two-column portrait of Mr. Dan Anisty, cracksman, accompanied by a
vivacious catalogue of that notoriety's achievements in the field
of polite burglary, hardly stirred his interest. An elusive
resemblance which he traced in the features of Mr. Anisty, as
presented by the Sketch-Artist-on-the-Spot, to some one whom he,
Maitland, had known in the dark backwards and abysm of time,
merely drew from him the comment: "Homely brute!" And he laid the
papers aside, cradling his chin in the palm of one hand and
staring for a weary while out of the car window at a reeling and
moonsmitten landscape. He yawned exhaustively, his thoughts astray
between a girl garbed all in grey, Bannerman's earnest and
thoughtful face, and the pernicious activities of Mr. Daniel
Anisty, at whose door Maitland laid the responsibility for this
most fatiguing errand....

The brakeman's wolf-like yelp--"Greenfields!"--was ringing in his
ears when he awoke and stumbled down aisle and car-steps just in
the nick of time. The train, whisking round a curve cloaked by a
belt of somber pines, left him quite alone in the world, cast
ruthlessly upon his own resources.

An hour had elapsed; it was now midnight; the moon rode high, a
cold white disk against a background of sapphire velvet, its
pellucid rays revealing with disheartening distinctness the
inanimate and lightless roadside hamlet called Greenfields; its
general store and postoffice, its _soi-disant_ hotel, its
straggling line of dilapidated habitations, all wrapped in silence
profound and impenetrable. Not even a dog howled; not a belated
villager was in sight; and it was a moral certainty that the local
livery service had closed down for the night.