en red brick family
tomb! Shall we? How about it, Plank?"

O'Hara turned impatiently on his heel with a gesture of adieu, climbed
into his electric hansom, and went buzzing away up the avenue.

"I'd like to, but I don't think I know Mr. Siward well enough to do
that," said Plank diffidently. He hesitated, colouring up. "He might
misunderstand my going with you--as a liberty--which perhaps I might not
have ventured on had he been less--less unfortunate."

Again Fleetwood warmed toward the ruddy, ponderous young man beside him.
"See here," he said, "you are going as a friend of mine--if you care to
look at it that way."

"Thank you," said Plank; "I should be very glad to go in that way."

The Siward house was old only in the comparative Manhattan meaning of
the word; for in New York nothing is really very old, except the faces
of the young men.

Decades ago it had been considered a big house, and it was still so
spoken of--a solid, dingy, red brick structure, cubical in proportions,
surmounted by heavy chimneys, the depth of its sunken windows hinting
of the thickness of wall and foundation. Window-curtains of obsolete
pattern, all alike, and all drawn, masked the blank panes. Three massive
wistaria-vines, the gnarled stems as thick as tree-trunks, crawled
upward to the roof, dividing the facade equally, and furnishing some
relief to its flatness, otherwise unbroken except by the deep reveals
of window and door. Two huge and unsymmetrical catalpa trees stood
sentinels before it, dividing curb from asphalt; and from the centres of
the shrivelled, brown grass-plots flanking the stoop under the basement
windows two aged Rose-of-Sharon trees bristled naked to the height of
the white marble capitals of the flaking pillars supporting the stained
portico.

An old New York house, in the New York sense. Old in another sense,
too, where in a rapid land Time outstrips itself, painting, with the
antiquity of centuries, the stone and mortar which were new scarce ten
years since.

"Nice old family mausoleum," commented Fleetwood, descending from the
hansom, followed by Plank. The latter instinctively mounted the stoop on
tiptoe, treading gingerly as one who ventures into precincts unknown but
long respected; and as Fleetwood pulled the old-fashioned bell, Plank
stole a glance over the facade, where wisps of straw trailed from
sparrows' nests, undisturbed, wedged between plinth and pillar; where,
behind the lace pane-screens,