ch was nearly a sigh. Was this the way Mr. Lawrence felt
when times went bad? Was some such trouble the cause of that fatal
disaster? He bowed his head in a sort of touching and profound respect
to the dead man. He experienced an earnest sympathy for all struggling
capitalists. What did unreasoning labor know of such nights as these
when every thing, even good name, was at stake! He wondered if his mop
of curly hair would turn gray, and then, in a ridiculously trivial
mood, remembered he must go and have it cropped. As well now as any
time; but when he reached the barber's, the place looked so uninviting,
with the smoky kerosene-lamps turned low. He did not stop: he used to
wonder afterward how it would have been if he had, until he came to have
a sincere and reverent belief in God as the disposer of human events,
the Hand back of the curtain, that guided every step, and kept sacred
watch even over two sparrows.

He walked down past Maverick's; but half a dozen people were in there,
so he went on and on to the very end of the street, when by the dim
light he saw a figure in advance of him, a woman, tall and stately,
muffled in a waterproof and hood. There was something in the bearing
different from most of the Yerbury women who ran out of an evening for a
neighborly gossip, or some provender for their next morning's breakfast.
There were no stores in this direction; it was quite lonely; perhaps she
was going home. It would annoy her to be followed, doubtless; and on
such a night as this no roughs would be abroad in this vicinity.

Jack Darcy was in that nervous state when the brain seems rarefied and
empowered to wrest secrets from the very elements in his path. He
pursued several chains of thought at once, with lightning rapidity, and,
with curious mental inconsistency, dropped them, and lapsed into others.
Now a sudden interest sprang up in this wandering traveller. He listened
with the wariness of an Indian to her step. It had in it the essential
principle of flight, but a baffled, fruitless longing for escape, rather
than a nearing to some distant haven or goal. He had not used to be so
keen in this subtile discrimination, until Maverick crossed his path,
and helped him out of his psychological bondage. And ordinarily his
senses had not the electric keenness of to-night.

The figure paused. The face seemed to turn to the drear, blank sky--was
it in appealing, or a desperate daring? an impotent resistance, or a
wil