floor, lived with his wife and baby in the rear. The
janitress had a room on the floor above hers. Two
elderly women workers of ability in the mechanical arts
occupied the rear of her floor, and a dear little fat
woman of fifty who drew designs for the New England
weavers of cotton goods lived in the room adjoining
hers.

She had never spoken to any of these people, but
Ella, the janitress, who cleaned up her place every
morning, had told her their history. Ella was a
sociable soul, her face an eternal study and an
inscrutable mystery. She spoke both German and English
and yet never a word of her own life's history passed
her lips. She had loved Mary from the moment she
cocked her queer drawn face to one side and looked at
her with the one good eye she possessed. She was
always doing little things for her comfort--and never
asked tips for it. If Mary offered to pay she smiled
quietly and spoke in the softest drawl: "Oh,
that's nothing, child-- Ach, Gott im Himmel--nein!"

This one-eyed, homely woman who cleaned up her room
for three dollars a month, and Jane Anderson, were the
only friends she had among the six million people whose
lives centered on Manhattan Island.

Man had yet to darken her door. The little room
had been carefully fitted, however, to receive her
Knight when the great event of his coming should be at