In less than a year after Fair’s mysterious disappearance from New York, Waverley Osborne, whose admiration had been the indirect cause of all her trouble, was married to Sadie Allen.

The telegram that had summoned Sadie Allen to the deathbed of her sister in Philadelphia was a fraudulent one, forged by Carl Bernicci, who had resorted to this means to remove from Fair the friend and protector to whom she clung with the desperation of despair.

When she reached Philadelphia and found her sister perfectly well and greatly surprised at her coming, Sadie at once suspected the fraud that had been perpetrated upon her.

“It is the work of Carl Bernicci, or of Belva Platt. They have taken this means to get me away, but I will foil them; I will go back at once to that poor child, whom they hope in this way to get into their power,” she said to her sister, to whom she had hastily related the whole story, and who, as glad as she was to see Sadie, would not press her to stay, lest harm should befall the fair young girl she had left.

So Sadie, after spending but a few hours in Philadelphia, started back to New York, with her mind full of misgivings and fears.

“I have been away from her one whole night, and it will be night again before I reach New York. Oh, may Heaven protect that poor girl until I get back to her side!” she thought anxiously.

It was night, indeed, when she reached the great city, and a heavy thunderstorm was in progress. One moment the lightning flashed and made everything clear as noonday, the next the thunder’s peal and the downpour of torrents of rain made the scene one of Cimmerian darkness.

Poor Sadie, without either waterproof cloak, gossamer, or umbrella, took her little satchel and stepped out into the rainy night amid the bawling troop of cabmen, intent on making her way to the nearest street car.

She had not enough money to pay for a cab, or she would certainly have taken one, and saved herself a drenching, for in a minute her light summer dress was soaking wet.

But she did not have time to think of her dress, for in another moment, as she struggled through the crowd, she felt a hand at her elbow, and she tripped and fell over a booted foot thrust out before her. Before she could recover her balance, the hand at her elbow thrust a heavy shawl over her head, smothering her shrieks of terror, and she was quickly lifted by a pair of strong arms and borne to a cab that was waiting close by.

She was flung upon the cushions, the door banged to, and then the vehicle set off rapidly, while Sadie was immediately placed under the influence of a drug that stupefied her senses for the time being, and when she awoke, the next morning, she was a prisoner in a little, low, shabby hut near the river, she judged, from what she could see through the dirty panes of a small window in her second-story room.

An old woman came up presently and unlocked the door long enough to present her with some bread and water for her breakfast. To Sadie’s angry questions, she replied coolly that she was to be her prisoner until Carl Bernicci had brought his wife to her senses.

“When she quits her foolin’ and goes home to her husband, like a dacent wife, then you’ll git out, and not afore!” said the crone sharply, as she locked the door on the outside, heedless of Sadie’s alternate threats and entreaties.

A long and weary week went by, during which poor Sadie remained a close prisoner in the miserable little hut, closely guarded by the cross old woman whom Sadie concluded must follow the trade of laundress, judging by the continual smell of soapsuds that came up through the cracks in the bare floor.

During that time she had made daily efforts to escape, but the old woman was too sharp for her, and when Sadie threatened, in desperation, to throw herself from the window, she placed iron bars across it.

Immured in the narrow room, Sadie proceeded to make it as airy as possible by breaking all the panes in the window. Through the apertures thus made, she could look down upon an unpaved street, along which there were few passers-by, and these of so rough a looking aspect that her momentary temptations to call down to them for assistance did not last long.

“No doubt all the inhabitants of the place are in collusion with the old woman,” she thought despairingly.

One day, when she had been imprisoned on bread and water for a week and a half, she heard voices in the room beneath. One belonged to the old woman, and the other was a masculine voice with a strangely familiar sound.

Sadie started and listened intently, for that voice seemed to carry her mind back to the shroud factory with vivid power.

But still she could not remember to whom the voice belonged, although a wild hope came over her that perhaps some of her friends were searching for her—a wild hope speedily dissipated, for when she laid down upon the floor and placed her ear at a gaping crack she discovered that the conversation, which began to grow loud and threatening, related to the larceny of sundry shirts and collars.

“You failed to bring the right number last week, and this week it is the same, so I determined to come myself and to force you to give up the missing things, for I will not be robbed in this wholesale fashion,” said the voice; and then Sadie’s hopes fell into ashes.

“It is only one of her customers whom she has robbed of his shirts,” she decided.

But so keen was her curiosity over the owner of the familiar voice that she stationed herself at the window, hoping to see him emerge from the house.

She was not disappointed, for presently the furious war of words below came to an end, and a man stepped out into the street with a bundle under his arm—the missing shirts, which the dishonest washerwoman had yielded up on being threatened with arrest.

Sadie Allen screamed with joy and pounded furiously on the window to attract the man’s attention.

It was Waverley Osborne, the young clerk who had been in love with Fairfax Fielding, and for whose sake Belva Platt had plotted such a wicked revenge on the innocent girl.

The young man looked up at the noise above his head, and quickly recognized the face of the good-natured girl whom he had seen so often at the factory.

“Good gracious, Miss Allen, what are you doing here?” he exclaimed, and she answered:

“I am a prisoner, Mr. Osborne. Oh, please, please make that wicked old woman downstairs release me, and I will bless you forever.”

“All right,” replied the young man heartily, and he instantly darted into the house again.

A furious altercation ensued, but the end of it was that Waverley Osborne burst open the door of Sadie’s prison and took her away with him in triumph, although the old woman fought, scratched, bit, and tore like a hyena in the effort to keep her prisoner. The young man was more than a match for her, however, and got away in triumph with Sadie.

“Oh, how brave and good you are, Mr. Osborne! I can never cease to thank you for this timely rescue,” cried Sadie gratefully, and somehow the romance of the occasion led each to take an interest in each other. Sadie wondered in secret how Fair Fielding could have been so indifferent to so brave and good-looking a young man, and Waverley thought it was strange that he had never noticed before how pleasant a girl Sadie Allen was—not pretty, but he was rather disgusted with beauty, anyway. He had found out that Belva Platt blondined her hair and painted her cheeks and lips. When he had turned in disgust from these false charms to Fair Fielding, the latter’s scornful airs and ambitious views had thrown cold water on his budding hopes. Truly he had reason to conceive an antipathy to beauty.

So Sadie caught his heart in the rebound, and as she won it by force of honest merit, not meretricious charms, she was able to hold and keep it. In a very few months the courtship that had begun on the day when he opened her prison door ended in a happy and suitable marriage. Belva Platt was furious with jealous rage, but she had become so unpopular at the factory since her wicked revenge upon Fair Fielding that she dared not vent her anger in anything but spiteful speeches, and in ignoring the bride and groom. She had lost him forever, and not one of the working girls but exulted in her defeat.

The married pair went to housekeeping on a simple scale, and each kept on with their factory work. Sadie learned that the old woman who had kept her imprisoned was the grandmother of Belva Platt. They made no effort to have any of the parties punished for Sadie’s imprisonment, for it was rumored that Carl Bernicci had drowned himself in despair at his wife’s strange disappearance.