e were some vacant lots,
backed by a scraggle of rough, red rock, only half a dozen blocks away.
If luck were with her, the loafers might be in temporary abeyance and
the refugee tents not unduly prominent.

Luck was with her. And Ikey sat down on the lea of the little cliff,
quite alone, spread out her buns,--you got three for ten cents these
catastrophe days,--and faced the situation.

The landlady had raised the rent.

Ikey could have screamed with laughter over the situation--if only the
matter were not so vital.

"This'll make the thirteenth move for you, Ikey, my love, since the
eighteenth of April--and the thirteenth move is bound to be unlucky. But
you'll have to go, sure as Fate; for you can't stand another raise. The
Wandering Jew gentleman takes the road again."

She pursed her lips as she said it. She had invented the appelation for
herself after nine moves in three months. "I don't know what his name
really was," she confessed--there was no one else to talk to, no one she
cared for, so she talked, sub voice, to herself--"but it must have been
Ikey. I'm sure it was Ikey--and that I look just like him." And deriving
much comfort from this witticism, she went on her way.

"Ikey, the Wandering Jew, on the move again," she repeated. "But where
to move _to_, that is the question. It's funny what a difference money
makes"--her eyebrows went up--"or rather, lack of it. I've never
considered that until recently."

Then her eyes fell on her shoes.

They had been very swagger little shoes in the beginning--Ikey had made
rather a specialty of footgear--but they were her "escape" shoes; and
their looks told the tale of their wanderings. Also, she had had no
others since.

She wriggled her toes.

"You'll be poking through before long, looking at the stars," she told
them severely. "Imagine your excitement."

And her suit.

[Illustration: "'I'VE BEEN FOLLOWING YOU EVER SINCE YOU LEFT YOUR
OFFICE,' HE SAID"]

Ikey looked away so as not to see the perfect cut of it, the perfect fit
of it, the utter shabbiness of it. It was her "escape" suit, too. She
had slept on the hills in it to the tune of dynamiting and the flare of
the burning city. She would never have another like it--never. For her
job----

Her job.

She leaned back suddenly and closed her eyes. Her job. The rage of this
noon was coming back again; rage, and with it a strange, new
sensation--fear. She had never known fear before, not even durin