Indifferent to his fate, Mr. Heatherbloom moved on; no one molested him.  He walked along dark highways, not through fear of being apprehended, but because his mood was dark.  He did not even notice where he went; he just kept going.  He forgot he was hungry, but at length, as in a dream, he began to realize a physical weariness.  Overwrought nature asserted itself; he was not made of iron; his muscles responded reluctantly.  Without observing his surroundings, he sank listlessly to the earth; the cool grass received his exhausted frame.  Beyond, some distance away, the lights of the city threw now a sullen glow on the sky.  All was comparatively still about him; the noise of the city was replaced by the lighter sound of vehicles on the well kept, almost non-resounding country road.  It seemed to be a main thoroughfare, but with little life and animation about it at that evening hour.  A buggy did go by occasionally, however, and, not far from Mr. Heatherbloom, at a curb, stood a motor-car.

He had suffered himself to relax on the ground in front of a small house set well back among spectral-looking trees and surrounded by a stone wall overgrown with foliage.  Mr. Heatherbloom remained unmindful of his surroundings.  The lamps of the car near by were not lighted; a single figure on the front seat was barely distinguishable.  Now this person got down and lighted a cigarette; he seemed restless, walked to and fro, and glanced once or twice at the house.  From a single window a faint light gleamed; then it vanished, only to reappear a few moments later at another window.  Among the masses of foliage fireflies glistened; a tree-toad began to make a sound but almost immediately stopped.  The front door had apparently opened and some person or persons came out.  The faint crunchings on the gravel indicated more than one person.  Now they stepped on the grass, for there were no audible indications of their approach.  The man near the machine threw quickly away his cigarette and opened the door of the car.  Several people, issuing from the gate, crossed the sidewalk and got in.  Mr. Heatherbloom was hardly aware of the fact; they seemed but unmeaning shadows.

The driver bent over and lighted one of his lamps.  As he did so, the flare revealed for an instant his face—­square, rather handsome and bearded.  A faint flicker of interest, for some reason undefinable to himself at the moment, swept over Mr. Heatherbloom.  He had been lying where the grass was tall and now raised himself on his elbow, the better to peer over the waving tops.  The car had gathered headway and swung out into the road, when suddenly some one in it laughed and uttered an exclamation in a foreign tongue.  That musical note—­a word he did not understand—­was wafted to Mr. Heatherbloom.  It acted upon him like a galvanic shock; he sprang to his feet and, bewildered, stared after the machine.  What had happened; was he dreaming?  He could hardly at first believe the evidence of his senses, for the laugh, coming back to him in the night, was that of the woman for whom he had procured employment at Miss Van Rolsen’s.  He could have sworn to the fact now.  And the man whose countenance he had so briefly seen was, no doubt, of her own nationality—­a Russian!