reformer, and Varney, turning, continued his way down Main Street toward
the river and the _Cypriani_, not entirely displeased, after all, that
Peter had found some congenial diversion for the evening.

The street was almost a desert. If the unmistakable sounds of revelry by
night meant anything, nearly the whole population was behind him in the
Ottoman bar. But in the middle of the next block, two ragged men,
standing idly and talking together, turned at the sounds of the young
man's steps. One of them, revealed by a near-by shop-light, had straggly
gray whiskers, vacant eyes, and a bad foolish mouth. Both of them stared
at Varney with marked intentness. He had to go quite out of his way to
get round them.

"They don't see strangers every day, I take it," he thought absently;
and suddenly he cast an inquiring eye at the heavens.

The night, so shining half an hour before, was becoming heavily
overcast. Clouds had rolled up from nowhere and blotted out the moon.
About him the night breeze was freshening with a certain significance;
and now unexpectedly there fell upon his ear the faint far rumble of
thunder. Decidedly, there would be rain, and that right soon. Varney
quickened his pace.

At the end of that quiet block he came upon a crimson-cheeked lady,
somewhat past her first youth and over-plump for beauty, who was engaged
in putting up the shutters at her mother's grocery establishment.
Glancing around casually at his approach, her glance became transfixed
into a stare.

"Well!" she exclaimed in surprise and not without coquettishness--"if it