ouses that I know this sort finds out sometimes. I'll go with
you, if you like."

"Thank you, I want to try the ferries first; we'll begin at the Battery
and work up. How long does the Staten Island boat run?"

"Not after one; but they'll be behind time to-night; it's getting to be
a smothering snow. I don't believe the elevated can run on time either,
and we've got three blocks to walk to the next station."

"We'd better be going, then." Father Honore bade the other man good
night, and the two walked rapidly to the nearest elevated station on
Second Avenue. It was an up-town train that rolled in covered with sleet
and snow, and they were obliged to wait fully a quarter of an hour
before a south bound one took them to the Battery.

The wind was lessening, but a heavy snowfall had set in. They made their
way across the park to the "tongue that laps the commerce of the world."

Where was that commerce now? Wholly vanished with the multiple daytime
activities that centre near this spot. The great fleet of incoming and
out-going ocean liners, of vessels, barges, tows, ferries, tugs--where
were they in the drifting snow that was blotting out the night in opaque
white? The clank and rush of the elevated, the strident grinding of the
trolleys, the polyglot whistling and tooting of the numerous small river
craft, the cries of 'longshoremen, the roaring basal note of
metropolitan mechanism--all were silenced. Nothing was to be heard, at
the moment of their arrival, but the heavy wash of the harbor waters
against the sea wall and its yeasting churn in the ferry slip.

Near the dock-house they saw some half-obliterated tracks in the snow.
Father Honore bent to examine them; it availed him nothing. He looked at
his watch; at the same moment he heard the distant hoarse half-smothered
whistle repeated again and again and the deadened beat of the paddle
wheels. Gradually the boat felt her way into the slip. The snow was
falling heavily.

"We will wait here until the boat leaves," said Father Honore, stepping
inside to a dark wind-sheltered angle of the house.

"It's a wild goose chase we're on," muttered his companion after a
while. The next moment he laid a heavy hand on the priest's arm,
gripping it hard, every muscle tense.

A heavy brewery team, drawn by noble Percherons, rumbled past them down
the slip. On it, behind the driver's seat, was the figure of a man,
crouched low. Had it not been for the bandaged arm and the un