ered around the hole, for the news of a human voice having been
heard out of the "Larve Chimney," as the chasm was called, had spread
far and wide.

The water-fall on one side and the sharp rocks on the other made it no
easy matter to draw the boys up safely. But at length they were dragged
forth into the daylight, to be embraced and shouted over by the whole
town, and to receive, a few days later, the praises of the entire
Scientific Association, together with the three thousand francs which
they had so bravely earned.

BIDDY O'DOLAN.

BY MRS. ZADEL B. GUSTAFSON.

CHAPTER I.

Do you remember Biddy O'Dolan, the little rag-picker and ash girl who
found Lily De Koven's broken doll in the ash-can that cold winter's
morning? I have not forgotten my promise to tell you the rest about her.

Biddy had a boy-friend, a little Irish boy, who called himself
"Chairlier-Shauzy." I suspect his name was Charley O'Shaughnessy. He was
just as poor and alone in the world as Biddy, and almost always staid in
the same cellar at night.

When Biddy ran off with her doll that cold morning, she not only thought
of the hospital and the little girl who had there brought her the
flowers, but she thought how she would tell Charley that night about her
doll.

The first thing to be done was to get Dolly a dress, and this was the
way Biddy managed it. She took an old knife and hacked out a piece of
her skirt, then she pulled out of her dingy pocket a little wad. A wad
of what? Pins. Pins that she had picked up on the street in the summer,
when she swept the street crossings, and had stuck thick and
"criss-cross" in a bit of woollen rag. With some of these pins Biddy
fastened together the two sides of the cut in her skirt. Next she took
the piece of cloth she had cut out, and punched her tough little
forefinger through it in two places, and through one of these holes
pushed the whole arm and through the other the broken arm of her doll,
and pinned the cloth together in the back.

Thus Dolly was dressed, and nearly as well as Biddy, too. Biddy had been
very quick about this, and had often looked over her shoulders to see
who came in and out of the cellar.

You who do not live in a cellar, and do not get shoved about and slapped
as Biddy did, can hardly imagine how glad she was that no one happened
to take notice of her.

She hid Dolly under the straw where she was to sleep at night, and then
hurried out to pick over as many more