n to obtain much longer.
There were too many who must be interested, vitally interested, in Gypsy
Nan! There was Rough Rorke, of headquarters; he had given no sign, but
that did not mean he had lost interest in Gypsy Nan. There was the death
of the real Gypsy Nan, which was pregnant with possibilities; and though
the newspapers, that she, Rhoda Gray, had bought and scanned with such
tragic eagerness, had said nothing about the death of one Charlotte
Green in the hospital, much less had given any hint that the identity
Gypsy Nan had risked so much to hide had been discovered, it did not
mean that the police, with their own ends in view, might not be fully
informed, and were but keeping their own counsel while they baited a
trap.

Also, and even more to be feared, there were those of this criminal
organization to which Gypsy Nan had belonged, and to which she, Rhoda
Gray, through a sort of hideous proxy, now belonged herself! Sooner or
later, they must show their hands, and the test of her identity would
come. And here her danger was the greater because she did not know who
any of them were, unless the man who had stepped in between Rough Rorke
and herself last night was one of them--which was a question that had
harassed her all day. The man had been no more drunk than she had been,
and he had obviously only played the part to get her out of the clutches
of Rough Rorke; but, against this, he had seen her simply as herself
then, the White Moll, and what could the criminal associates of Gypsy
Nan have cared as to what became of the White Moll?

A newspaper, to procure which had been the prime motive that had lured
her out of her retreat that afternoon, caught her eye now, and she
shivered a little as, from where it lay on the floor, the headlines
seemed to leer up at her, and mock, and menace her. "The White
Moll....The Saint of the East Side Exposed....Vicious Hypocrisy....Lowly
Charity for Years Cloaks a Consummate Thief..." They had not spared her!

Her lips firmed suddenly, as she listened. The stealthy footfall had not
paused in the hall below. It was on the short, ladder-like steps now,
leading up here to the garret--and now it had halted outside her door,
and there came a low, insistent knocking on the panels.

"Who's dere?" demanded Rhoda Gray, alias Gypsy Nan, in a grumbling tone,
as, getting up from the bed, she moved the chair noiselessly a few feet
farther away, so that the bed would be beyond the immediate