Just then a man moved slowly from the shadows near the fountain. He leisurely walked toward the reservoir. She watched him for a moment, until the pale moonlight again faded away, and darkness shut him from view. Then, as if by inspiration, she suddenly remembered that the note directed her to the top of the "long steps." In her excitement, she had taken the wrong direction, and was then at the top of the long walk. Cautiously as possible, she crept down the bank, crossed the bridge, that spanned the park's main artery, and though confusing in the darkness, she at last found her way to the appointed place without meeting or seeing anyone, but with nerves almost snapping asunder, and so fatigued that her limbs trembled. She sat on a bench near a clump of small firs to get a little rest, and while peering through the darkness, which at that point was faintly illumined by the mass of distant lights spread over the city before and beneath her, she made out the figure of a man walking leisurely on the drive below where she was sitting. She arose to her feet, and silently stepped in the deep shadow of a clump of trees, and watched him. She took him to be the same man she had seen a little while before near the fountain. As she watched him, another man, who had been concealed in the grove of trees, recently trimmed out to make way for the traditional group of Indians in bronze, "The Coming of the White Man," and which now graces the spot--stole up with cat-like tread behind her, and then, quite close, halted, and silently stood regarding her. Virginia was watching the stranger on the road, almost directly below her, with such intense eagerness as to be quite unconscious of the dark shadow behind her. "Perhaps I am being watched," she thought. "I will go down the steps." She turned about, and was terrified to discover a roughly-clad man at her elbow. Her heart seemed to stop its beat. "What do you mean? Who are you?" she gasped. The man lifted his hat, bowed and softly said: "Bees a-note a da fraid, Signora de Virginia. Eesa nota-a do you-a da harm. I come to da meet-a you." His easy, respectful manner reassured her. Relieved, she said: "Then it was you who sent me the note this morning?" "He, he, he, he," he chuckled low, but exultantly. "Eesa tole-a da self a-da letta would-a da fetch a-you." "What do you want--what am I--who are you?" He turned his head aside, and muttered to himself. "She doesn't recognize me as the old cripple," and evaded a direct answer by asking her: "Donna you da know-a me?" "Your voice sounds like"--and she thought of the old cripple who intruded on Mr. Harris' grounds a few nights since. "Yes--what"-- And she halted, unable to frame her thoughts into words. He laughed low and gutturally. "He, he, he, he, eesa be a da fine-a artiste. Make-a da boss actor--like-a Salvina--bime by, eh?" "You--you--you kidnapped little Dorothy," she almost shrieked, forgetting her fear, and searching him with glittering eyes.