It was still bitterly cold.

The rain and sleet beat through his clothes, and struck his skin with a sharp chilling touch that set him trembling.

Even the thought of the overweighted patrol-wagon probably sticking in the mud some safe distance in the rear, failed to cheer him, and the excitement that had so far made him callous to the cold died out and left him weaker and nervous.

But his horse was chilled with the long standing, and now leaped eagerly forward, only too willing to warm the half-frozen blood in its veins.

“You’re a good beast,” said Gallegher, plaintively.  “You’ve got more nerve than me.  Don’t you go back on me now.  Mr. Dwyer says we’ve got to beat the town.”  Gallegher had no idea what time it was as he rode through the night, but he knew he would be able to find out from a big clock over a manufactory at a point nearly three-quarters of the distance from Keppler’s to the goal.

He was still in the open country and driving recklessly, for he knew the best part of his ride must be made outside the city limits.

He raced between desolate-looking corn-fields with bare stalks and patches of muddy earth rising above the thin covering of snow, truck farms and brick-yards fell behind him on either side.  It was very lonely work, and once or twice the dogs ran yelping to the gates and barked after him.

Part of his way lay parallel with the railroad tracks, and he drove for some time beside long lines of freight and coal cars as they stood resting for the night.  The fantastic Queen Anne suburban stations were dark and deserted, but in one or two of the block-towers he could see the operators writing at their desks, and the sight in some way comforted him.

Once he thought of stopping to get out the blanket in which he had wrapped himself on the first trip, but he feared to spare the time, and drove on with his teeth chattering and his shoulders shaking with the cold.

He welcomed the first solitary row of darkened houses with a faint cheer of recognition.  The scattered lamp-posts lightened his spirits, and even the badly paved streets rang under the beats of his horse’s feet like music.  Great mills and manufactories, with only a night-watchman’s light in the lowest of their many stories, began to take the place of the gloomy farmhouses and gaunt trees that had startled him with their grotesque shapes.  He had been driving nearly an hour, he calculated, and in that time the rain had changed to a wet snow, that fell heavily and clung to whatever it touched.  He passed block after block of trim workmen’s houses, as still and silent as the sleepers within them, and at last he turned the horse’s head into Broad Street, the city’s great thoroughfare, that stretches from its one end to the other and cuts it evenly in two.

He was driving noiselessly over the snow and slush in the street, with his thoughts bent only on the clockface he wished so much to see, when a hoarse voice challenged him from the sidewalk.  “Hey, you, stop there, hold up!” said the voice.