In less than an hour after his arrival Slippery Dick had executed his commission and was filling up the grave. With the utmost care he pressed down the earth and drew up the loosened soil. There had been a bunch of faded flowers upon the mound; he restored these and with a sigh of relief shouldered his spade and auger and took his departure, glad to leave the grewsome spot. But a dramatic pantomime had been enacted near him which he never saw. While he was engaged in marking the head of the lifeless body, the slender form of a man appeared above him and shrank back in horror at the discovery. This man turned and picked up the heavy spade and swung it in air. If it had descended the negro would have been brained. But thought is a monarch! Slowly the arm descended, the spade was laid upon the ground, and the form a moment before animated with an overwhelming passion stood silent and motionless behind the cedar. When the negro withdrew, this man followed, gliding from cover to cover, or following boldly in the open, but at all times with a tread as soft as a panther's. Down they went, the criminal and his shadow, down into the suburbs, then into the streets and then into the heart of the city. Near the office of Amos Royson the man in front uttered a peculiar whistle and passed on. At the next corner under the electric lamp he turned and found himself confronted by a slender man, whose face shone white under the ghastly light of the lamp, whose hair hung upon his shoulders, and whose eyes were distended with excitement. Uttering a cry of fright, the negro sprang from the sidewalk into the gutter, but the other passed on without turning except to cross the street, where in a friendly shadow he stopped. And as he stood there the negro retraced his steps and paused at the door of the lawyer's office. A dimly outlined form was at the window above. They had no more than time to exchange a word when the negro went on and the street was bare, except that a square away a heavy-footed policeman was approaching. The man in the shadow leaned his head against a tree and thought. In his brain, standing out as distinct as if cut from black marble, was the face of the man he had followed. Gerald possessed the reasoning faculty to an eminent degree, but it had been trained altogether upon abstract propositions. The small affairs of life were strange and remote to him, and the passions that animate the human breast were forces and agencies beyond his knowledge and calculations.