diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the
slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed
out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting
radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, to my mind,
something eerie and ghost-like in the endless procession of faces
which flitted across these narrow bars of light,--sad faces and
glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind, they flitted from
the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom once more.
I am not subject to impressions, but the dull, heavy evening,
with the strange business upon which we were engaged, combined to
make me nervous and depressed. I could see from Miss Morstan's
manner that she was suffering from the same feeling. Holmes
alone could rise superior to petty influences. He held his open
note-book upon his knee, and from time to time he jotted down
figures and memoranda in the light of his pocket-lantern.

At the Lyceum Theatre the crowds were already thick at the side-
entrances. In front a continuous stream of hansoms and four-
wheelers were rattling up, discharging their cargoes of shirt-
fronted men and beshawled, bediamonded women. We had hardly
reached the third pillar, which was our rendezvous, before a
small, dark, brisk man in the dress of a coachman accosted us.

"Are you the parties who come with Miss Morstan?" he asked.

"I am Miss Morstan, and these two gentlemen are my friends," said
she.

He bent a pair of wonderfully penetrating and questioning eyes
upon us. "You will excuse me, miss," he said with a certain