sacred in their eyes.

Danny continued on across the dimly lit court into the dark entrance of
the rear tenement. At the door of the room which Miss Barstow's note had
described Danny knocked softly, and was admitted by her, a tall, plainly
dressed, handsome young woman, whose kindly face was at that moment
clouded by anxiety. She seemed surprised to see the messenger alone, and
after taking the bundle from him and placing it in a chair, she stepped
out in the hall, closing the door so that their voices would not disturb
the sick people inside, and heard Danny's story of the maid's fright and
desertion.

Miss Barstow was silent for some time before she said, and there was no
anger in her voice:

"Perhaps I was wrong to send for her. I would not have done so, but all
my assistants are busy. But," she added, after a pause, "I must have
some assistance until the doctor comes again."

"Say, what's de matter wid me helpin' you, lady?" asked Danny, promptly.

Miss Barstow looked at him in the half-light the hall lamp gave, and
then said, quickly, "Yes. Go and put my maid on a car that will take her
home, and then come back here."

Danny did so, and was pretty soon back in the sick-room with Miss
Barstow and her two patients. The room was poor, very poor, but better
than the one he had lived in with his uncle. There were a bed and a cot,
some chairs, a rough table, a cook stove, and a few cooking and table
dishes.

In the bed was an Italian woman, and in the cot her daughter, a girl
about twelve years old. Both were sick with a fever only too common in
the tenement district. The husband and father was a fruit peddler, who
had what is called an "all-night" stand on the Bowery. The man and his
wife alternated with each other in attending the stand, and it was
exposure to the cold wet nights that had brought on the woman's fever.
The girl had been a scholar in the day-school for tenement children in
Miss Barstow's Mission, but she had attempted to take her mother's place
at the stand when the woman was taken sick, and she, too, soon came down
with the fever.

It was while making inquiries about her absent scholar that Miss Barstow
had found the patients both in bed, and having only the rough care the
man could give them during the few hours he could leave his stand. Danny
was soon at work under Miss Barstow's orders, and both the patients had
some dainty food and wine, and every attention to make them comfortable.
Befo