he basement and speak to the caretaker, who
doubtless had a duplicate key. To the basement, therefore, Sister Ursula
went with the medicine-bottle clasped to her breast, and there, among
mops and brooms and sinks and heating pipes, and the termini of all the
electric communications of that many-storied warren, she found, not the
caretaker, but his wife, reading a paper, with her feet on a box of
soap. The caretaker's wife was Irish, and a Catholic, reverencing the
Church in all its manifestations. She was not only sympathetic, but
polite. Her husband had gone out, and, being a prudent guardian of the
interests confided to him, had locked up all the duplicate keys.

[Illustration: "READING A PAPER, WITH HER FEET ON A BOX OF SOAP."]

"An' the saints only know whin Mike'll be back av a Sunday," she
concluded cheerfully, after a history of Mike's peculiarities. "He'll be
afther havin' supper wid friends."

"The medicine!" said Sister Ursula, looking at the inscription on the
bottle. "It must begin at twenty minutes past five. There are only ten
minutes now. There _must_--oh! there must be a way!"

"Give him a double dose next time. The docthor won't know the differ."
The convent of Sister Ursula is not modelled after Irish ideals, and the
present duty before its nun was to return to the locked room with the
medicine. Meantime the minutes flew bridleless, and Sister Ursula's eyes
were full of tears.

"I must get to the room," she insisted. "Oh, surely, there is a way, any
way!"

"There's wan way," said the caretaker's wife, stung to profitable
thought by the other's distress. "And that's the way the tenants would
go in case av fire. To be sure now I might send the lift boy."

"It would frighten him to death. He must not see strangers. What is the
way?"

"If we wint into the cellar an' out into the area, we'll find the ground
ends av the fire-eshcapes that take to all the rooms. Go aisy, dear."

Sister Ursula had gone down the basement steps through the cellar into
the area, and with clenched teeth was looking up the monstrous sheer of
red-brick wall cut into long strips by the lessening perspective of
perpendicular iron ladders. Under each window each ladder opened out
into a little, a very little, balcony. The rest was straighter than a
ship's mast.

The caretaker's wife followed, panting; came out into the sunshine, and,
shading her eyes, took stock of the ground.

"He'll be No. 42 on the Fifth. Thin this ladd