Halloran nodded; and they returned to the hall. Jimmie was dancing again when they reached the parlour door, to music by one of the resident teachers who had volunteered to take the place of Miss Davies. Apples had disappeared and Lizzie Bigelow also. Miss Davies looked around for them; then, realizing after a moment that Jimmie's feet were not the only ones that were stepping in time to the music, she glanced up the stairway. A laugh from the upper hall and the fling of a skirt at the head of the stairs brought a puzzled expression to her face. But the explanation came in a moment. Just as Jimmie stopped dancing and was turning toward the hall, Apples came running down the stairs, a cane in his hand, and after him Lizzie Bigelow, laughing, nearly breathless, and with a heightened colour.

“Oh, Miss Davies,” Apples exclaimed with all his good-natured assurance on the surface, “Miss Bigelow and I are going to do a cake-walk, and we want you to play for us--a good, lively march, with a lot of jump in it.”

Miss Davies looked at him surprised, then at Lizzie; finally, in distress, she turned to Halloran. But he found nothing to say. Before Miss Davies could collect her wits and think of some excuse Apples was blundering on.

“Play the one you did for the boy--that'll do splendidly. We've been practising upstairs, and it goes mighty well. We'd better do it now, before we get our steps mixed. Miss Bigelow says she'd rather do this than the song she is down to sing--didn't you?” he added, appealing to her.

She assented rather shamefacedly, and Miss Davies gave up. There was no rule against cakewalks, and she herself had invited Le Duc to entertain the boys and girls; so she concealed her dislike for this juvenile way of overstepping boundaries and went to the piano. Halloran was downright sorry for her, but he did not see what he could do.

CHAPTER III--George and His Troubles

Halloran foresaw that it might be late Saturday evening before Miss Davies and he could return to Evanston, so he arranged with another member of the crew to stand his watch from ten to midnight; and then, knowing nothing of what might be before them, these two young people set out on their search for George.

Picture a tenement far out on the North Side, one of thousands of smoke-coloured buildings, somewhere on an obscure street that was discouragingly like dozens of other streets. Without the tenement an electric light (for it was six o'clock and dark on this 

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