sked Harding, a good deal surprised and not a little out of temper.

"Humph!" answered the Superintendent. "This is not France under the
Empire, and I am not Fouche."

"The latter part of that sentence may probably be true: I have my doubts
about the other!" thought Tom Leslie, though he waited a more prudent
occasion for communicating the thought to Harding.

"And so, Mr. Superintendent, you consider all this of no consequence?"
said Harding, going back to first principles, and not by any means
improving in the matter of temper.

"I did not say anything of the kind!" answered the Superintendent, his
face sterner but his voice even as before. "I said there was nothing
upon which I could act, and the police force of the district is scarcely
sufficient to set a watch around all the houses that may happen to have
traitors in them. I would advise you to say nothing of this affair to
any other persons, if you have not yet done so; and if you see or hear
of anything more that _will_ seem to justify an arrest, communicate with
this office again."

He did not say "good morning!" as a sign of dismissal, but his manner
indicated as much, and the two friends left him with merely an
additional nod. Harding was in decided dudgeon as the policeman of the
bright blue cloth and the unimpeachable buttons accompanied them to the
door, and muttered something very like "I'm d--d if I _do_ communicate
with that office again, in a hurry!" Leslie, who had seen more of police
operations, both abroad and at home, than his friend, and who had
expected little or nothing else from the first,--kept his good humor
admirably; and he bored Harding, before they had walked from the office
to Broadway, with the information that that was about all the thanks any
man ever received for attempting to do a service to government or
individuals, and a relation of how at Naples a couple of years before,
he had attempted to save the life of an Englishman threatened with
assassination, and been arrested and very nearly imprisoned for an
attempt to stab the man himself, with his penknife or tooth-pick--he
never knew precisely which!

The two friends were scarcely in the street, when the Superintendent
called sharply:

"Mr. Carpenter!"

The Deputy was in the room in a moment. The Superintendent was writing a
few words on a piece of paper.

"You heard the story those men were telling?"

"A part of it--perhaps all," answered the Deputy.

"There may be so