to filter into the befogged
intellect of the inebriate. On the third rendition the latter roused
from where he was slumped down.

"I garcia, Steve," he said thickly. "I garcia firs' time only y'
hollowed s'loud I couldn und'stancher."

So saying he lurched into a semiupright posture and fumbled for the
wheel. Silently condemning the curse of intemperance among the working
classes of a great city Mr. Leary boarded the cab and drew the skirts of
his overcoat down in an effort to cover his knees. With a harsh grating
of clutches and an abrupt jerk the taxi started north.

Wobbling though he was upon his perch the driver mechanically steered a
reasonably straight course. The passenger leaning back in the depths of
the cab confessed to himself he was a trifle weary and more than a
trifle sleepy. At thirty-seven one does not dance and play children's
games alternately for six hours on a stretch without paying for the
exertion in a sensation of let-downness. His head slipped forward on his
chest.

III

With a drowsy uncertainty as to whether he had been dozing for hours or
only for a very few minutes Mr. Leary opened his eyes and sat up. The
car was halted slantwise against a curbing; the chauffeur was jammed
down again into a heap. Mr. Leary stepped nimbly forth upon the
pavement, feeling in his overcoat pocket for the fare; and then he
realised he was not in West Eighty-fifth Street at all; he was not in
any street that he remembered ever having seen before in the course of
his life. Offhand, though, he guessed he was somewhere in that mystic
maze of brick and mortar known as Old Greenwich Village; and, for a
further guess, in that particular part of it where business during these
last few years had been steadily encroaching upon the ancient residences
of long departed Knickerbocker families.

The street in which he stood, for a wonder in this part of town, ran a
fairly straight course. At its western foot he could make out through
the drifting flakes where a squat structure suggestive of a North River
freight dock interrupted the sky line. In his immediate vicinity the
street was lined with tall bleak fronts of jobbing houses, all dark and
all shuttered. Looking the other way, which would be eastward, he could
make out where these wholesale establishments tailed off, to be
succeeded by the lower shapes of venerable dwellings adorned with the
dormered windows and the hip roofs which distinguished a bygone
architec