forge slowly up the Avenue and vanish round the Thirty-sixth
Street corner; then turned his face southward, sighing with
weariness and discontent.

At Thirty-fourth Street a policeman, lounging beneath the
corrugated iron awning of a corner saloon, faced about with a low
whistle, to stare after him. Maitland experienced a chill sense of
criminal guilt; he was painfully conscious of those two shrewd
eyes, boring gimlet-like into his back, overlooking no detail of
the wreck of his evening clothes. Involuntarily he glanced down at
his legs, and they moved mechanically beneath the edge of his
overcoat, like twin animated columns of mud and dust, openly
advertising his misadventures. He felt in his soul that they
shrieked aloud, that they would presently succeed in dinning all
the town awake, so that the startled populace would come to the
windows to stare in wonder as he passed by. And inwardly he
groaned and quaked.

As for the policeman, after some reluctant hesitation, he overcame
the inherent indisposition to exertion that affects his kind, and,
swinging his stick, stalked after Maitland.

Happily (and with heartfelt thanksgiving) the young man chanced
upon a somnolent and bedraggled hack, at rest in the stenciled
shadows of the Third Avenue elevated structure. Its pilot was
snoring lustily the sleep of the belated, on the box. With some
difficulty he was awakened, and Maitland dodged into the musty,
dusty body of the vehicle, grateful to escape the unprejudiced
stare of the guardian of the peace, who in another moment would
have overtaken him and, doubtless, subjected him to embarrassing