The plans I had in mind still kept me from making headway as the crow flies. I went far up the Avenue; I crossed into Madison Avenue; I went up that again; I crossed into Park Avenue. I crossed and recrossed and crisscrossed and descended, and at last found myself strolling by a house toward which I scarcely dared to turn my eyes, feeling that even for looking at it I might be arrested. I slackened my pace so as to verify all the points which experts had underscored in my hearing. There was the vacant lot which the surrounding buildings rendered so dark at night. There was the low, red-brown fence inclosing the back premises, over which a limber, long-legged fellow like me could leap in a second. There were the usual numerous windows—to kitchen, scullery, pantry, laundry—of any good-sized American house, some one of which was pretty sure to be left unguarded on a summer night. There were the neighboring yards, with more low fences, offering excellent cover in a get-away, with another vacant lot leading out on another street a little farther down. I had so many times strolled by the house as I was doing now, and had so many times rehearsed its characteristics, that I made the final review with some exactitude before passing on my way. My way was not far. There was nothing to do but to go back into the Park. As it was nearly six o’clock, it was too late to search for a job that day, and I should have had no heart for doing so in any case. I had found a job that morning—that of handling big packing-cases in a warehouse—but I was too exhausted for the work. When in the effort to lift one onto a truck I collapsed and nearly fainted, I was told in a choice selection of oaths to beat it as no good. I sat on a bench, therefore, waiting for the dark and thinking of the house of which I had just inspected the outside. It was not a house picked at random. It was one that had possessed an interest for me during all the three years I had been in New York. I had, in fact, brought a letter of introduction to its owner from the man under whom I had worked in Montreal. Chiefly through my own carelessness, nothing came of that, but I never failed, when I passed this way, to stare at the dwelling as one in which I might have had a footing. The occupant was also a well-known architect in New York. In the architects’ offices in which I found employment I heard him praised, criticized, condemned. His work was good or bad according to the speaker’s point of view. I thought it tolerably good, with an over-emphasis on ornament.