often she had seen him holding his watch in his hand, open at the
back, where the picture lay, with his fingers on it, and sometimes he
would kiss it when he thought she was out of the room. After the watch
was sold the picture had been folded up in one of her mother's
handkerchiefs, and her father kept it in the pocket of his coat; but
once it had slipped out of the handkerchief, and once through a hole
in the pocket, and they thought it was lost. Her father hadn't slept
any that night. And now he could sleep with the locket around his
neck. She would put it on a ribbon. Wasn't it grand? And Carmencita's
hands had clasped ecstatically.

Up and down the streets he went, looking, looking, looking. The
district in which he found himself was one of the poorest in the city,
but the shops were crowded with buyers, and, though the goods for sale
were cheap and common and of a quality that at other times would have
repelled, to-day they interested. Carmencita might be among the
shoppers. She had said she had a few things to get for some
children--penny things--and she was possibly out, notwithstanding the
snow which now was falling thick and fast.

Some time after his usual lunch-hour he remembered he must have
something to eat; and, going into a dingy-looking restaurant, he sat
down at a table, the only one which had a vacant seat at it, and
ordered coffee and oysters. His table companion was a half-grown boy
with chapped hands and a thin white face; but his eyes were clear and
happy, and the piece of pie he was eating was being swallowed in huge
hunks. It was his sole order, a piece of awful-looking pie. As the
coffee and oysters were brought him Van Landing saw the boy look at
them hungrily and then turn his eyes away.