with rage and
starvation. I think you'll find him more amenable than he was before."

Mr. Eissler did not find him at all. Room 18 awaited them, pleasant,
orderly, and empty. Empty, too, was the whole great building and all
the rooms they searched through, save for the sweeper women who met
their queries blankly. They had noticed no boy.

"Again!" exclaimed Miss Bailey, almost tearfully, as they returned.
"What shall I ever do about him? I meant, you know, to take him now,
this very afternoon, while I had him, up to the Society's rooms in
Twenty-third Street."

"How often has he been here altogether?" asked Mr.