"Well?" said the latter, expecting more. They had again crossed the street, and stood opposite the house of mystery. Leslie was endeavoring to brush his soiled clothes with that most difficult of all brushes, the hand. Harding was looking full at the window, and waiting for the further explanation. Suddenly, a carriage whirled through Prince from the direction of Broadway, and pulled up immediately before the house. Leslie stopped brushing his clothes. At the same moment, a head was again thrust against the window, and immediately withdrawn. Then the light against the curtain dimmed suddenly. Leslie "put that and that together" with the celerity of a lawyer and the confidence of a man of the world. The people in that house were going away. Where? That was something to be looked into. "You know where the livery stable round the corner is, on Houston?" he asked hurriedly of Harding. "Yes," was the reply. "I am too lame to run fast," said Leslie, speaking very rapidly. "We must follow those people, if they go to perdition. Go to the stable, quick--do. There is always at least one carriage standing ready, and have it here as soon as money can bring it. I will watch meanwhile. Hurry! hurry!" Probably Harding, who was rather precise in his ordinary movements, had not gone so fast in ten years. He was around the corner before the last words had fairly left Leslie's mouth--going as if an enraged woman and three lively policemen had been close after him. Leslie stepped across the street again, took a glance at the number on the lamps of the hack as he passed, and then ensconced himself in a deserted doorway very near, to watch what followed. Every moment that Harding was gone seemed an hour. Would they come out and get away, after all, before the coming of the other vehicle? What kept him so long? (He had been gone about half a minute!) Had there been, for once, no carriage in waiting at the livery? or had Harding concluded to go to sleep on the road? And what the deuce did it all mean--the half-dozen persons, and one a woman almost completely stripped, whom he had seen in that moment's glance into that upper chamber? And the red woman!--aye, the _red woman_!--that bothered Tom Leslie the worst, and as he had himself confessed, frightened him.