Otherwise the tall, lean workman with the hollow cheeks and luminous eyes was left to prosecute his apparently fruitless search for work unquestioned. Mrs. Clark was far too busy with her brood of offspring to concern herself with his affairs, a small mercy vouchsafed him, and for which he was duly thankful. Mr. Charles Smith by no means courted the intimacy of his neighbors, or his fellow-lodger; at the same time, he avoided exciting any suspicion. He had received a letter that morning. He had read it at once. It was written in German, but the address upon the outer envelope was in a bold English handwriting. After reading it he straightened up his meagre room in a preoccupied fashion. His big, foreign-looking eyes were more than usually reflective, and a curious pucker of thought had drawn his shaggy brows together. Then, as was his rule, he passed out of the house, greeting the ragged fragments of humanity, who owed--and rarely yielded--obedience to Mrs. Clark, in his friendly fashion, and set out on what appeared to be his daily pursuit of employment. He returned at noon. He read his letter again, and sat thinking about it until he was disturbed by one of the children. Then he again set forth. Nor did he return to his abode until darkness had closed in, and the army of small children had been bestowed for the night in their various nooks and corners of the lower premises. He lit the cheap oil lamp on his table, seated himself in the unstable old basket-chair beside his uninviting bed, and settled himself for a third perusal of his letter. It was a long letter, and it was signed "Vita." It was written in a striking feminine hand, which moulded the spidery German characters into something unusually strong and characteristic. He displayed a mild wonder that German characters supervened the signature. But the wonder passed as he read, lost in the gravity of alarm which steadily grew in his eyes as he turned each page. He paused during this third reading at several of the paragraphs. He reread them, as though he would penetrate the last fraction of their significance. And at each pause, at each rereading, his disquiet grew.