as he told me,
and then he would direct me how to rescue him.

In less time than it would take most girls, as soggy with sleep as I
was, to get dressed and down to a taxi, I was on my way to Sam. I forgot
to get the maid to go with me; and, anyway, what was the use, with a
nice young white man like that taxi-car driver? He said, looking at me
so pleasantly that I was sure he didn't really mean anything, "It's
early, isn't it, miss?"

I was so hustled and so dazed, and had such trouble in making the little
new kind of hook-buttons on my gloves stay fastened, that before I knew
it we drew up at a queer kind of old warehouse down in a part of New
York where I had never been, with a line of the ocean or the bay or the
river or the harbor, I couldn't tell which, just beyond. Then I was
scared, for instead of Sam being in danger, I felt that maybe I was
being kidnapped. I hesitated at the curbing as I got out of the taxi.

"Through that warehouse and to your left you'll find the gentleman. Good
morning, miss," said the nice taxi-man as he touched his cap and drove
off and left me to my fate. If I had had only my own fate to consider I
would have taken to my good strong legs and fled, but Sam was also
concerned. At the thought of his needing me my courage came back, and I
went on into the long shed where queer dirty boxes and bales and barrels
and things were piled. At last I came to a turn and stepped into a low
room that was almost at the water's edge. It was still very early
morning, and a mist from the sea made things dim, but in a crowd of
queer people and bundles and voices I saw Sam standing and looking
perfectly helpless, while that Commissioner of Agriculture stood over by
the window, evidently perfectly furious and growling out expletives to
the saddest crowd of pitiful people I had ever seen.

Sam was in his dress-suit with his overcoat off and his hair in a mop;
and in a faltering jumble of several languages he was trying to tell
something to a gaunt, fierce woman in a wide ragged skirt, a shapeless,
torn man's coat, with a faded woolen scarf over her head. In her arms
she had a baby, and a woman with a baby in her arms knelt beside her;
while a dozen other women with children, ragged, pale, frightened little
children in their arms, and at their skirts, hung in a sullen group
back of her. A crowd of dejected, hungry, gaunt men stood to one side,
and one very old man had his old woolen cap off his white head, wh