Scarcely noticing how he went, he got himself out of the intricacies of the court into a neighborhood a shade less poverty-stricken, and stood upon the corner of a busy thoroughfare in an utterly unfamiliar district, pausing to look about him and discover his whereabouts.

A little child with long, fair hair rushed suddenly out of a door on the side-street, eagerly pulling a ragged sweater about his small shoulders, and stood upon the curbstone, breathlessly watching the coming trolley.  The car stopped, and a young girl in shabby clothes got out and came toward him.

“Bonnie!  Bonnie!  I’ve got supper all ready!” the child called in a clear, bird-like voice, and darted from the curb across the narrow side-street to meet her.

Courtland, standing on the corner in front of the trolley, saw, too late, the swift-coming automobile bearing down upon the child, its head-lights flaring on the golden hair.  With a cry the young man sprang to the rescue, but the child was already crumpled up like a lily and the relentless car speeding onward, its chauffeur darting frightened, cowardly glances behind him as he plunged his machine forward over the track, almost in the teeth of the up-trolley.  When the trolley was passed there was no sign of the car, even if any one had had time to look for it.  There in the road lay the little, broken child, the long hair spilling like gold over the pavement, the little, still, white face looking up like a flower that has suddenly been torn from the plant.

The girl was beside the child almost instantly, dropping all her parcels; gathering him into her slender arms, calling in frightened, tender tones: 

“Aleck!  Darling!  My little darling!”

The child was too heavy for her to lift, and she tottered as she tried to rise, lifting a frightened face to Courtland.

“Let me take him,” said the young man, stooping and gathering him gently from her.  “Now show me where!”

CHAPTER VI

Into the narrow brick house from which he had run forth so joyously but a few short minutes before, they carried him, up two flights of steep stairs to a tiny room at the back of the hall.

The gas was burning brightly at one side, and something that sent forth a savory odor was bubbling on a little two-burner gas-stove.  Courtland was hungry, and it struck his nostrils pleasantly as the door swung open, revealing a tiny table covered with a white cloth, set for two.  There was a window curtained with white, and a red geranium on the sill.

The girl entered ahead of him, sweeping back a bright chintz curtain that divided the tiny room, and drew forth a child’s cot bed.  Courtland gently laid down the little inert figure.  The girl was on her knees beside the child at once, a bottle in her hand.  She was dropping a few drops in a teaspoon and forcing them between the child’s lips.