of _The Bunhouse_, and made sleepily for
his lodgings. But sleep that night was to be a stranger to him, and his
share of adventures--which, like sorrows, never "come as single spies,
but in battalions"--was by no means exhausted.

The night, through which the first glimpse of dawn just peered, was
extremely cold; and Barton, who had left his great-coat in the _Hit or
Miss_, stamped his way homeward, his hands deep in his pockets, his hat
tight on his head, and with his pipe for company.

"There's the gray beginning, Zooks," he muttered to himself, in
half-conscious quotation. He was as drowsy as a man can be who still
steps along and keeps an open eye. The streets were empty, a sandy wind
was walking them alone, and hard by the sullen river flowed on, the
lamplights dimly reflected in the growing blue of morning. Barton was
just passing the locked doors of the _Hit or Miss_--for he preferred to
go homeward by the riverside--when a singular sound, or mixture of
sounds, from behind the battered old hoarding close by, attracted his
attention. In a moment he was as alert as if he had not passed a _nuit
blanche_. The sound at first seemed not very unlike that which a
traction engine, or any other monster that murders sleep, may make
before quite getting up steam. Then there was plainly discernible a
great whirring and flapping, as if a windmill had become deranged in its
economy, and was laboring "without a conscience or an aim." Whir, whir,
flap, thump, came the sounds, and then, mixed with and dominating them,
the choking scream of a human being in agony. But, strangely enough, the
scream appeared to be half checked and suppressed, as if the sufferer,
whoever he might be, and whatever his torment, were striving with all
his might to endure in silence. Barton had heard such cries in the rooms
of the hospital. To such sounds the Question Chambers of old prisons and
palaces must often have echoed. Barton stopped, thrilling with a
half-superstitious dread; so moving, in that urban waste, were the
accents of pain.

Then whir, flap, came the noise again, and again the human note was
heard, and was followed by a groan. The time seemed infinite, though
it was only to be reckoned by moments, or pulse-beats--the time during
which the torturing crank revolved, and was answered by the hard-wrung
exclamation of agony. Barton looked at the palings of the hoarding: they
were a couple of feet higher than his head. Then he sprung up, ca