nd one foot twisted around the other. "It isn't any use to forgive
me. I'm not worth forgiving. I'm not worth--"

The door was slammed violently, and before Miss Barbour could reach
the hall Carmencita was down the steps and out into the street, where
the Damanarkist was waiting.

CHAPTER XI

Late into the night Stephen Van Landing kept up his hurried walking.
Again and again he had stopped and made inquiries of policemen, of
children, of men and women, but no one knew that of which he asked. A
blind man who played the harp, a child named Carmencita, a boy called
Noodles, a settlement house, he supposed, over which Mother Somebody
presided--these were all he had to go on. To ask concerning Miss
Barbour was impossible. He could not bring himself to call her name.
He would have to go to headquarters for help. To-morrow would be
Christmas eve. He _would not_ spend Christmas alone--or in the usual
way.

"Say, mister, don't you wish you was a boy again? Get out the way!"

With a push the boy swept by him, pulling on a self-constructed sleigh
a still smaller boy, and behind the two swarmed a bunch of yelling
youngsters who, as they passed, pelted him with snow. One of them
stopped to tie the string of his shoe, and, looking down, Van Landing
saw--Noodles.

With a swift movement he reached down to grab him, but, thinking it
was a cop, the boy was up and gone with a flash and in half a moment
was out of sight. As swiftly as the boy Van Landing ran down the
street and turned the corner he had seen the boy turn. His heart was
beating thickly, his breath came unevenly, and the snow was blinding,
but there was no thought of stopping. He bumped into a man coming
toward him, and two hats flew in the air and on the pavement, but he
went on. The hat did not matter, only Noodles mattered, and Noodles
could no longer be seen. Down the street, around first one corner and
then another, he kept on in fierce pursuit for some moments; then,
finding breathing difficult, he paused and leaned against the step
railing of a high porch, to better get his bearings. Disappointment
and fury were overmastering him. It was impossible and absurd to have
within one's grasp what one had been looking for all day and part of
two nights, and have it slip away like that.

"Come on. No use--that--" The policeman's voice was surly. "If you'll
walk quiet I won't ring up. If you don't you'll get a free ride. Come
on."

"Come on?" Van Landing put