It was so cold that when the boy stamped his feet against the
footboard to keep them warm, sharp pains shot up through his body, and
when he beat his arms about his shoulders, as he had seen real cabmen
do, the blood in his finger-tips tingled so acutely that he cried
aloud with the pain.

He had often been up that late before, but he had never felt so
sleepy. It was as if some one was pressing a sponge heavy with
chloroform near his face, and he could not fight off the drowsiness
that lay hold of him.

He saw, dimly hanging above his head, a round disc of light that
seemed like a great moon, and which he finally guessed to be the
clock-face for which he had been on the look-out. He had passed it
before he realized this; but the fact stirred him into wakefulness
again, and when his cab's wheels slipped around the City Hall corner,
he remembered to look up at the other big clock-face that keeps awake
over the railroad station and measures out the night.

He gave a gasp of consternation when he saw that it was half-past two,
and that there was but ten minutes left to him. This, and the many
electric lights and the sight of the familiar pile of buildings,
startled him into a semi-consciousness of where he was and how great
was the necessity for haste.

He rose in his seat and called on the horse, and urged it into a
reckless gallop over the slippery asphalt. He considered nothing else
but speed, and looking neither to the left nor right dashed off down
Broad Street into Chestnut, where his course lay straight away to the