lawed by even the mildest curiosity. He had been seen, perhaps,
though certainly not noted with any interest, to be one of the group
watching a night scene in front of one of the Fifth Avenue mansions.

Lights shone from the draped windows of this mansion and from its
portals issued none other than Muriel Mercer, who, as Vera Vanderpool,
freed at last from the blight of Broadway, was leaving her palatial home
to cast her lot finally with the ardent young tenement worker with the
high forehead. She descended the brown-stone steps, paused once to look
back upon the old home where she had been taught to love pleasure above
the worth-while things of life, then came on to the waiting limousine,
being greeted here by the young man with the earnest forehead who had
won her to the better way.

The missing youth might later have been observed, but probably was not,
walking briskly in the chill night toward the gate that led to the outer
world. But he wheeled abruptly before reaching this gate, and walked
again briskly, this time debouching from the main thoroughfare into
the black silence of the Western village. Here his pace slackened, and
halfway down the street he paused irresolutely. He was under the wooden
porch of the Fashion Restaurant--Give our Tamales a Trial. He lingered
here but a moment, however, then lurked on down the still thoroughfare,
keeping well within the shadow of the low buildings. Just beyond the
street was the log cabin of the big-hearted miners. A moment later he
could not have been observed even by the keenest eye.

Nothing marked his disappearance, at least nothing that would have been
noted by the casual minded. He had simply gone. He was now no more than
the long-vanished cowboys and sheriffs and gamblers and petty tradesmen
who had once peopled this street of silence and desolation.

A night watchman came walking presently, flashing an electric torch from
side to side. He noticed nothing. He was, indeed, a rather imaginative
man, and he hoped he would not notice anything. He did not like coming
down this ghostly street, which his weak mind would persist in peopling
with phantom crowds from long-played picture dramas. It gave him the
creeps, as he had more than once confessed. He hurried on, flashing his
torch along the blind fronts of the shops in a perfunctory manner. He
was especially nervous when he came to corners. And he was glad when he
issued from the little street into the wider one that w