and when I told her that my friend
was doubtless awaiting him, she only wrung her hands.

'He may not be now. It is so early, and I shall not feel at ease until
I know. Mr. Masters, I am sure there is danger very near us; I feel
it. Won't you go--and come back when all is safe?'

CHAPTER XXIII.

'YOU ARE SUFFERING IN MY STEAD.'

It was useless to argue, and how could I refuse? For the first time,
and greatly to my amazement, I saw that self-contained and sweetly
reasonable young woman deaf to reason, and in that strange condition
which, for lack of power to understand, we men call 'hysterical.'

I went, and in spite of myself I left her presence feeling somehow
aroused and watchful--quite prepared, for a little time, to see an
assassin at every corner and beneath every tree.

'Do not overtake him,' had been her last command. 'It might offend
him. Only see him safe at his own door.'

I was not five minutes behind Lossing, and he could not, or would not,
I knew, walk rapidly. I expected to come close upon his heels before I
had reached the first corner.

That he would take the most direct and nearest route, I felt, was a
matter of course. In fact, he knew no other, or so I thought.

The direct route was straight north to Fifty-seventh Street, and east
to the entrance gate; but though I walked fast, and then almost ran, I
could see nothing of Lossing and nothing of Dave Brainerd.

What did it mean? When I had reached the end of the first block,
without a sight of Lossing, I hastened across the intersecting street
and hurried on another block, and still no Lossing. I paused, looked
around me, and seeing and hearing nothing, increased my steps almost
to a run.

At Fifty-seventh Street I paused, before turning, to look about me and
to listen. After the first block, going east, this street became quite
densely shaded by the trees on either side.

I had now reached the second block on the south side of the street,
that which contained the vacant lots and the overshadowing trees,
beneath which the bootblack's stand was placed by day; and here again
I paused and listened, in the hope that in the quiet about me I might
hear and recognise Lossing's slow, even step. But no step was heard,
and I moved on.

'It is early yet,' I assured myself; 'so early that thugs and
night-birds are hardly likely to be abroad.'

I was now opposite the bootblack's stand on the skeleton uprights
which supported his rainy-day a