de to let Kit and Churn pass. An instant later the door shut
them in.

Clo stood gazing at the house. It was one in a row of old-fashioned,
shabby brick buildings, four storeys in height. A light showed in the
basement, but other windows were black. Suddenly, as Clo watched, a
yellow gleam flashed in a fourth-storey room but at the same moment a
man stepped to the window and pulled down a dark blind. Clo thought that
this man was Churn.

"They're going to stay," she argued; and crossing the street at a
distance from the house, the girl looked at it with interest. There was
no street lamp near, and she could not see the number; but there was a
small plaque at the side of the door, and Clo tripped up the steps to
read it. Joy, the place was a boarding house!

The pair having mounted to the fourth storey, Clo thought she might
venture to ring. She pulled an old-fashioned bell, and her heart thumped
in her breast as the shrill sound jingled through the house.

"I must have some tale to tell--why I'm here so late, wanting a room,"
she reflected.

The door was opened by the woman who had admitted Kit and Churn. Not
only was she black, but she was fat and slovenly. Staring at the
new-comer, she exclaimed with a mouth full of gum:

"Say, is you another fren' o' Mr. Cheffinsky?"

"Chuff!" was the password that flashed through Clo's brain. "This is
where he lives!" She was triumphant.

"I don't know anything about Mr. Cheffinsky," she replied, "but I'm in a
scrape, and a friend of mine once recommended me to this house. I saw
some people come in, and a light. It's still a boarding-house, isn't
it?"

"It ain't no foundlin' orphant asylum."

"I don't ask for charity. I've got money to pay my board. But I don't
want an expensive room. One at the top of the house will do."

"Say, it's a real funny time o' night for a young girl like you to go
lookin' foh a home to lay her haid," remarked the negress. "But you can
step in the hall. I'll call Mis' MacMahon. She's the lady o' the house.
We've got a room upstahs, but I don't know whethah she'll let you have
it."

She allowed Clo to enter, and left the girl standing as she descended
the basement stairs.

"'MacMahon' sounds hopeful!" Clo thought. The girl had lodged drearily
in New York, but she had never been in a house as dreary as this.

Mrs. MacMahon's look was less inspiring than her name. She was of the
big-jowled type; a grim woman of middle age; and her manner sug