my way to the store!" she moaned. "I-- I will perish
in this awful cold!"

She grew bewildered as to the direction which had been given her. "It
can not be that I am going the right way," she sobbed.

Involuntarily she turned around and took the first cross-street in view.
She had scarcely made her way half a dozen blocks when the knowledge was
fully forced upon her that she must have lost her way, that each step
she took was bringing her toward the suburbs of the city instead of the
business portion.

Jessie stopped short. Then she fell. Hubert Varrick, on the other side
of the street, saw the slender figure suddenly reel backward, whirl
about, and then fall face downward in a huge snow-drift that swallowed
her from sight. He plunged quickly forward, muttering to himself: "What
a terrible thing it is for a weak woman to be out on such a night as
this!"

And he wondered if it could be the poor sewing-girl whom he had just
heard the servants discussing. They had said that Rosamond Lee had sent
her to one of the stores for a few yards of velvet ribbon, without
giving her her car-fare, expecting her to walk all the way in the face
of such a storm.

"I declare, it is a thousand pities!" muttered Varrick.

In less time than it takes to tell it he had reached the spot where the
girl lay prostrate.

Heavens! how thinly she was clad! And he shivered even from the depths
of his fur-lined overcoat at the very thought of it.

Deftly as a woman might have done, he raised her, remembering that there
was a drug store across the way to which he could carry her. For one
instant his eyes rested on her face in the dim, uncertain, fading
daylight; then an awful cry broke from his lips--a cry of horror.

"My God! is it Jessie Bain? Am I mad, or am I dreaming?"

He looked again. Surely there was no mistaking that lovely face, with
the curling locks lying over her white forehead.

Do not censure him, that in that instant he forgot the whole world, only
remembering that fate had given into his arms the one being in this
wide earth his soul longed for. He had found Jessie Bain.

Mad with delight, he clasped her in his arms and covered her face with
fervid kisses. He kissed the snowy cheeks and lips, and the
cotton-gloved hands. Then the thought suddenly occurred to him that he
was losing valuable time. Every moment was precious, her young life
might be in jeopardy while he was keeping her out there in the bitter
cold.

In a tr