urage of a hundred men
would not have faced the utmost possibilities of "no."

This simple truth kept the man to the room as though therein lay all his
hopes of salvation. At one time he was upon the point of waking Alban
and putting the question to him. Or again, he tried to creep back to the
landing, determined, in his own room, to suffer as best he could the
hours of uncertainty. Distressed by irresolution he crossed to the
window at last and breathed the cool sweet air of morning as one being a
stranger to such a scene at such an hour. The sun had risen by this time
and all the landscape stood revealed in its morning beams. Not yet had
London stirred to the murmur of the coming day--no smoke rose from her
forest of chimneys, no haze drifted above the labyrinth. Far below she
lay, a maze of empty streets, of shuttered shops, of vast silent
buildings--a city of silence, hiding her cares from the glory of the
dawn, veiling her sorrow and her suffering, hushing her children to
rest, deaf to the morning voices; rich and poor alike turning from the
eyes of the day to Mother Sleep upon whose heart is eternal rest. Such a
city Gessner beheld while he looked from the window, and the golden
beams lighted his pallid face and the sweet air of day called him to
deed and resolution. What victories he had won upon that grimy field;
what triumphs he had known; what hours of pomp and vanity--what bitter
anguish! And now he might rule there no longer. Detection had stalked
out of the unknown and touched him upon the shoulder. Somewhere in that
labyrinth his enemies were sleeping. But one human being could shield
him from them, and he a lad--without home or friends, penniless and a
wanderer.

He drew back from the window, saying that the hours of suspense must be
brief and that his will should prevail with this lad, at whatever
sacrifice. Believing that his old shrewdness would help him, and that in
Alban not only the instrument of his salvation but of his vengeance
should be found, he would have quitted the room immediately, had not his
eye lighted at hazard upon a rough paper, lying upon the floor by the
bed, and a pencil which had tumbled from Alban's tired hand. Perceiving
that the lad had been drawing, and curious beyond ordinary to know the
subject of his picture, he picked the paper up to discover thereon a
rude portrait which he recognized instantly for that of his daughter,
Anna. Such a discovery, thrusting into his schemes