It had been several weeks since Carlin had heard from his sister. She had called at the store on her return from Canada, where she had spent the summer, and he had helped her find a small suite of rooms on a side street off St. Mark's Place, which she subsequently occupied, but since then she had never crossed his threshold. At first she had kept him advised of her nursing engagements--the days when her work carried her out of town, or the addresses of those who needed her in the city. These brief communications having entirely ceased, he had decided in his anxiety to look her up and, strange to say, on that very night. That his hand trembled and his rough, weather-browned face became tinged with color as he read her letter to the end, turning the page and reading the whole a second time, would have surprised anybody who knew the stern, silent old sailor. His clerk, a thin, long-necked young man wearing a paper collar and green necktie, noticed his agitation and guessed wrong--Carlin being a confirmed old bachelor. And so did the driver of the wagon, who had to wait for his receipt and who, wondering at Stephen's emotion, would have asked what the letter was all about had not the ship-chandler, after consulting his watch, crammed the envelope into his side pocket, jumped to his feet, and shouted to the Paper Collar to “roll the stuff off that sidewalk and get everything stowed away, as he was going up to St. Mark's Place.” Here and there in the whir of the great city a restful breathing-spot is found, its stretch of grass dotted with moss-covered tombs grouped around a low-pitched church. At certain hours the sound of bells is heard and the low rhythm of the organ throbbing through the aisles. Then lines of quietly dressed worshippers stroll along the bordered walks, the children's hands fast in their mothers' the arched vestibule-door closing upon them. Most of these oases, like Trinity, St. Paul's, and St. Mark's, differ but little--the same low-pitched church, the same slender spire, the same stretch of green with its scattered gravestones. And, outside, the same old demon of hurry, defied and hurled back by a lifted hand armed with the cross. Of these three breathing-spaces, St. Mark's is, perhaps, a little greener in the early spring, less dusty in the summer heat, less bare and uninviting in the winter snow. It is more restful, too, than the others, a place in which to sit and muse--even to read. Out from its shade and sunshine run queer side streets, with still queerer houses, rising two stories and an attic, each with a dormer and huge chimney. Dried-up old aristocrats, these, living on the smallest of pensions, taking toll of notaries public, shyster lawyers, peddlers of steel pens, die-cutters, and dismal real-estate agents in dismal offices boasting a desk, two chairs, and a map.