aid I was to go to his uncle an' say he'd sent
me. I--I'm scared! My Gawd!--I'm scared!"

He remembered once seeing a trapped rabbit die of sheer terror. This
girl, trapped by the inevitable, reminded him unpleasantly of the
rabbit. His kind heart contracted. He asked gently:

"What is it you are so afraid of, Gracie? Try to tell me just what
you want me to do for you." Perspiration appeared upon her forehead.
She clutched him with a skeleton hand.

"I'm scared o' bein' cut up!" she whispered fearfully. "Oh, for
Gawdsake, save me from bein' cut up!" Her eyes widened; in her thin
breast you could see her laboring heart thumping. "I want you keep
'em from cuttin' me up!" she repeated feverishly.

"Cutting you up!" Vandervelde looked at her wonderingly.

"Yes. I heard 'em say I didn't have no chanst. They put you in the
morgue--afterward--when you're folks like me, and then the doctors
come and get you and cut you up. I don't want to be cut up! For
Christ's sake, don't you let 'em cut me up!"

Vandervelde felt a sort of sick horror. He couldn't quite understand
Gracie's psychology; her unreasoning, ignorant terror.

"Why, my poor girl, what a notion! You--" he stammered.

"I been treated bad enough alive without bein' cut up when I'm
dead," said she, interrupting him. "I get to thinkin' about it,
wakin' up here in the night. He said his folks'd help me if I asked
'em."

"Of course, of course! Certainly we'll help!" said Vandervelde
hastily.

"If I had any money saved up, 't wouldn't be so bad. But I ain't. We
never do. I--I been sick a long time. What clothes I had they kep'
against the rent I was owin', when they told me to get out. An' I
walked an' walked,--an' then one o' them cops in Central Park, he
seen me, an' next thing I knew I was here."

She was getting hysterical, and he saw that it was quite useless to
try to reason with her; the one way to allay her terror was to make
the promise she implored.

"Well, now that your message has reached us, Gracie, you need not be
afraid any more, because what you fear won't happen; it can't
happen. There!--Put it out of your mind."

She stared at him intently, and decided that this large, fair man
was one to be implicitly trusted.

"You bein' one o' his people, if you say it won't happen, then it
won't happen," she told him, and fetched a great sight of relief.
"Oh! I was that scared I 'most died! I--I just naturally can't bear
the idea o' bein' turned over