the street. Two men
were getting out of the carriage holding between them a slight struggling
figure. For one instant the clear shrill cry of a woman was lifted into
the night, then it was cut short abruptly by the clutch of a hand at the
throat.

I scudded toward them, lugging at my sword as I ran, but while I was yet
fifty yards away the door of the house opened and closed behind them. An
instant, and the door reopened to let out one of the men, who slammed it
behind him and entered the chaise. The postilion whipped up his horses and
drove off. The door yielded nothing to my hand. Evidently it was locked
and bolted. I cried out to open, and beat wildly upon the door with the
hilt of my sword. Indeed, I quite lost my head, threatening, storming, and
abusing. I might as well have called upon the marble busts at the Abbey to
come forth, for inside there was the silence of the dead. Presently lights
began to glimmer in windows along the dark street, and nightcapped heads
were thrust out to learn what was ado. I called on them to join me in a
rescue, but I found them not at all keen for the adventure. They took me
for a drunken Mohawk or some madman escaped from custody.

"Here come the watch to take him away," I heard one call across the street
to another.

I began to realize that an attempt to force an entrance was futile. It
would only end in an altercation with the approaching watch. Staid
citizens were already pointing me out to them as a cause of the
disturbance. For the moment I elected discretion and fled incontinent down
the street from the guard.

But I was back before ten minutes were up, lurking in the shadows of
opposite doorways, examining the house from front and rear, searching for
some means of ingress to this mysterious dwelling. I do not know why the
thing stuck in my mind. Perhaps some appealing quality of youth in the
face and voice stirred in me the instinct for the championship of dames
that is to be found in every man. At any rate I was grimly resolved not to
depart without an explanation of the strange affair.

What no skill of mine could accomplish chance did for me. While I was
inviting a crick in my neck from staring up at the row of unlighted
windows above me, a man came out of the front door and stood looking up
and down the street. Presently he spied me and beckoned. I was all
dishevelled and one stain of mud from head to foot.

"D' ye want to earn a shilling, fellow?" he called.

I