"Have you, honest?" he cried. "Where is she?"
"Well, I lost her in the crowd," said Ivan, and told the whole story.
Warren lay listening carefully.
"Well, as long as we know she is here in the same town, we know we will find her. And there won't be any slip the next time." His face clouded. "But, Ivan," he said huskily, "I can't bear to think of my dear Evelyn, and poor father, and little Jack." He closed his lips and shut his eyes in a desperate effort to control his grief.
Warren's cot was drawn across a closed door. And on the other side of that door sat Evelyn, crying her heart out for her lost brother and sister!
CHAPTER X
BEGGARS
When poor little Elinor found herself dragged forcibly from her brother and away from the comparative safety of the underground room where Warren and Ivan had so mysteriously appeared, as she thought, to get her and take her home, her childish heart was filled with a terror so overwhelming that she did not know what she did. Notwithstanding the efforts of the woman who held her, she screamed as hard as she could and stiffened in the woman's brutal grasp until she was obliged to put her down. Elinor tried to run, but she was too tightly held. Then with a muttered rush of comments, the woman rained blows on the poor little shoulders and body until the child sank to the ground, nearly stunned from the force of the blows. Her cries died, and she lay gasping.
"Now will you be silent?" demanded the fury, shaking her. "You just try that again! Just try it, and see what I will do to you." She overwhelmed the fallen child with terrible threats until Elinor was silenced and shook as though in a chill.
"Now you had better do as I tell you," the woman said. "You will never see your brother again, never; never! And you will have to live with me, and do as I say." She jerked the child to her feet and dragged her down the street after the two men who had gone on, one of them carrying Rika.