o us.

"Where are you going?" I asked the girl. "I will take you to your
home--or hotel," I added with a slight upward intonation on the last
word.

"I do not know where I am going," she answered slowly. "I have never
been in New York until to-day."

"But you have friends here?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"But are you really carrying eight thousand dollars about with you in
New York at night?" I asked in amazement. "Don't you know this city is
full of thieves, and that you are in the worst district?"

For a moment it occurred to me that she might have been decoyed into
Daly's. And yet I knew it was not that sort of place; indeed, Daly's
chief desire was to remain as inconspicuous as possible. It was very
difficult to get into Daly's.

"Do you know the character of the place you came out of?" I asked,
trying to find some clue to her actions.

"The character?" she repeated, apparently puzzled at first. "Oh, yes.
That is Mr. Daly's gaming-house. I came to New York to play at
roulette there."

She was looking at me so frankly that I was sure she was wholly
ignorant of evil.

"My father is too ill to play himself," she explained, "so I must find
a hotel near Mr. Daly's house, and then I shall play every night until
our fortune is made. Tonight I lost nearly two thousand dollars. But
I was nervous in that strange place. And the system expressly says
that one may lose at first. To-morrow I raise the stakes and we shall
begin to win. See?"

She pulled a little pad from her bag covered with a maze of figuring.

"But where do you come from?" I asked. "Where is your father?"

Again I saw that look of terror come into her eyes. She glanced
quickly about her, and I was sure she was thinking of escaping from me.

I hastened to reassure her.

"Forgive me," I said. "It is no business of mine. And now, if you
will trust me a little further I will try to find a hotel for you."

It would have disarmed the worst man to feel her little hand slipped
into his arm in that docile manner of hers. I took her to the Seward,
the Grand, the Cornhil, and the Merrimac--each in turn.

Vain hope! You know what the New York hotels are. When I asked for a
room for her the clerk would eye her furs dubiously, look over his book
in pretense, and then inform me that the hotel was full.

At the Merrimac I sat down in the lobby and sent her to the clerk's
desk alone, but that was equally useless. I realized pretty