with water; the leaves and petals were wet, and the acrid odour of moist
earth, mingling with perfumes, penetrated the room. Hodder paused in the
window.

"Sam keeps our flowers alive," he heard Mr. Bentley say, "I don't know
how."

"I scrubs 'em, sah," said Sam. "Yassah, I washes 'em like chilluns."

He found himself, at Mr. Bentley's request, asking grace, the old darky
with reverently bent head standing behind his master; sitting down at a
mahogany table that reflected like a mirror the few pieces of old silver,
to a supper of beaten biscuits that burned one's fingers, of 'broiled
chicken and coffee, and sliced peaches and cream. Mr. Bentley was
talking of other days--not so long gone by when the great city had been a
village, or scarcely more. The furniture, it seemed, had come from his
own house in what was called the Wilderness Road, not far from the river
banks, over the site of which limited trains now rolled on their way
eastward toward the northernmost of the city's bridges. He mentioned
many names, some remembered, some forgotten, like his own; dwelt on
pleasures and customs gone by forever.

"A little while after I moved in here, I found that one old man could not
fill the whole of this house, so I let the upper floors," he explained,
smilingly. "Some day I must introduce you to my tenants, Mr. Hodder."

By degrees, as Hodder listened, he became calm. Like a child, he found
himself distracted, talking, asking questions: and the intervals grew
longer between the recurrent surges of fear when the memory rose before
him of the events of the day,--of the woman, the child, and the man: of