along the sidewalk in the splashing rain.

"I--I've looked for you everywhere," moaned the girl. "It's
been--awful."

"I know, but it's goin' to be all right now, Kitty," he comforted.
"You're goin' home with me to-night. To-morrow we'll talk it all over."

He tucked an arm under hers and led her along the wet, shining street
to a taxicab. She crouched in a corner of the cab, her body shaken
with sobs.

The young man moved closer and put a strong arm around her shoulders.
"Don't you worry, Kitty. Yore big brother is on the job now."

"I--I wanted to--to kill myself," she faltered. "I tried to--in the
river--and--it was so black--I couldn't." The girl shivered with cold.
She had been exposed to the night rain for hours without a coat.

He knew her story now in its essentials as well as he did later when
she wept it out to him in confession. And because she was who she was,
born to lean on a stronger will, he acquitted her of blame.

They swung into Broadway and passed taxis and limousines filled with
gay parties just out of the theaters. Young women in rich furs,
wrapped from the cruelty of life by the caste system in which wealth
had encased them, exchanged badinage with sleek, well-dressed men. A
ripple of care-free laughter floated to him across the gulf that
separated this girl from them. By the cluster lights of Broadway he
could see how cruelly life had mauled her soft youth. The bloom of her
was gone, all the brave pride and joy of girlhood. It would probably
never wholly return.

He saw as in a vision the infinite procession of her hopeless sisters
who had traveled the road from which he was rescuing her, saw them
first as sweet and merry children bubbling with joy, and again, after
the world had misused them for its pleasure, haggard and tawdry, with
dragging steps trailing toward the oblivion that awaited them. He
wondered if life must always be so terribly wasted, made a bruised and
broken thing instead of the fine, brave adventure for which it was
meant.

CHAPTER XVII

JOHNNIE MAKES A JOKE

As Kitty stepped from the cab she was trembling violently.

"Don't you be frightened, li'l' pardner. You've come home. There
won't anybody hurt you here."

The soft drawl of Clay's voice carried inexpressible comfort. So too
did the pressure of his strong hand on her arm. She knew not only that
he was a man to trust, but that so far as could be he would take her
troubles on his broa