to supply so
many pins to the torn gathers of the dress as enabled her to walk and
hid her exposed under-clothing; and the instant that object was
accomplished she thrust her arm into his, he making no attempt to repel
the familiarity, but walking with hasty strides and almost dragging her
after him, down into the partial gloom of Houston Street.

When they had disappeared, and not till then, the two friends removed
from the spot where they had been standing entirely silent, and passed
on up Broadway.

"A strange person--a very strange person, that!" said Harding, the
moment after, to Leslie, who appeared to be thinking intently, and who
had not uttered a word since the affair commenced.

"Y--a--es!" said Leslie, in that slow, abstracted tone which indicates
that the man who uses it is doing so mechanically and without knowing
what he says.

"Poor devil! how the new man whirled him out into the street!" Harding
went on, _his_ attention on the incident, as Leslie's apparently was
not. "Just the treatment he deserved for being brutal to a woman, no
matter how lost or degraded she may be! Tearing off her dress was all
right enough, however, for all the woman deserve nothing better than to
have their dresses torn into ribbons for thrusting them under our feet
and sweeping the streets with them, as they do!"

Harding was thinking, at the moment, of a little adventure of his own a
few weeks before, in which, hurrying along to an appointment, early in
the evening, not far from the St. Nicholas, he had come up with a party
of theatre-goers, trodden upon the dress of one of the ladies in
attempting to pass--in extricating himself from that awkwardness,
trodden upon the dresses of two more--and left the whole three nearly
naked in the street; while three female voices were screaming in shame
and mortification, and three male voices sending words after him the
very reverse of complimentary.

"You think that a singular person?" at length said Leslie, as if waking
from a reverie, but proving at the same time that he had heard the words
of his friend. "You are right, he is so!"

"What! do you know him?" asked Harding, surprised.

"I do, indeed," was the reply of Leslie; "but I should as soon have
thought of meeting Schamyl or Garibaldi in the streets of New York, at
this moment, as the man we have just encountered. Fortunately, he did
not recognize me--perhaps, thanks to this hat--(it _is_ an immense hat,
isn't it, Harding