rship, but soulless now and only distinguishable from the
five-story tenements pressing up on either side, by its one high window
in which some bits of colored glass still lingered amid its twisted and
battered network. You may remember the building and you may remember the
stray glimpses afforded you through the arched opening in the lower
story of one of the adjacent tenements, of the churchyard in its rear
with its chipped and tumbling head-*stones just showing here and there
above the accumulated litter. But it is not probable that you have any
recollections of the interior of the church itself, shut as it has been
from the eye of the public for nearly a generation. And it is with the
interior we have to do--a great hollow vault where once altar and
priest confronted a reverent congregation. There is no altar here now,
nor any chancel; hardly any floor. The timbers which held the pews have
rotted and fallen away, and what was once a cellar has received all this
rubbish and held it piled up in mounds which have blocked up most of the
windows and robbed the place even of the dim religious light which was
once its glory, so that when the man whose words we have just quoted
asked if they were quite alone and peered into the dim, belumbered
corners, it was but natural for his hardy, resolute, and unscrupulous
companion to snort with impatience and disgust as he answered:

"Would I have brought you here if I hadn't known it was the safest place
in New York for this kind of talk? Why, man, there may be in this city
five men all told, who know the trick of the door I unfastened for you,
and not one of them is a cop. You may take my word for that.
Besides----"

"But the kids? They're everywhere; and if one of them should have
followed us----"

"Do you know what would happen to him? I'll tell you a story--no, I
won't; you're frightened enough already. But there's no kid here, nor
any one else but our two selves, unless it be some wandering spook from
the congregations laid outside; and spooks don't count. So out with
your proposition, Mr. Fellows. I----"

CHAPTER II

"_Thousands in that safe_"

"No names!" hoarsely interrupted the other. "If you speak my name again
I'll give the whole thing up."

"No you won't; you're too deep in it for that. But I'll drop the Fellows
and just call you Sam. If that's too familiar, we'll drop the job. I'm
not so keen on it."

"You will be. It's right in your line." Sam Fellow