"Was it he who burst in that door?"

"It was, and there isn't a tramp or a stranded girl within half a mile of where we sit that he doesn't know and take care of. So I say you can have your money kings and your popes and your doges; as for me, I'll take Father Cruse every time, and there's dozens just like him."

Felix pushed back his chair, reached for his hat, said good night in his usual civil tone, and left the shop, Murford merely nodding at him over the bowl of his pipe, the others taking no notice of his departure. It was the way they did things at Kelsey's. There were no great welcomings when they arrived and no good-bys when they parted. They would meet again the next night, perhaps the next morning--and more extended courtesies were considered unnecessary.

All the way back to Kitty's the erect figure of Father Cruse, holding the emblem of his faith in that dimly lighted room stood out clear. He wondered why he had not seen more of the man whose courage and faith he himself had dimly recognized at their first meeting, and determined to cultivate his acquaintance at once. Long ago he had promised Kitty to do so. He would keep that promise by timing his visit so as to reach St.

Barnabas's when the service was over. The balance of the evening could then be spent with the father.

He glanced at his watch and a glow of satisfaction spread over his face as he noted the hour. Kitty would be up, and he would have the opportunity of delighting her with the details of the tribute Murford had paid her beloved priest. The more he pictured the effect upon her, the lighter grew his heart.

He began before the k.n.o.b of the sitting-room had left his hand and had gone as far as: "Oh I heard something about a friend of yours who--"

when she checked him by rising to her feet and exclaiming:

"Hold on a minute and listen to me first. I have something that belongs to ye. I found it after ye'd gone out, and ran after ye. I thought ye'd miss it and come back. I wonder ye didn't. Ye see I was tidyin' up yer room, and yer brush dropped down behind the bureau; and when I pushed it out from the wall I found this under the edge of the carpet. Ye better keep these little things in the drawer." Her hand was in the capacious pocket of her ap.r.o.n as she spoke, her plump fingers feeling about its depths. "Oh, here it is," she cried. "I was gettin' nigh scared ter death fer fear I'd lost it. Here, give me your cuff and I'll put it in fer ye."

"What is it? A cuff b.u.t.ton?" he asked, controlling his disappointment but biding his time.

"Yes, and a good one."

"I'm sorry, Mistress Kitty, but it cannot be mine," he returned with a smile. "I have but one pair, and both b.u.t.tons are in place, as you can see," and he held out his cuffs.

"Well, then, who can this one belong to? Take a look at it. It's got arms on one b.u.t.ton and two letters mixed up together on the other," and she dropped it into his hand.

Felix held the sleeve-links to the light, smothered a cry and, with a quick movement of his hands, steadied himself by the table.

"Where did you get this?" he breathed rather than spoke.

"I just told ye. Down behind the bureau where ye dropped it, along with your hair-brush."

Felix tightened his fingers, straining the muscles of his arms, striving with all his might to keep his body from shaking. He had his back to her, his face toward the lamp, and had thus escaped her scrutiny. "I haven't lost it," he faltered, prolonging the examination to gain time and speaking with great deliberation.

"Ye haven't! Oh, I am that disappointed! And ye didn't drop it? Well, then, who did drop it?" she cried, looking over his shoulder. She had been thinking all the evening how pleased he would be when she returned it, and in her chagrin had not noticed the mental storm he was trying to master.

"And ye're sure ye didn't drop it?" she reiterated.

"Quite sure," he answered slowly, his face still in the shadow, the link still in his hand.

"Well, that's the strangest thing I ever heard! We don't have n.o.body--we ain't never had n.o.body up in that room with things on 'em like that. The fellow that John and I fired didn't have no sleeve-b.u.t.tons."

"Perhaps somebody else may have dropped it," he answered, sinking into a chair. He was devouring her face, trying to read behind her eyes, praying she would go on, yet fearing to prolong the inquiry lest she should discover his agitation.

"No, there ain't n.o.body," she said at last, "and if there was there wouldn't--Stop! Hold on a minute, I got it! You've bin here six months or more, ain't ye?"

Felix nodded, his eyes still fastened on her own. A nod was better than the spoken word until his voice obeyed him the better.

"An' ye ain't had a soul in that room but yerself since ye've been here?

Is that true?"

Again Felix nodded.

"Of course it's true, whether ye say it or not. What a fool I was to ask ye! I got it now. That sleeve-link belongs to a poor creature who slept in that room three or four days before ye come and skipped the next morning."

Felix's fingers tightened on the arm of the chair. For the moment it seemed to him as if he were swaying with the room. "Some one you were kind to, I suppose," he said, lifting a hand to shade his face, the words coming one at a time, every muscle in his body taut.

"What else could we do? Leave the poor thing out in the cold and wet?"

"It was, then, some one you picked up, was it not?" The room had stopped swaying and he was beginning to breathe evenly again. He saw that he had not betrayed himself. Her calm proved it; and so did the infinite pity that crept into her tones as she related the incident.

