ached sixty thousand. The inhabitants had dwindled to a
tenth of that number when I looked at Enkhuizen now!

I considered with myself what my next course of proceeding was to be.

The chances were certainly against my discovering Mrs. Van Brandt if I
ventured alone and unguided into the city at night. On the other hand,
now that I had reached the place in which she and her child were living,
friendless and deserted, could I patiently wait through the weary
interval that must elapse before the morning came and the town was
astir? I knew my own self-tormenting disposition too well to accept this
latter alternative. Whatever came of it, I determined to walk through
Enkhuizen on the bare chance of meeting some one who might inform me of
Mrs. Van Brandt's address.

First taking the precaution of locking my cabin door, I stepped from the
bulwark of the vessel to the lonely quay, and set forth upon my night
wanderings through the Dead City.

CHAPTER XXXV. UNDER THE WINDOW.

I SET the position of the harbor by my pocket-compass, and then followed
the course of the first street that lay before me.

On either side, as I advanced, the desolate old houses frowned on me.
There were no lights in the windows, no lamps in the streets. For a
quarter of an hour at least I penetrated deeper and deeper into the
city, without encountering a living creature on my way--with only the
starlight to guide me. Turning by chance into a street broader than
the rest, I at last saw a moving figure, just visible ahead, under the
shadows of the houses. I quickened my pace, and found myself following
a man in the dress of a peasant. Hearing my footsteps behind him, he
turned and looked at me. Discovering that I was a stranger, he lifted
a thick cudgel that he carried with him, shook it threateningly, and
called to me in his own language (as I gathered by his actions) to
stand back. A stranger in Eukhuizen at that time of night was evidently
reckoned as a robber in the estimation of this citizen! I had learned on
the voyage, from the captain of the boat, how to ask my way in Dutch,
if I happened to be by myself in a strange town; and I now repeated
my lesson, asking my way to the fishing office of Messrs. Van Brandt.
Either my foreign accent made me unintelligible, or the man's suspicions
disinclined him to trust me. Again he shook his cudgel, and again he
signed to me to stand back. It was useless to persist. I crossed to the
opposite side of the