I passed an alley, glittering strangely with bits of scattered window glass, and stood surveying an adjacent house which leaned crazily with a collapsed roof. It was a small white frame house, inexpensively built, and yet I saw that someone had once tended it carefully. The paint was bright; the little mailbox looked as if it had been scrubbed; and the trampled remains of a once-neat garden surrounded the place. As, musing, I stared at this wrecked house through the growing mist, I saw a face at one of the two front ground-floor windows. It was the face of an old man, white, mournful, filled with an ineffable desolation. I gazed at it in astonishment. My first thought was that an elderly vagrant had crept into the wreckage of the white house in order to pass the night. The dampness, probably, made his old bones ache. The face continued to look out at me; I walked away with some uneasiness. I shivered, blaming it on the cold mist. I had gone less than a half block when I saw the woman. Enormously fat, she sat in a wicker chair on the half-demolished veranda of a two-story house. She wore very thick-lensed glasses which seemed to reflect light from some hidden source. There was no moon, certainly, and I saw no artificial lights nearby. I was startled, but I supposed that a few people must still be clinging illegally to old homes in the area, pending final arrangements for the occupancy of a new residence. Some impulse urged me to hurry past, to move straight ahead without looking aside. Stubbornly, however, and against my own best judgement, I refused. Instead, I paused, cleared my throat and spoke. "Good evening," I said. The fat woman did not reply; she did not seem to have heard me. Possibly, I reasoned, in addition to having weak eyes, she was also hard of hearing. I moved a few steps up the front walk and nodded. "Good evening," I repeated, loudly. Then I blinked in astonishment. The wicker chair was empty! I stopped dead and stared at it. Momentarily I had glanced down at the walk to make sure that I would not stumble over debris; in those scant seconds the fat woman must have vacated her chair and slipped inside. I marveled. For one of her bulk, she moved with amazing agility. Turning, I went back to the sidewalk and started on. I supposed that the woman was self-conscious about her continued occupancy in the condemned house and had gone inside to avoid any necessity of discussing it with a stranger. As I walked away, I glanced back. Once again I saw light glitter on those thick-lensed glasses; the fat woman was back in her wicker chair. Something more than the swirling mist made me shudder. Frowning, I hurried on. It was late, I told myself, and I had better leave these ruined, mist-shrouded streets and go home to a good cup of hot tea. I walked rapidly, but I could not resist looking at the vacant houses I passed.