"No, some one Tom McGinniss picked up on his beat, or would have picked up hadn't John and I come along. And that wet she was, and everything streamin' puddles, an' she, poor dear, draggled like a dog in the gutter."

Felix's sheltering hand sagged suddenly, exposing for a moment his strained face and wide-open eyes.

"I didn't understand it was a woman," he stammered, turning his head still farther from the light of the lamp.

"Yes, of course, it was a woman, and a lady, too. That's what I've been a-tellin' ye. Here, take my seat if that light gets into your eyes. I see it's botherin' ye. It's that red shade that does it. It sets John half crazy sometimes. I'll turn it down. Well, that's better. Yes, a lady. An' she wet as a rat an' all the heart out of her. An' that link ye got in yer hand is hers and n.o.body else's. John and I had been to evening service at St. Barnabas's, an' we hung on behind till everybody had gone so as to have a word with Father Cruse, after he had taken off his vestments. We bid him good night, come out of the 29th Street door, and kept on toward Lexington Avenue. We hadn't gone but a little way from the church, when John, who was walking ahead, come up agin Tom McGinniss. He was stooping over a woman huddled up on them big front steps before you get to the corner.

"'What are you doin', Tom?' says John.

"'It's a drunk,' he says, 'an I'll run her in an' she'll sleep it off and be all the better in the mornin'.'

"'Let me take a look at her, Tom,' says I; an' I got close to her breath and there was no more liquor inside her than there is in me this minute.

"'You'll do nothin' of the kind, Tom McGinniss,' says I. 'This poor thing is beat out with cold and hunger. Give her to me. I'll take her home. Get hold of her, John, an' lift her up.'

"If ye'd 'a' seen her, Mr. O'Day, it would have torn ye all to pieces.

The life and spirit was all out of her. She was like a child half asleep, that would go anywhere you took her. If I'd said, 'Come along, I'm goin' to drown ye,' she'd 'a' come just the same. Not one word fell out of her mouth. Just went along between us, John an' I helpin' her over the curbs and gutters until she got to this kitchen, an' I sat her down in that chair, close by the stove, and began to dry her out, for her dress was all soaked in the mud and streamin' with water. I got some hot coffee into her, an' found a pair of John's old shoes, an' put 'em on her feet till I had dried her own, an' when she got so she could speak--not drunk, mind ye, nor doped; just dazed like as if she had been hunted and had given up all hope. She said like a sick child speakin': 'You've been very kind, and I'm very grateful. I'll go now.'

"'No, ye won't,' I says; 'ye'll stay where ye are. Ye don't leave this place to-night. Ye'll go up-stairs and git into my bed.' She looked at me kind o' scared-like; then she looked at John an' our big man Mike who had come in while I was dryin' her out, but I stopped that right away.

'No, ye needn't worry,' I said, 'an' ye won't. Ye're just as safe here as ye would be in your mother's arms. Ye ain't the first one my man John an' I have taken care of, an' ye won't be the last. Take another sip o'

that hot coffee, an' come with me.'

"Well, we got her up-stairs, an' I helped her undress, an' when I unhooked her skirt an' it fell to the floor, I saw what I was up aginst.

She had the finest pair of silk stockings on her feet ye ever seen in your life, and her petticoat was frills up to her knees. She said nothin' an' I said nothin'. 'Git in,' I said, an' I turned down the cover and come out. The next mornin' the boys had to get over to Hoboken, an' I was up before daylight and then back to bed again. At seven o'clock I went to her room and pushed in the door. She was gone, an' I've never seen her since. That cuff-link's hers. Take it up-stairs with ye an' put it in the wash-stand drawer. I'll lose it if I keep it down here, an' she's bound to come back for it some day. What time is it? Twelve o'clock, if I'm alive! Well, then, I'm goin' to bed, and you're goin', too. John's got his key, and there's his coffee, but he won't be long now."

Felix sat still. Only when she had finished busying herself about the room making ready to close the place for the night did he rouse himself.

So still was he, and so absorbed that she thought he had fallen asleep, until she became aware of a flash from under the overhanging brows and heard him say, as if speaking to himself: "It was very good of you. Yes, very good--of you--to do it, and--I suppose she never came back?"

"She never did," returned Kitty, drawing a chair away from the heat of the stove, "and I'm that sorry she didn't. I'll fix the lights when ye've gone up. Good night to ye."

"Good night, Mrs. Cleary," and he left the room.

In the same absorbed way he mounted the stairs, opened his own door and, without turning up the gas, sank heavily into a chair, the link still held fast in his hand. A moment later he sprang from his seat, stepped quickly to the gas-jet, turned up the light, and held one of the small b.u.t.tons to the flame, as if to rea.s.sure himself of the initials; then with a smothered cry fell across the narrow bed, his face hidden in the quilt.

For an hour he lay motionless, his mind a seething caldron, above which writhed distorted shapes who hid their faces as they mounted upward.

When these vanished and a certain calm fell upon him, two figures detached themselves and stood clear: a woman cowering on a door-step, her skirts befouled with the slime of the streets, and a priest with hand upraised, his only weapon the symbol of his G.o.d.