orphan, same town--Ridgeville, Georgia."

"Thanks. Is that all?" asked the reporter.

"That is all," and, afraid of being further questioned, John turned and
stalked away.

CHAPTER XXXVII

He and Dora took a train for New York early the next morning. The air
seemed to be growing more crisp. Dora's color was better, her skin
clearer, her eyes brighter. She seemed more and more interested in the
scenery along the way. They had to stop over in Washington for about
three hours, and, leaving their valises in a check-room, they strolled
about the city. John did not realize it, but the care and entertainment
of the child had much to do with keeping his mind from dwelling on his
troubles. Once he caught himself actually laughing over a droll mistake
Dora made. She was so much interested in the sights that she walked
nearly half a block at the side of a stranger, thinking that the man was
John, who had paused to buy a cigar, and when she discovered her mistake
she fairly screamed and hastened to John, whose hand she wanted to hold
thereafter.

"He wouldn't bite you," John said. "In fact, he thought it was a good
joke."

At four o'clock that afternoon they reached Jersey City, and at once
took the ferry for New York, sitting on the upper deck and viewing the
harbor and sky-line.

"It is a big town," John said, "a powerful big town. We'll be lost here
like needles in a haystack. Well, that is what we are after, Sis," he
added, a serious cast to his features.

They went ashore at Twenty-third Street. They were so ignorant of the
life they were entering that they were fairly dazed by the crush and
din of human beings and traffic which met them at the long pier and in
the congested thoroughfare upon which it fronted. They were all but as
helpless as incoming foreigners who could not speak the language of the
country. However, with a bag in each hand, and Dora closely following,
John managed to reach a street that was less crowded, and they walked on
now more calmly. He was looking for a boarding-house, John informed his
companion. "I understand there are plenty of them all about," he added.

They had reached West Fourteenth Street, and there in the windows of
many of the old-fashioned brownstone former residences of the well-to-do
John saw cards advertising rooms and board.

"There are three in a row," he smiled at Dora. "Which one shall we
pick?"

"The one this way," she decided. "It looks cleaner, and there a