ed. As it was,
he went to his work at the hotel on the third morning, and still left
his strange guest in the old house, walking about in an empty room,
munching some bread with his keen white teeth, his bright eyes half shut
under their bushy brows.

Harkness came to the hotel disconcerted, and, meeting Eliza near the
dining-room, took off his hat in sullen silence. Several men in the room
called after him as he passed. "How's your dancing bear, Harkness?"
"How's the ghost you're befriending?" "How's your coffin-gentleman?"
There was a laugh that rang loudly in the large, half-empty room.

After Harkness had despatched two morning visitors, however, and was
looking out of his window, as was usual in his idle intervals, he
noticed several errand-boys gazing up the road, and in a minute an
advancing group came within his view, old Cameron walking down the
middle of the street hitting the ground nervously with his staff, and
behind him children of various sizes following rather timidly. Every now
and then the old man emitted some sound--a shout, a word of some sort,
not easily understood. It was this that had attracted the following of
children, and was very quickly attracting the attention of every one in
the street. One or two men, and a woman with a shawl over her head, were
coming down the sidewalks the same way and at about the same pace as the
central group, and Harkness more than suspected that they had diverged
from the proper course of their morning errands out of curiosity. He
took more interest in the scene than seemed consistent with his slight
connection with the principal actor. He made an excited movement toward
his door, and his hand actually trembled as he opened it. Eliza was
usually about the passages at this time of day. He called her name.

She put her head over the upper bannister.

"Come down and see Lazarus Cameron!"

"I'll come in a minute."

He saw through the railing of the bannisters the movement of some linen
she was folding.

"He'll be past in a minute." Harkness's voice betrayed his excitement
more than he desired.

Eliza dropped the linen and came downstairs rather quickly. Harkness
returned to his window; she came up beside him. The inner window was
open, only one pane was between them and the outer air. In yards all
round cocks were crowing, as, on a mild day in the Canadian March, cocks
will crow continually. Light snow of the last downfall lay on the
opposite roofs, and made t