arms, sprang with a startled cry to his feet. 

"Good-morning," said Jimmie Dale again. "Your name's Hagan, Bert Hagan--isn't it? And you work for Isaac Brolsky in the secondhand shop over on West Broadway--don't you?" 

The boy's lips quivered, and the gaunt, hollow, half-starved face, white, ashen-white now, was pitiful. 

"I--I guess you got me," he faltered "I--I suppose you're a plain-clothes man, though I never knew dicks wore masks." 

"They don't generally," said Jimmie Dale coolly. "It's a fad of mine--Bert Hagan." 

The lad, hanging to the table, turned his head away for a moment--and there was silence. 

Presently Hagan spoke again. "I'll go," he said numbly. "I won't make any trouble. Would--would you mind not speaking loud? I--I wouldn't like her to know." 

"Her?" said Jimmie Dale softly. 

The boy tiptoed across the room, opened a connecting door a little, peered inside, opened it a little wider--and looked over his shoulder at Jimmie Dale. 
Jimmie Dale crossed to the boy, looked inside the other room--and his lip twitched queerly, as the sight sent a quick, hurt throb through his heart. A young woman, younger than the boy, lay on a tumble-down bed, a rag of clothing over her--her face with a deathlike pallor upon it, as she lay in what appeared to be a stupor. She was ill, critically ill; it needed no trained eye to discern a fact all too apparent to the most casual observer. The squalor, the glaring poverty here, was even more pitifully in evidence than in the other room--only here upon a chair beside the bed was a cluster of medicine bottles and a little heap of fruit. 

Jimmie Dale drew back silently as the boy closed the door. 

Hagan walked to the table and picked up his hat. 

"I'm--I'm ready," he said brokenly. "Let's go." 

"Just a minute," said Jimmie Dale. "Tell us about it." 

"Twon't take long," said Hagan, trying to smile. "She's my wife. The sickness took all we had. I--I kinder got behind in the rent and things. They were going to fire us out of here--to-morrow. And there wasn't any money for the medicine, and--and the things she had to have. Maybe you wouldn't have done it--but I did. I couldn't see her dying there for 

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