irritated him, in spite of the amusement at himself
he felt at the sensation.

"Didn't think I was so far gone as to be jealous of Trotter," he
muttered.

Then he slipped into the hat-room and was quickly capped and cloaked
for that precious boon to the bored, the exit _sans adieu_.

V.

It was a raw, searching Christmas morning into which Van Morris
stepped, as he softly closed the door of the Allmand mansion and
turned up his fur collar against "a nipping and an eager air."

Even in that fashionable section the streets already showed somewhat
of the bustle of the busy to-morrow. Belated caterers' carts spun by;
early butchers' and milk-wagons rumbled along, making their best speed
towards distant patrons. Here and there, gleams from gas-lit windows
slanted athwart the frosty darkness, punctuated by ever-recurrent
flaring of street lamps. Not infrequent groups of muffled men--some
jovial with reminiscent scenes of pleasure left behind, and some
hilarious from what they brought along with them--passed him, as he
strode rapidly along the echoing flags, too intent on his own thoughts
to notice any of them.

Suddenly, from beneath one of the gloom punctuators opposite, a
woman's voice cut the air sharply:

"_Please_ let me pass!"

Morris, alert in a second, had crossed the street and joined the group
of four intuitively, before he knew it himself. Three young men, whose
evening dress told that they were of society, and whose unsteady hold
of their own legs, that they had had just a little too much of it,
barred the way of a young girl. Tall, slight, and with a mass of
blonde hair escaping from the rough shawl she drew closer about her
head as she shrank back, there was something showing through her
womanly terror that spoke convincingly the gentlewoman. The trio
chuckled inanely, making elaborate bows; and the girl shivered as she
shrank further into the shadow, and repeated piteously:

"Do, _please_, let me pass! _won't_ you?"

"Certainly they will," Van answered, stepping up on the pavement and
taking her in at a glance. "Am I not right, gentlemen?" he added
urbanely to the unsteady trio.

"Not by a damned sight!"

"Who the devil are you?" were the prompt and simultaneous rejoinders.

"That doesn't matter," Van answered quietly; "but you are obstructing
the public streets and frightening this evident stranger."

"We don't know any stranger at two o'clock in the morning," was the
illogical rejoinder