I am ashamed to take you to my
home. We have only two rooms now."

"Oh, you mustn't mind me," answered Winn, briskly. "I am a
fellow-sufferer with you now, you know."

When her home was reached in a narrow side street and up three flights
of stairs at that, poverty and a woman coughing her life away beside the
kitchen stove told the tale. Winn noticed that the supper awaiting the
girl was of bread, butter, and tea only.

"It was very kind of you to come, Mr. Hardy," said the mother, in an
almost tearful voice, when he was introduced; "and if you can find a
place for Mamie, it will help us very much."

And then she told her story.

It need not be repeated--its counterpart may be found by the score in
any city where legalized thieving like Weston's scheme ever dupes the
credulous, and is as common as the annals of simple drunks. To Winn it
was new, for he had no idea his former employer could be so vile as to
induce a poor widow to invest her all to meet inevitable loss.

And be it said here, that if the world at large could realize how many
sharks are ready to prey upon them with the tempting bait of countless
schemes, promising sure and rich returns, big interest for their money,
guarantees of all kinds (on paper), and flanked by long lists of names,
they would look at "farm-mortgage bonds," "gold-mining stocks," "oil
stocks," "cumulative gold-bearing bonds," and the whole list of traps
set for the unwary, as so many financial perils.

And be it said also, that if the securities held as collateral by half
the banks could be scrutinized, and the foundations they rested upon
understood by all the confiding depositors in these banks, a panic would
ensue that would sweep this land of credulity like a typhoon.

Winn Hardy, who by sheer good luck had saved his aunt's fortune,
listening to this poor widow's tearful recital of her woes, gnashed his
teeth at the departed J. Malcolm Weston and vowed that he would show him
up in the press.

When he bade good-by to the girl and her mother, promising to look out
for a place for the former, he stopped on his way home at a market and
paid for an ample supply of necessaries to be sent them on the morrow.
More than that, he went to Page and, telling the tale, insisted that he
give the girl a chance to earn a livelihood.

And to no one, not even his aunt, did he tell what he had done.

CHAPTER XXXVI

GOING, GOING, GONE!

Winn Hardy, agentle child when the hand of