rtunity to dog it at leisure.

Two or three minutes afterwards the leading carriage wheeled out of
Lexington Avenue into East 5-- Street, not very far from the Eastern
Dispensary, which has lately so well supplied the place of a soldiers'
hospital. It was driving slowly, now, and unless some peculiar dodge was
intended, Leslie knew that the occupants must be near their destination.
To follow them further with the carriage would be both useless and
dangerous. Stopping the carriage and telling the driver to wait for them
in the avenue half a dozen blocks above, the two friends alighted and
followed their quarry on foot. They were close behind the carriage,
now, but keeping the sidewalk, and even if observed they might have been
supposed to be a couple of late wayfarers plodding home, and not _spies_
as they at that moment felt themselves to be, in however meritorious a
cause! About half way between Fourth Avenue and Madison, the carriage
stopped before a handsome brown-stone house. "Nothing venture nothing
have!" is an old motto that never wears out. Before the rumble of the
carriage had fairly stopped or the driver could have had time to turn
around, the two friends were over the area railings and under the steps.
Not a dignified position, perhaps, nor a pleasant one in which to be
caught in the event of a sudden opening of the area door; but other men
have risked as much for a much idler curiosity!

Perfect silence under the steps, except two loudly-beating hearts and a
little quick breathing. Leslie ventured a look around the corner of the
stoop--saw the driver get down and open the door, and the one man and
two women alight and go up the steps. For the rest, they were obliged to
depend upon the ears. One of the women spoke:

"It will come to-morrow at midnight?"

Harding could feel that Leslie shuddered, and could distinguish his
sharp whisper to himself:

"The red woman's voice! I knew I could not be mistaken!"

Then the voice of the man said: "Wait a moment!" and Leslie fancied that
he recognized that voice quite as well as the other. Then there was a
quick pull of the bell, the sound tinkling far back in the still house.
Then came two sharp pulls after the pause of a moment, and then a fourth
after another pause. Not until the fourth tinkle had been heard was
there any other sound within the house. Then a door was heard to open
and shut, and feet were heard in the hall. The man's voice said "All
right!" and t