you are all right.
How long have you been here?"

"About half an hour."

"Did you notice which way that man went who has just shut the door?"

The tramp looked about him in a helpless way. "I wasn't lookin'. I was
a-watchin' you--waitin' for you to come out--but I got on to him when he
went in awhile ago."

"Then you have seen him before?"

"Of course I've seen him before. He plays pool where I've been
a-workin'."

Felix bent closer. "Do you know his name?"

"Sure! His name's Stanton. He's been puttin' sompin' to soak, I guess. I
heard last week he was up against it. Do you know him?"

Felix remained silent a moment, checking his own disappointment, and
then answered slowly: "I thought I did, but I see I am mistaken. Come
inside the store where it is warmer. I have secured you a job, and will
take you with me when I have finished here."

Chapter XIX

Had a spark of human feeling been left in Dalton's body, it would have
been kindled into a flame of sympathy, could he have seen Lady Barbara
when she opened the box early next morning, and stood trembling over the
loss of the mantilla.

Her first hope was that she had inadvertently taken it to Rosenthal's
with the other pieces of lace, and that Mangan had found it when he
checked up her work. Then a cold chill ran through her, her anxiety
increasing every moment. Had she dropped it in the street? Had the woman
who jostled her on the way up the long staircase to the workroom, picked
up her package when she stumbled? Perhaps some one had crept in during
the night and, finding the box near the door, had caught up the mantilla
and escaped without being detected? Could she herself have dragged it
into her bedroom, entangled in the folds of her skirt? Was it not near
the window, or in her basket, or behind the door, or--

Martha, with a shake of her head, put all these theories to flight.

"No, it isn't in your room at all, and it isn't anywhere else around
here; and nobody's been in here from the outside; and they couldn't get
in if they tried, for I bolted the door when we went to bed. The only
person who has had the run of the place is Mr. Dalton, and he--"

"Martha!"

"Well, I wasn't here when he first came, but when I opened the door he
was peeking behind the china."

"But I had not been inside my room a minute before I heard your voice.
How could he have taken it? You don't think--"

"I don't say what I think, because I don't know, but he's