And this was the occupation of that amazing new boy! Miss Bailey clearly saw the path of her duty, and it led her, the lighter of fires in tow, straight to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. For some days, however, this path was closed to her conscientious feet. The boy was lost again, and Miss Bailey, who took the welfare of her charges very much to heart, was seriously distressed and uneasy. The First Readers were enlisted as a corps of detectives, but though they prowled in likely and unlikely spots, they brought no news of the stranger.
A week went by. The Principal, the Truant Officer, Patrick Brennan's father, were all informed and enlisted in the quest. But day followed day empty of news. Mr. Eissler could offer no suggestion, though he promised that if the child should reappear he would make further and more patient efforts to elicit some information from him. And then quite casually one afternoon Sergeant Brennan appeared in Room 18, with a bundle of rags under his arm.
"Here he is for you, Miss," he announced, waving away her acknowledgments with a stout blue arm before he removed his helmet and dried his heated brow. "I seen him several times since you spoke about him, but never run him down until now."
Again the child was thinner, and his likeness to a hunted animal was clearer, more heart-breaking. "And how should he be otherwise?" reflected Constance Bailey as she realized that, partly through her bidding, he actually had been persistently hunted throughout the past weeks.
After three o'clock when the First Readers, including the loudly objecting Board of Monitors, had been sent home, Miss Bailey secured every exit save the door into the hall, established the new boy in one of the front row of seats, locked the hall door upon her own retreat, and sought Mr. Eissler.
"The Russian child has turned up again," she told him. "I've had him in the class since lunch time, and I never knew of so disturbing an element. A band in the street, a piano organ, even the passing of a fire engine, would have left those babies calmer than his mere presence did. Did you ever see a poultry yard when a hawk was perched in a neighboring tree? Well, there you have my class as long as that boy is in the room. Brainless! Stupid! Huddled in their seats! I declare I hardly knew them. And he, he hardly looked at one of us."
"He'll look at me," said Mr. Eissler, picking up a brass-bound ruler. "By-laws may be by-laws——"
"No, no," cried Teacher, "not that. I don't think I could bear it. And as for him, he would either kill or die. He's almost spent with rage and starvation. I think you'll find him more amenable than he was before."
Mr. Eissler did not find him at all. Room 18 awaited them, pleasant, orderly, and empty. Empty, too, was the whole great building and all the rooms they searched through, save for the sweeper women who met their queries blankly. They had noticed no boy.
"Again!" exclaimed Miss Bailey, almost tearfully, as they returned. "What shall I ever do about him? I meant, you know, to take him now, this very afternoon, while I had him, up to the Society's rooms in Twenty-third Street."