gs had been held, and political speeches made, and political hard
cider drunk, in the days of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too."

The street down which Warwick had come intersected Front Street at a
sharp angle in front of the old hotel, forming a sort of flatiron block
at the junction, known as Liberty Point,--perhaps because slave
auctions were sometimes held there in the good old days. Just before
Warwick reached Liberty Point, a young woman came down Front Street
from the direction of the market-house. When their paths converged,
Warwick kept on down Front Street behind her, it having been already
his intention to walk in this direction.

Warwick's first glance had revealed the fact that the young woman was
strikingly handsome, with a stately beauty seldom encountered. As he
walked along behind her at a measured distance, he could not help
noting the details that made up this pleasing impression, for his mind
was singularly alive to beauty, in whatever embodiment. The girl's
figure, he perceived, was admirably proportioned; she was evidently at
the period when the angles of childhood were rounding into the
promising curves of adolescence. Her abundant hair, of a dark and
glossy brown, was neatly plaited and coiled above an ivory column that
rose straight from a pair of gently sloping shoulders, clearly outlined
beneath the light muslin frock that covered them. He could see that
she was tastefully, though not richly, dressed, and that she walked
with an elastic step that revealed a light heart and the vigor of
perfect health. Her face, of course, he could not analyze, since he
had caught only the one brief but convincing glimpse of it.

The young woman kept on down Front Street, Warwick maintaining his
distance a few rods behind her. They passed a factory, a warehouse or
two, and then, leaving the brick pavement, walked along on mother
earth, under a leafy arcade of spreading oaks and elms. Their way led
now through a residential portion of the town, which, as they advanced,
gradually declined from staid respectability to poverty, open and
unabashed. Warwick observed, as they passed through the respectable
quarter, that few people who met the girl greeted her, and that some
others whom she passed at gates or doorways gave her no sign of
recognition; from which he inferred that she was possibly a visitor in
the town and not well acquainted.

Their walk had continued not more than ten minutes when they crossed a
c