Maitland paused on the forward deck of the craft and faced about, looking the cabby trustfully in the eye. "I leave it to you," he replied politely. "Just as you please." The driver gasped. "You see," Maitland continued with a courteous smile, "I have two engagements: one at Sherry's, the other with the ten-twenty train from Long Island City. What would you, as man to man, advise me to do, cabby?" "Well, sir, seein' as you puts it to me straight," returned the cabby with engaging candor, "I'd go home, sir, if I was you, afore I got any worse." "Thank you," gravely. "Long Island City depôt, then, cabby." Maitland extended himself languidly upon the cushions. "Surely," he told the night, "the driver knows best--he and Bannerman." The cab started off jogging so sedately up Madison Avenue that Maitland glanced at his watch and elevated his brows dubiously; then with his stick poked open the trap in the roof. "If you really think it best for me to go home, cabby, you'll have to drive like hell," he suggested mildly. "Yessir!" A whip-lash cracked loudly over the horse's back, and the hansom, lurching into Thirty-fourth Street on one wheel, was presently jouncing eastward over rough cobbles, at a regardless pace which roused the gongs of the surface cars to a clangor of hysterical expostulation. In a trice the "L" extension was roaring overhead; and a little later the ferry gates were yawning before them. Again Maitland consulted his watch, commenting briefly: "In time." Yet he reckoned without the ferry, one of whose employees deliberately and implacably swung to the gates in the very face of the astonished cab-horse, which promptly rose upon its hind legs and pawed the air with gestures of pardonable exasperation. To no avail, however; the gates remained closed, the cabby (with language) reined his steed back a yard or two, and Maitland, lighting a cigarette, composed himself to simulate patience. Followed a wait of ten minutes or so, in which a number of vehicles joined company with the cab; the passenger was vaguely aware of the jarring purr of a motor-car, like that of some huge cat, in the immediate rear. A circumstance which he had occasion to recall ere long. In the course of time the gates were again opened. The bridge cleared of incoming traffic. As the cabby drove aboard the boat, with nice consideration selecting the choicest stand of all, well out upon the forward deck, a motor-car slid in, humming, on the right of the hansom. Maitland sat forward, resting his forearms on the apron, and jerked his cigarette out over the gates; the glowing stub described a fiery arc and took the water with a hiss. Warm whiffs of the river's sweet and salty breath fanned his face gratefully, and he became aware that there was a moon. His gaze roving at will, he nodded an even-tempered approbation of the night's splendor: in the city a thing unsuspected.