fruitless. The man had appeared like a vision from the past, and
vanished. Whither? Out of the country, once more? Over the seas? Had he
taken quick alarm at Steele's words, and effected a hasty retreat from
the scenes of his graceless and nefarious career?

Reluctantly John Steele found himself forced to entertain the
possibility of this being so; otherwise the facilities at his command
were such that he should most likely, ere this, have been able to attain
his end, find what he sought. Soberly attired, he attracted no very
marked attention in the slums,--breeding spots of the criminal classes;
the denizens knew John Steele; he had been there oft before.

He had, on occasion, assisted some of them with stern good advice or
more substantial services. He was acquainted with these men and women;
had, perhaps, a larger charity for them than most people find it
expedient to cherish. His glance had always seemed to read them through
and through, with uncompromising realization of their infirmities,
weaknesses of the flesh and inherited moral imperfections. His very
fearlessness had ever commended him to that lower world; it did now,
enabling him the better to cast about in divers directions.

To hear nothing, to learn nothing, at least, very little! One man had
seen the object of Steele's solicitude and to this person, a weazened
little "undesirable," the red-headed giant had confided that London was
pretty hot and he thought of decamping from it.

"'Arter all this time that's gone by,' he says to me, bitter-like, 'to
think a man can't come back to 'is native 'ome without being spied on
for what ought long ago to be dead and forgot!' But you're not trying to
lay hands on 'im, to put 'im in the pen, gov'ner?"