ount of the faint sparks of kindness that alternated
with gusts of passion he did not understand. "You won't hurt me; you'll
let me sit by the fire and get warm?"

"Yes, yes."

"And eat a bit of bread with butter on it?"

"Yes, yes."

"Then I'll go."

She drew him down the hall. "Why do you like to have me come to your
house?" he prattled away.

She turned on him with a look which unfortunately Mr. Sylvester could
not see. "Because your eyes are so blue and your skin is so white; they
make me remember her!"

"And who is _her_?"

She laughed and seemed to hug herself in her rage and bitterness. "Your
mother!" she cried, and in speaking it, she came upon Mr. Sylvester.

He at once put out his hand.

"I don't know who you are," said he, "but I do not think you had better
take the child out to-night. From what you say, his father is evidently
upstairs; if you will give the boy to me, I will take him back and leave
him where he belongs."

"You will?" The slow intensity of her tone was indescribable. "Know that
I don't bear interference from strangers." And catching up the child,
she rushed by him like a flash. "You are probably one of those
missionaries who go stealing about unasked into respectable persons'
rooms," she called back. "If by any chance you wander into his, tell him
his child is in good hands, do you hear, in good hands!" And with a
final burst of her hideous laugh, she dashed down the stairs and was
gone.

Mr. Sylvester stood shocked and undecided. His fatherly heart urged him
to search at once for the parent of this lame boy, and warn him of the
possible results of entrusting his child to a woman with so little
command over herself. But upon taking out his watch and finding it later
by a good half-hour than he expected, he was so struck with the
necessity of completing his errand, that he forgot everything else in
his anxiety to confront Holt. Knocking at the first door he came to, he
waited. A quick snarl and a surprised, "Come in!" announced that he had
scared up some sort of a living being, but whether man or woman he found
it impossible to tell, even after the door opened and the creature,
whoever it was, rose upon him from a pile of rags scattered in one
corner.

"I want Mr. Holt; can you tell me where to find him?"

"Upstairs," was the only reply he received, as the creature settled down
again upon its heap of tattered clothing.

Fain to be content with this, he went up another flig