will see what I can do for
you."

"It's true, miss, so help me God!" the man had answered brokenly. "Youse
come an' see. I'll be dere-an'-an'-God bless youse, miss!"

And so they had let the man go free, and her father, with a whimsical,
tolerant smile, had shaken his head at her. "You'll never find that
address, Rhoda-or our friend the Bussard, either!"

But she had found both the Bussard and the address, and destitution
and a squalor unspeakable. Pathetic still, but the vernacular of the
underworld where men called their women by no more gracious names than
"molls" and "skirts" no longer strange to her ears, there came to her
again now the Bussard's words in which he had paid her tribute on that
morning long ago, and with which he had introduced her to a shrunken
form that lay upon a dirty cot in the barefloored room:

"Meet de moll I was tellin' youse about, Mag. She's white--all de way
up. She's white, Mag; she's a white moll--take it from me."

The White Moll!

The firm little chin came suddenly upward; but into the dark eyes
unbidden came a sudden film and mist. Her father's health had been too
far undermined, and he had been unable to withstand the shock of the
operation, and he had died in the hospital. There weren't any relatives,
except distant ones on her mother's side, somewhere out in California,
whom she had never seen. She and her father had been all in all to each
other, chums, pals, comrades, since her mother's death many years ago.
She had gone everywhere with him save when the demands of her education
had necessarily kept them apart; she had hunted with him in South
America, ridden with him in sections where civilization was still in the
making, shared the crude, rough life of mining camps with him--and it
had seemed as though her life, too, had gone out with his.

She brushed her hand hastily across her eyes. There hadn't been any
friends either, apart from a few of her father's casual business
acquaintances; no one else--except the Bussard. It was very strange! Her
reward for that one friendly act had come in a manner little expected,
and it had come very quickly. She had sought and found a genuine relief
from her own sorrow in doing what she could to alleviate the misery in
that squalid, one-room home. And then the sphere of her activities had
broadened, slowly at first, not through any preconceived intention
on her part, but naturally, and as almost an inevitable corollary
consequent upon