"I do not need you at all now; only, do not be absent too long. When I meet this Leesy Sullivan, whom I have not yet seen, you remember, I want a long talk with her. The last object I have is to frighten her; I shall seek to soothe her instead. If I can once meet her face to face, and voice to voice, I believe I can tame the antelope, or the lioness, whichever she turns out to be. I do not think I shall have to coerce her--not even if she is guilty. If she is guilty she will give herself up. I may even take her home to dinner with us," he added, with a smile. "Don't shudder, Mr. Redfield; we often dine in company with murderers--sometimes when we have only our friends and neighbors with us. I assure you I have often had that honor!" His grim humor was melancholy to me--but who could wonder that a man of Mr. Burton's peculiar experience should be touched with cynicism? Besides, I felt that there was more in the inner meaning of his words than appeared upon their outer surface. I left him, sitting in a sheltered corner of the shop below, in a position where he could command the street and the entrance-hall without being himself observed, and making himself friendly with the busy little man behind the counter, of whom he had already purchased a pint of chestnuts. It would be as well that I should be out of the way. Miss Sullivan knew me, and might take alarm at some distant glimpse of me, while Mr. Burton's person must be unknown to her, unless she had been the better detective of the two, and marked him when he was ignorant of her vicinity. Stepping into a passing car, in a few minutes I had gone from the city of the living to the city of the dead. Beautiful and silent city! There the costly and gleaming portals, raised at the entrance of those mansions, tell us the name and age of the inhabitants, but the inhabitants themselves we never behold. Knock as loud and long as we may at those marble doors, cry, entreat, implore, they hold themselves invisible. Nevermore are they "at home" to us. We, who once were never kept waiting, must go from the threshold now, without a word of welcome. City of the dead--to which that city of the living must soon remove--who is there that can walk thy silent streets without a prescience of the time when he, too, will take up his abode in thee for ever? Strange city of solitude! where thousands whose homes are ranged side by side, know not one the other, and give no greeting to the pale new-comers.