s quarter of the city, greeted his nostrils, and
from the depths of the dark and dank passage a dog gave a perfunctory
bark.

Without hesitation Diogenes now began the ascent of the creaking stairs,
his heavy footfall echoing through the silent house. On one or two of
the landings as he mounted he was greeted by pale, inquiring faces and
round inquisitive eyes, whilst ghostlike forms emerged out of hidden
burrows for a moment to look on the noisy visitor and then equally
furtively vanished again.

On the topmost landing he halted; here a small skylight in the roof
afforded a modicum of light. Two doors confronted him, he went up to one
of them and knocked on it loudly with his fist.

Then he waited--not with great patience but with his ear glued to the
door listening to the sounds within. It almost seemed as if the room
beyond was the abode of the dead, for not a sound reached the listener's
ear. He knocked again, more loudly this time and more insistently. Still
no response. At the other door on the opposite side of the landing a
female figure appeared wrapped in a worsted rag, and a head half hidden
by a linen coif was thrust forward out of the darkness behind it.

"They's won't answer you," said the apparition curtly. "They are
strangers ... only came last night, but all this morning when the
landlord or his wife knocked at the door, they simply would not open
it."

"But I am a friend," said Diogenes, "the best I fancy that these poor
folk have."

"You used to lodge here until last night."

"Why yes. The lodgings are mine, I gave them up to these poor people who
had nowhere else to go."

"They won't answer you," reiterated the female apparition dolefully and
once more retired into its burrow.

The situation was becoming irritating. Diogenes put his mouth against
the keyhole and shouted "What ho, there! Open!" as lustily as his
powerful lungs would allow.

"Dondersteen!" he exclaimed, when even then he received no response.

But strange to relate no sooner was this expletive out of his mouth,
than there came a cry like that of a frightened small animal, followed
by a patter of naked feet upon a naked floor; the next moment the door
was thrown invitingly open, and Diogenes was able to step across its
thresh-hold.

"Dondersteen!" he ejaculated again, "hadst thou not opened, wench, I
would within the next few seconds have battered in the door."

The woman stood looking at him with great, dark eyes in w