I found it just as ordinary and unsuggestive as before; an old-fashioned, square apartment renovated and redecorated to suit modern tastes.  Its furnishings I have already described; they were such as may be seen in any comfortable abode.  I did not linger over them a moment; besides, they were the property of the present tenant, and wholly disconnected with the past I was insensibly considering.  Only the four walls and what they held, doors, windows and mantel-piece, remained to speak of those old days.  Of the doors there were two, one opening into the main hall under the stairs, the other into a cross corridor separating the library from the dining-room.  It was through the dining-room door Nixon had come when he so startled me by speaking unexpectedly over my shoulder!  The two windows faced the main door, as did the ancient, heavily carved mantel.  I could easily imagine the old-fashioned shutters hidden behind the modern curtains, and, being anxious to test the truth of my imaginings, rose and pulled aside one of these curtains only to see, just as I expected, the blank surface of a series of unslatted shutters, tightly fitting one to another with old-time exactitude.  A flat hook and staple fastened them.  Gently raising the window, and lifting one, I pulled the shutter open and looked out.  The prospect was just what I had been led to expect from the location of the room—­the long, bare wall of the neighboring house.  I was curious about that house, more curious at this moment than ever before; for though it stood a good ten feet away from the one I was now in, great pains had been taken by its occupants to close every opening which might invite the glances of a prying eye.  A door which had once opened on the alley running between the two houses had been removed and its place boarded up.  So with a window higher up; the half-circle window near the roof, I could not see from my present point of view.

Drawing back, I reclosed the shutter, lowered the window and started for my own room.  As I passed the first stair-head, I heard a baby’s laugh, followed by a merry shout, which, ringing through the house, seemed to dispel all its shadows.

I had touched reality again.  Remembering Mayor Packard’s suggestion that I might through the child find a means of reaching the mother, I paid a short visit to the nursery where I found a baby whose sweetness must certainly have won its mother’s deepest love.  Letty, the nurse, was of a useful but commonplace type, a conscientious nurse, that was all.

But I was to have a further taste of the unusual that night and to experience another thrill before I slept.  My room was dark when I entered it, and, recognizing a condition favorable to the gratification of my growing curiosity in regard to the neighboring house, I approached the window and stole a quick look at the gable-end where, earlier in the evening I had seen peering out at me an old woman’s face.  Conceive my