His cousin Barbara keenly felt the change in him. It was she who comforted the poor old mother, and who pleaded with Jack to try and take up the duties of life again, and to forget faithless Dorothy.
But he would only shake his head, and answer that he would never cease to love Dorothy and search for her while life lasted. But troubles never seem to come singly. One day, as Jack was pacing restlessly up and down Broadway—the vantage-ground which he always sought at six o'clock each evening, to scan the faces of the working-girls as they passed, with the lingering hope in his heart that some day, sooner or later, his vigilance would be rewarded by seeing Dorothy—a terrible accident happened which almost cost him his life.
An old sign on one of the corner buildings, which had done service many a year, suddenly fell, and Jack—poor Jack, was knocked senseless to the pavement.
Surely it was the workings of Providence that Jessie Staples happened along just at that critical moment.
With a wild, bitter cry she sprang forward, flinging herself upon the prostrate body, shrieking out as she saw his handsome, white face with the stains of blood upon it:
"Oh, Heaven have mercy! It is Jack—Jack Garner!"
Kindly hands raised him. No, he was not dead—only stunned, and terribly bruised.
A cab was hastily summoned, and, accompanied by Jessie, he was taken home.
The girl broke the sad news gently to Jack's mother and to Barbara. It was many and many a day before Jack left his couch; the accident had proved more dangerous than had been at first anticipated, for brain fever had set in.
Every day on her way home from the book-bindery Jessie would go several blocks out of her way to see how Jack was getting along, and Barbara and his mother soon discovered that it was something more than mere friendship that actuated the girl's visits. Although against their expostulations, every cent that she could scrape together, over and above the cost of the bare necessities of her living, she would expend for fruit to bring to Jack.