rom a big
clock over a manufactory at a point nearly three-quarters of the
distance from Keppler's to the goal.

He was still in the open country and driving recklessly, for he knew the
best part of his ride must be made outside the city limits.

He raced between desolate-looking cornfields with bare stalks and
patches of muddy earth rising above the thin covering of snow; truck
farms and brick-yards fell behind him on either side. It was very lonely
work, and once or twice the dogs ran yelping to the gates and barked
after him.

Part of his way lay parallel with the railroad tracks, and he drove for
some time beside long lines of freight and coal cars as they stood
resting for the night. The fantastic Queen Anne suburban stations were
dark and deserted, but in one or two of the block-towers he could see
the operators writing at their desks, and the sight in some way
comforted him.

Once he thought of stopping to get out the blanket in which he had
wrapped himself on the first trip, but he feared to spare the time, and
drove on with his teeth chattering and his shoulders shaking with the
cold.

He welcomed the first solitary row of darkened houses with a faint cheer
of recognition. The scattered lamp-posts lightened his spirits, and even
the badly paved streets rang under the beats of his horse's feet like
music. Great mills and manufactories, with only a night-watchman's light
in the lowest of their many stories, began to take the place of the
gloomy farm-houses and gaunt trees that had startled him with their
grotesque shapes. He had been driving nearly an hour, he calculated, and
in that time the rain had changed to a wet snow, that fell heavily and
clung to whatever it touched. He passed block after block of trim
work-men's houses, as still and silent as the sleepers within them, and
at last he turned the horse's head into Broad Street, the city's great
thoroughfare, that stretches from its one end to the other and cuts it
evenly in two.

He was driving noiselessly over the snow and slush in the street, with
his thoughts bent only on the clock-face he wished so much to see, when
a hoarse voice challenged him from the sidewalk. "Hey, you, stop there,
hold up!" said the voice.

Gallegher turned his head, and though he saw that the voice came from
under a policeman's helmet, his only answer was to hit his horse sharply
over the head with his whip and to urge it into a gallop.

This, on his part, was followed