branches of an old vine, which had spent its whole life trying to grow
high enough to look over the tall fence into the yard beyond; but this
was so long ago that not even the landlord remembered the color of its
blossoms.

Then there was an old-fashioned hydrant, with a half-spiral crank of
a handle on its top and the curved end of a lead pipe always aleak
thrust through its rotten side, with its little statues of ice all
winter and its spattering slop all summer.
Besides all this there were some broken flower-pots in a heap in one
corner,--suicides from the window-sills above,--and some sagging
clothes-lines, and a battered watering-pot, and a box or two that might
once have held flowers; and yet with all this circumstantial evidence
against me I cannot conscientiously believe that this forlorn courtyard
ever could have risen to the dignity of a garden.

But of course nothing of all this can be seen at night. At night one
sees only the tall clock tower of Jefferson Market with its one blazing
eye glaring high up over the fence, the little lantern hung in the
tunnel, and the glow through the curtains shading the old-fashioned
windows of the house itself, telling of warmth and comfort within.

To-night when I pushed open the swinging door--the door of the tunnel
entering from the street--the lantern was gone, and in its stead there
was only the glimmer of a mysterious light moving about the yard,--a
light that fell now on the bare wall, now on the front steps, making
threads of gold of the twisted iron railings, then on the posts of the
leaning fence, against which hung three feathery objects,--grotesque
and curious in the changing shadows,--and again on some barrels and
boxes surrounded by loose straw.