ion, with its acres of
tracks and footways, and its incessantly shifting processions of people,
there was visible nobody else who seemed also in doubt, or who appeared
capable of sympathizing with indecision in any form. Another train came
in, some way over to the right, and before it had fairly stopped,
swarms of eager men began boiling out of each end of each car, literally
precipitating themselves over one another, it seemed to Theron, in their
excited dash down the steps. As they caught their footing below, they
started racing pell-mell down the platform to its end; there he saw
them, looking more than ever like clustered bees in the distance,
struggling vehemently in a dense mass up a staircase in the remote
corner of the building.

"What are those folks running for? Is there a fire?" he asked an
amiable-faced young mulatto, in the uniform of the sleeping-car service,
who passed him with some light hand-bags.

"No; they's Harlem people, I guess--jes' catchin' the Elevated--that's
all, sir," he answered obligingly.

At the moment some passengers emerged slowly from one of the
sleeping-cars, and came loitering toward him.

"Why, are there people still in these cars?" he asked eagerly. "Haven't
they all gone?"

"Some has; some ain't," the porter replied. "They most generally take
their time about it. They ain't no hurry, so long's they get out 'fore
we're drawn round to the drill-yard."

There was still hope, then. Theron took up his bag and walked forward,
intent upon finding some place from which he could watch unobserved the
belated stragglers issuing from the sleeping-cars. He started back
all at once, confronted by a semi-circle of violent men with whips
and badges, who stunned his hearing by a sudden vociferous outburst of
shouts and yells. They made furious gestures at him with their whips
and fists, to enforce the incoherent babel of their voices; and in these
gestures, as in their faces and cries, there seemed a great deal of
menace and very little invitation. There was a big policeman sauntering
near by, and Theron got the idea that it was his presence alone which
protected him from open violence at the hands of these savage hackmen.
He tightened his clutch on his valise, and, turning his back on them
and their uproar, tried to brave it out and stand where he was. But the
policeman came lounging slowly toward him, with such authority in his
swaying gait, and such urban omniscience written all over his