, and followed them at a safe
distance, making Celia's hat, and the portmanteau perched on the
shoulder of the porter behind her, his guides. To his surprise, they
still kept on their course when they had reached the sidewalk, and went
over the pavement across an open square which spread itself directly
in front of the station. Hanging as far behind as he dared, he saw them
pass to the other sidewalk diagonally opposite, proceed for a block or
so along this, and then separate at a corner. Celia and the negro lad
went down a side street, and entered the door of a vast, tall red-brick
building which occupied the whole block. The priest, turning on his
heel, came back again and went boldly up the broad steps of the front
entrance to this same structure, which Theron now discovered to be the
Murray Hill Hotel.

Fortune had indeed favored him. He not only knew where they were, but he
had been himself a witness to the furtive way in which they entered
the house by different doors. Nothing in his own limited experience of
hotels helped him to comprehend the notion of a separate entrance
for ladies and their luggage. He did not feel quite sure about the
significance of what he had observed, in his own mind. But it was
apparent to him that there was something underhanded about it.

After lingering awhile on the steps of the hotel, and satisfying himself
by peeps through the glass doors that the coast was clear, he ventured
inside. The great corridor contained many people, coming, going, or
standing about, but none of them paid any attention to him. At last
he made up his mind, and beckoned a colored boy to him from a group
gathered in the shadows of the big central staircase. Explaining that
he did not at that moment wish a room, but desired to leave his bag, the
boy took him to a cloak-room, and got him a check for the thing. With
this in his pocket he felt himself more at his ease, and turned to walk
away. Then suddenly he wheeled, and, bending his body over the counter
of the cloak-room, astonished the attendant inside by the eagerness with
which he scrutinized the piled rows of portmanteaus, trunks, overcoats,
and bundles in the little enclosure.

"What is it you want? Here's your bag, if you're looking for that," this
man said to him.

"No, thanks; it's nothing," replied Theron, straightening himself again.
He had had a narrow escape. Father Forbes and Celia, walking side by
side, had come down the small passage in whic