inite purpose; he carried a little bundle in his hand.

"What a villain he looks!" whispered Brown. "Upon my soul, I do believe
that he is going to murder somebody!"

"Ah, the vile animal! We will pursue," answered Jaune, also in a
whisper.

Giving the Count a start of a dozen house fronts, they stepped out from
their retreat and followed him cautiously. He walked quickly up
Macdougal Street until he came out on Washington Square. For a moment
he paused--by Sam Wah's laundry--and then turned sharply to the left
along Fourth Street. At a good pace he crossed Sixth Avenue, swung
around the curve that Fourth Street makes before beginning its
preposterous journey northward, went on past the three little balconied
houses whose fronts are on Washington Place, and so came out upon the
open space where Washington Place and Barrow Street and Fourth Street
all run into each other. It was hereabout that Wouter Van Twiller had
his tobacco farm a trifle less than two centuries ago.

The Count stopped, as though to get his bearings, and while they waited
for him to go on Brown nudged Jaune to look at the delightfully
picturesque frame house, set in a deep niche between two high brick
houses, with the wooden stair elbowing up its outside to its third
story. It came out wonderfully well in the moonlight, but Jaune was too
much excited even to glance at it.

At the next group of corners--where Fourth Street crosses Grove and
Christopher Streets at the point where they go sidling into each other
along the slanting lines of the little park--the Count halted again.
Evidently, the exceeding crookedness of Greenwich Village puzzled him--
as well it might. Presently a Christopher Street car came along and set
him straight; and thus guided, he started resolutely westward, as
though heading for the river.

"Is it posseeble that he goes 'imself to drown?" suggested d'Antimoine.

"No such good luck," Brown answered shortly.

Coming out on what used to be called "the Strand"--West Street they
call it now--the Count bore away from the lights of the Hoboken Ferry
and from the guarded docks of the White Star and Anchor lines of
steamers, skirted the fleet of oyster boats, and so came to the quiet
pier at the foot of Perry Street, where the hay barges unload. This
pier runs a long way out into the river, for it is a part of what was
called Sapo-kamikke Point in Indian times. The Count stopped and looked
cautiously around him, but his pursuers