e from the draught, but that did not
prevent me from hearing what went on.

"Are you Mrs. Gemmell?" This from a female voice, breathless with
excitement.

"I am."

"Then you are one of the trustees of the House of Refuge?" gasped
another feminine speaker.

"Yes. Won't you come in?"

"No, thank you. We've just come to tell you about this young girl who
has run to us for protection."

"We're school-teachers, mawm."

"She's in my class, and she hasn't a friend in the city and knew nowhere
else to go."

Then followed some hysterical whispers, which roused my curiosity so
much that I went to the door and peeped over the shoulder of my tall
wife. The two plain, business-like young women were evidently much
distressed, but between them was a fair-haired slip of a girl of
fifteen or sixteen, the least disturbed of the group. The three older
women might have been talking in a foreign tongue, or of someone else,
so unconcerned did she appear, present danger being over.

"How did she happen to be with these people?" Belle was asking as I came
forward.

"The wife of this brute of a man told us that she was nursemaid with the
Ferguson Family Concert Company, but they dropped her here in Lake City
without a friend or a cent."

"She took her in to help sell fruit and ice cream evenings, and she let
her go to school through the day."

At this juncture the subject under discussion broke into a beaming
smile, showing all her fine teeth. Her cheek dimpled and reddened, and
her blue eyes, full of fun, looked straight into mine. I became
suddenly aware that I had forgotten to remove the tidy, and retired in
confusion, but heard Belle's conclusion of the interview:

"Just wait a second till I give you a line to the matron of the House of
Refuge. You can leave the girl there till we see what can be done for
her. She'll be perfectly safe, and had better keep on going to school as
usual."

* * * * *

A week afterward I asked my wife what had become of her latest
_protegee_.

"You mean Mary Mason? She's in the refuge yet, attending school, and
we've settled that man's ice-cream saloon."

"How?"

"Boycotted him. We can't reach him any other way."

"That's rather hard on his wife, who seems to be a decent sort of
party."

"The innocent often appear to suffer with and for the guilty, but if
you understood the law of Karma you would know that all the evil that
befalls us is really the resu