RESCUED.
"Hame, hame, hame! 'tis hame I fain wad be--
Hame, hame, hame, in my ain countree!"
Sammy Hall was bitterly sorry that he had missed getting any
information from the blonde about the beautiful girl he had seen with
her that night at the station.
The beautiful white face and closed eyes of the young girl haunted him
with strange persistency.
And after his accidental _rencontre_ on the street with the insolent
blonde he felt more apprehensive than ever.
"I wish I knew where she lived: I would find out more about her," he
thought; and fell to watching for the bright, steel-blue eyes and
golden hair every day.
He was rewarded for his efforts when one day he saw her at the trimming
counter buying some gold passementerie from Tessie Mays.
Sammy Hall waited till she had sailed out of the store, then went
across to the young salesgirl.
"It's that woman--the one that carried off the girl that night. I saw
her give you her address. What is it?" he queried, excitedly.
As much excited as himself, Tessie gave it to him, and he began to set
his wits to work to find out the mystery of that night.
To Kathleen's indignation and dismay, Fedora had kept her a close
prisoner in the shabby little garret chamber ever since that night--now
five days ago--when she had been brought there.
To quiet the complaints of the girl, Fedora told her that she dare
not let her go outside the house, because her aunt's emissaries were
searching for her everywhere, and that, if found, she would be arrested
and taken back to the asylum.
"You must remain quietly hidden here until the search blows over," she
said; and no entreaties could move her jailer's heart; there was always
a plausible excuse; but Kathleen, looking into the flippant, insolent
face, began to distrust the woman.
"She hates me--hates me because Ralph Chainey said he loved me," she
thought, uneasily; and she grew frightened in the miserable little
garret room in which she was kept a prisoner, seeing no one but Fedora,
who brought her food with her own hands--food which tasted palatable
enough, but which seemed only to sap the young girl's strength.
For with each day Kathleen grew weaker and weaker.
At first she had been wont to pace the chamber restlessly for hours.
Now her limbs grew weary; her brain seemed to reel. She rested in the
chair, then upon the bed, and her burning brain was full of the thought
of Ralph Chainey's treachery.
"I loved him so, I loved him so--yet he was wicked, false and cruel
beyond all men!" she sobbed; and the knowledge was killing to her. She
thought that now, at last, she was going mad, like poor Daisy Lynn,
over a lover's falsity.
She did not know that it was death, not madness, that was approaching;
but the food brought her by Fedora was drugged, so that in a short time
it must cause her death if she kept on taking it.
She did not dream what a terrible interest the woman had in her death,
and that she had decided that Kathleen Carew must never go out of that
house alive.
"He did it for _me_, and I must not let her go free," she decided,
grimly, and went unfalteringly about her plans for ending that sweet,
innocent young life.
Kathleen found her imprisonment here more galling than it had been in
the home of Miss Watts. There was here no pretty, dainty room filled
with a young girl's dainty books and pictures, but only squalor such as
might have surrounded an uneducated servant.
She wondered much over the house she was in, and if her jailer, the
gaudily attired blonde beauty, inhabited such a shabby apartment as she
allotted to her guests. But she was not likely to have her curiosity
gratified on this point, as Fedora always locked the door on leaving,
and there was only one window--a small one, very high up--that gave
an uninteresting outlook on the walls of other houses--poor ones, it
seemed, from their moldy bricks.
A day came when Fedora did not bring her any dinner, and the whole day
wore away dully and gloomily. It was the day when Samuel Hall saw her
shopping in the store of Granville B. Haines & Co. Kathleen did not
dream of what had happened, but Fedora had moved out of the house that
day, leaving her victim to her fate.
Kathleen ate so little of the drugged food prepared for her that she
had lived longer than the woman anticipated, so she decided to leave
her to starve to death in the unoccupied house, where she was locked
into the wretched garret.
When she gave her address to the pretty saleslady at Granville B.
Haines & Co.'s, it was in a fit of absent-mindedness that saved
Kathleen's life.
Instead of giving her new address, she gave her old one, and, as we
have seen, Samuel Hall at once secured it from Tessie Mays.
So excited was the young man, and so fearful that harm had befallen
the beautiful young girl of that night's adventure, that he actually
secured the services of a policeman, and finding the house closed and
seemingly unoccupied, the doors were broken open and a strict search
instituted.
When they had almost begun to despair of success, the beautiful victim
was found by the delighted young clerk, who at once recognized her as
the fainting girl he had placed in the carriage that night.
She fainted again when she learned that she was saved, and the
policeman and Sammy had some difficulty in restoring her to
consciousness. When they had done so, they were filled with grief and
horror at the story she had to tell.
"Oh, let me go to papa!" she begged them, pathetically, and Samuel
Hall, melted by her beauty and distress, assured her that she should
be sent at once to Boston. A closed carriage was secured, and Sammy
and the sympathetic policeman escorted her to the station, where a
first-class ticket was bought and Kathleen placed in a Pullman car.
"God forever bless you!" sobbed the young girl, weeping over Sammy's
hand, and overwhelming him with promises of what her rich father would
do to reward him for his nobility.
Then the train steamed away out of the station, and there were tears in
the eyes of both men, through which they saw dimly the pale and lovely
face, on which a little hopeful smile was budding into bloom.
The policeman made Sammy promise to keep a sharp lookout for the
perfidious blonde, and to let him know if he found her, so that she
might be arrested and punished for kidnapping the girl. Then the two
separated, the policeman returning to his regular beat, and Sammy to
the store, where he told the sympathetic young girls the story of his
knightly deliverance of Kathleen, and became quite a hero in their
admiring eyes.
But gladdest of all was our beautiful Kathleen, speeding as fast as
steam could carry her back to Boston and to papa, who must surely have
come home ere now, and who would be so glad to see his little girl.