broken that he hardly knew what to think.

He followed the tramp as far off as he could and still keep him in
sight, and he sometimes thought he had lost him, in the streets that
climbed and crooked beyond the Common towards the quarter whither
they were going; but he reappeared, slouching and shambling rapidly
on, in the glare of some electric lights that stamped the ground
with shadows thick and black as if cut in velvet or burnt into the
surface. Here and there some girl brushed against the boy, and gave
him a joking or jeering word; her face flashed into light for a
moment, and then vanished in the darkness she passed into. It was
that hot October, and the night was close and still; on the steps of
some of the houses groups of fat, weary women were sitting, and
children were playing on the sidewalks, using the lamp-posts for
goal or tag. The tramp ahead of Lemuel issued upon a brilliantly
lighted little square, with a great many horse-cars coming and going
in it; a church with stores on the ground floor, and fronting it on
one side a row of handsome old stone houses with iron fences, and on
another a great hotel, with a high-pillared portico, where men sat
talking and smoking.

People were waiting on the sidewalk to take the cars; a druggist's
window threw its mellow lights into the street; from open cellar-
ways came the sound of banjos and violins. At one of these cellar
doors his guide lingered so long that Lemuel thought he should have
to find the way beyond for himself. But the tramp suddenly commanded
himself from the music, the light, and the smell of strong drink,
which Lemuel caught a whiff of as he followed, and turning a corner
led the way to the side of a lofty building in a dark street, where
they met other like shapes tending toward it from different