apparently no
one paid the least attention to him. Finally he returned to the railway
station; and at six o'clock that evening he left the platform of the
125th Street Station, and appraised covertly the men who accompanied him
to the street. He felt assured that they were all Americans. Probably
they were; but there are still some stray fools of American birth who
cannot accept the great American doctrine as the only Ararat visible
in this present flood. Perhaps one of these accompanied Hawksley to the
street. Whatever he was, one had upon order met every south-going train
since seven o'clock that morning, when Quasimodo, paying from the
gold hidden in his belt, had sent forth the telegraphic alarm. The man
hurried across the street and followed Hawksley by matching his steps.
His business was merely to learn the other's destination and then to
report.

Across the earth a tempest had been loosed; but Ariel did not ride
it, Caliban did. The scythe of terror was harvesting a type; and the
innocent were bending with the guilty.

Suddenly Hawksley felt young, revivified, free. He had arrived.
Surmounting indescribable hazards and hardships he walked the pavement
of New York. In an hour the mutable quicksands of a great city would
swallow him forever. Free! He wanted to stroll about, peer into shop
windows, watch the amazing electric signs, dally; but he still had much
to accomplish.

He searched for a telephone sign. It was necessary that he find one
immediately. He had once spent six weeks in and about this marvellous
city, and he had a vague recollection of the blue-and-white enamel
signs. Shortly he found one. It was a pay station in the rear of a news
and tobacco shop.

He entered a booth, but discovered that he had no five-cent pieces in
his purse. He hurried out to the girl behind the cigar stand. She was
exhibiting a box of cigars to a customer, who selected three, paid for
them, and walked away. Hawksley, boiling with haste to have his affair
done, flung a silver coin toward the girl.

"Five-cent pieces!"

"Will you take them with you or shall I send them?" asked the girl,
earnestly.

"I beg pardon!"

"Any particular kind of ribbon you want the box tied with?"

"I beg your pardon!" repeated Hawksley, harried and bewildered. "But I'm
in a hurry--"

"Too much of a hurry to leave out the bark when you ask a favour? I make
change out of courtesy. And you all bark at me Nickel! Nickel! as if
that was my j