Darke Darrell, the Boy Detective — page 135: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

126 DARKE DARRELL CHAPTER XXVII. LEOTINE FINDS A FRIEND. — Leotine pushed through the crowd at the depot, and turned into one of the main streets, an entire stranger in Jersey City, and caring little whither her feet led her. She stopped now and then and stared into the shop- windows, to while away the time, and not because they were more handsomely filled and arranged than the shop- windows in New York. As the evening wore away she began to grow hungry and tired, and sleepy besides. The din was dying out on the streets; the sidewalks were becoming deserted; the shop- keepers were closing their stores; prowlers lurked in the shadows, and suspicious-looking characters scudded past her. She began to feel afraid. She began to see the neces- sity of seeking shelter. She might be insulted, robbed, or taken to the station by a policeman. She knew ‘no one. Whither should she go? To have entered a hotel would have subjected her to examination, she looked so childish to beunattended. She was anxious to avoid pul: licity. ‘‘ Vl trust the first benign-faced man I meet,” she con- cluded. ‘If need be, I’ll tell him who Iam and all about myself. I will not lose anything by being truthful.” But half an hour passed before she saw a face that she was sure she could trust, save one, that of a man too young almost to have a proper home to which to take her. At last, Just as she was passing a gloomy-looking store, a comicbooks.com