mething in it--I think there _is_," continued the
Superintendent. "At all events, put those two houses"--handing him the
slip of paper--"under close watch, and discover who enters and who
leaves them, and at what hours. Put B---- and another good man in charge
of the Prince Street house, and L---- and another good man at the one in
East 5-- Street. That is all."

The Deputy merely bowed and returned to his own table, beckoning to one
of the policemen near the door and giving the necessary orders to carry
out the directions of his superior. So that almost by the time the two
friends reached Broadway, and certainly some time before Leslie
concluded his illustrative narration of police management in Naples, the
arrangement for which they had especially come, and which had been
apparently denied, was already in active operation. The reasons which
had induced the Superintendent to underrate to Harding and Leslie the
importance of the intelligence he had just received, or which had led to
so sudden a change of mind, will probably remain a mystery even after
the profounder mysteries of governmental management during the war are
brought into broad daylight. There is no Sphynx like your "man in
authority," whether his reasons for silence be that he does not wish
others to know his intentions, or that he _does not know them himself_.

It was perhaps one o'clock when the two friends reached Broadway and
turned downward to return to their different places of business--Harding
of course to his store near the Hospital, and Leslie to his little desk
in the office of the _Daily Thundergust_, or anywhere else in the more
frequented parts of the town, where he might chance to pick up material
for an item or an article. Broadway at that point and at that moment
presented an appearance that used to be extraordinary, but that of late
months has been almost as common as its ordinary crowded condition. One
of the Eastern regiments, that had just landed at the New Haven Railroad
Depot, was on its way down to the Park Barracks, and the police had been
clearing the street of omnibuses and carriages to make room for them.
The sidewalks on both sides were pretty well filled with
spectators--idlers who never find anything better to do than gazing at
street spectacles, and people of both sexes, with more or less of
business on hand, who cannot avoid pausing for a moment when the police
sweep by to clear the street and the tap of the bass-drum is
he