“You can understand, now, why I am living at Mrs. Cleary’s and working in Mr. Kling’s store.  I had but a few pounds left after paying my passage and there was no one from whom I could borrow, even if I had been so disposed; so work of some kind was necessary.  It may be just as well for me to tell you, too, that nobody at home knows where I am, and that but two persons in New York know me at all.  One is a man named Carlin, who served on one of my father-in-law’s vessels, and the other is his sister Martha, who was a nurse in my wife’s family.

“Dalton, so I understood, had considerable money when he left, enough to last him some months, and until yesterday I have hunted for them where I thought he would be sure to spend it, in the richer cafes and restaurants, outside the opera-houses and the fashionable theatres—­places where two strangers in the city would naturally spend their evenings, and a woman loving light and color as she did would want to go.

“All these theories were upset last night when Mrs. Cleary gave me some details of a woman she had picked up near your church.  She found her, it seems, some months ago—­last April, in fact—­on the steps of a private house near your church—­here on 29th Street —­took her home and made her spend the night there.  In the morning she disappeared without any one seeing her.  Yesterday, while moving the bureau in my room, Mrs. Cleary found a sleeve-link on the carpet; she thought it was one I had dropped.  I have it in my trunk.  It is one of a pair my wife gave me on my birthday, the year we were married.  I missed it from my jewel case after she left, and thought somebody had stolen it.  Now I know that my wife must have taken it, and then dropped it at Mrs. Cleary’s.  So I came here tonight hoping against hope—­it was so many months ago—­to get some further information regarding her.  Then I remembered that I had not asked Mrs. Cleary what the woman looked like, and I was about to return home, when that poor girl staggered in, and I got a look at her face.  I lost my hold on myself then and—­”

He sprang to his feet and began striding across the room, his eyes blazing, one clinched fist upraised:  “By God!  Father Cruse, I know something of Dalton’s earlier life and of what he is capable.  And I tell you right here, that if he has brought my wife to that, I shall kill him the moment I set my eyes on him.  To take a child of a woman, foolish and vain as she was—­stupid if you will—­and—­” he halted, covered his face in his hands, and broke into sobs.

During the long recital Father Cruse had neither spoken nor moved.  He was accustomed to such outbursts, but it had been many years since he had seen so strong a man weep as bitterly.  Better let the storm pass—­he would master himself the sooner.

A full minute elapsed, and then, with a groan that seemed to come from the depths of his being, O’Day lifted his head, brushed the hot tears from his eyes, and continued: