e intersecting
street, but saw nothing save the oases of light shed by the street lamps
at the successive crossings. Then he strolled back the way he had come.
He was a shadow of a man, sliding noiselessly and without undue movement
through the semi-darkness. Also he was very alert, like a wild animal in
the jungle, keenly perceptive and receptive. The movement of another in
the darkness about him would need to have been more shadowy than he to
have escaped him.

In addition to the running advertisement of the state of affairs carried
to him by his senses, he had a subtler perception, a FEEL, of the
atmosphere around him. He knew that the house in front of which he
paused for a moment, contained children. Yet by no willed effort of
perception did he have this knowledge. For that matter, he was not even
aware that he knew, so occult was the impression. Yet, did a moment
arise in which action, in relation to that house, were imperative, he
would have acted on the assumption that it contained children. He was
not aware of all that he knew about the neighbourhood.

In the same way, he knew not how, he knew that no danger threatened in
the footfalls that came up the cross street. Before he saw the walker,
he knew him for a belated pedestrian hurrying home. The walker came
into view at the crossing and disappeared on up the street. The man that
watched, noted a light that flared up in the window of a house on the
corner, and as it died down he knew it for an expiring match. This was
conscious identification of familiar phenomena, and through his mind
flitted the thought, "Wanted to know what time." In another house one
room was lighted. The light burned dimly and steadily, and he had the
feel that it was a sick-room.

He was especially interested in a house across the street in the middle
of the block. To this house he paid most attention. No matter what
way he looked, nor what way he walked, his looks and his steps always
returned to it. Except for an open window above the porch, there was
nothing unusual about the house. Nothing came in nor out. Nothing
happened. There were no lighted windows, nor had lights appeared and
disappeared in any of the windows. Yet it was the central point of his
consideration. He rallied to it each time after a divination of the
state of the neighbourhood.

Despite his feel of things, he was not confident. He was supremely
conscious of the precariousness of his situation. Though unperturbed