he reached his hotel,
as we may call it.

He was hopeful that Jim would have a better story to tell; but to his
amazement, he found that his friend, despite the lateness of the hour,
had not yet come back. A shiver of alarm passed over Tom, for he was
certain that some dreadful evil had befallen him.

Most likely he had been waylaid and killed in some of the hundred
different ways which the police reports show are adopted by the assassins
of New York in disposing of their victims.

Chapter X.

Tom's anxiety for his comrade drove all thought of sleep from his eyes for
the time; and he sat long in the hot, smoky air of the room down-stairs,
in the hope that Jim would come.

It seemed to the watcher that there was an unusually large number of
visitors in the house that evening. There was a great deal of drinking and
carousing going on, and many of the men gathered there, he was sure,
belonged to the lowest grades of society.

A half-dozen foreign nations were represented, and one had but to listen
to the talk for a short while to learn that among them were many whom one
might well fear to meet on a lonely road at night.

Tom might have felt some dread but for the fact that, rather strangely,
these men showed little disposition to engage in any brawl, and no one
seemed to notice him.

Late in the evening a couple of policemen came in and waited a while
around the stove. They only spoke to the bartender, who treated them with
the greatest consideration; but they scrutinized the lad with a curious
look, which caused him to wonder whether they held any suspicion of
wrong-doing on his part. They said nothing to him, however, and shortly
after went out.

Tom's great alarm for Jim drove nearly every other thought from his mind.
Late as it was, he would have started out to search for him, could he have
formed the least idea of the course to take; but, besides being a stranger
in the city, he knew that a single man or a hundred might spend weeks in
hunting for one in the metropolis, without the least probability of
finding him.

It was near midnight when he concluded to make his way to the room, hoping
that Jim would show up before morning.

The sounds of revelry below, mingled with shouts and the stamping of feet,
together with the feverish condition of the lad, kept him awake another
hour; but at last he fell into a light, uneasy sleep, haunted by all sorts
of grotesque, awful visions.

Suddenly he awok