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“Madame, it would almost seem as if some accident had detained your escort. May I not offer to call a cab and see you home? I have an umbrella with me.”

The lady thanked him almost eagerly, saying that she would wait fifteen minutes more and at the elapse of that time, her escort not appearing, would gladly avail herself of his kind offer.

Twenty minutes later, they were whirling away northward. Crossing the Wells Street bridge, they turned eastward only a few blocks from the river. The rain had suddenly ceased. The wind having relaxed nothing of its fierceness, it occasionally parted the scudding clouds high over head to let glimpses of the moon escape from their wrack, and Mr. Middleton saw he was in a region whence the invasion of factories and warehouses had driven the major portion of the inhabitants forth, leaving their dwellings untenanted, white for rent signs staring out of the empty casements like so many ghosts. The lady signaling the driver to stop, Mr. Middleton assisted her to alight, and glanced about him. Here the work of exile had been very thorough. Not yet had the factories come into this immediate neighborhood, but the residents had retreated before the smoke of their advancing lines, leaving a wide unoccupied space behind the rear guard. Up and down the street, in no house could he perceive a light. The moon shining forth clear and resplendent, its face unobstructed by clouds for a moment, he saw stretching away house after house with white signs that grimly told their loneliness. Indeed, quite deserted did appear the very house to whose door they splashed through the pools in the depressions of the tall flight of stone steps. The lady threw open the door and stepped briskly in, and her footfalls rang sharply upon a bare floor and resounded in a hollow echo that told it was an empty house!

An empty house! An empty house! What danger might lurk here and how easy might losels lure victims to their door! Mr. Middleton paused on the threshold, staring into the gloom, but whatever irresolute thoughts he had entertained of retreat were dispelled by the sound of a wail from the lady, and the sight of her face, white in the moonlight, as she rushed out to him.

“Oh, oh,” she moaned, gibbering a gush of words which, despite their incoherence of form, in their tone proclaimed fear, consternation, and despair.

Lighting a match, Mr. Middleton stepped into the house. Standing in the little circle of dull yellow light, he saw beneath his feet windrows of dust and layers of newspapers that had rested beneath a carpet but lately removed, and beyond, dusk emptiness, and silence. He advanced, looking for a chandelier, but though he found two, the incandescent globes had been removed from them. Throwing a mass of the papers from the floor into the grate and lighting them, a bright glare brought out every corner of the room. There was nothing but the four bare walls.

“They have taken everything, everything!” cried the poor lady.

“Who?” asked Mr. Middleton, after the manner of his profession.

“Who? Would that I knew!–Thieves.”

Mr. Middleton then realized she had been the victim of a form of robbery far too common, where the scoundrels come with drays and carry off the whole household equipment, in the householder’s absence. That which had been done in comparatively well-populated quarters was easy of accomplishment on this deserted street.

Penetrated with compassion, he moved toward the unfortunate woman, who with an abandonment he had not expected of one so stately and reserved, threw herself upon his breast, weeping as though her heart would break.

“They have taken everything. How can I get along now! My piano is gone and how can I give lessons without it! I will have to go back to Peoria!”

Soothingly Mr. Middleton patted the weeping woman on the back. With infinite tenderness, he kissed her tear-bedewed cheeks and gently he laid her head upon his shoulder, and then with both arms clasped about her, he imparted to her statuesque figure a sort of rocking motion, crooning with each oscillation, “There, there, there, there,” until the paroxysm of her grief abated and passed from weeping into gradually subsiding sobs, and he began to tell her that he would be only too happy to give his legal services to convict the villains when caught–as they surely would be. The lady by degrees becoming more cheerful and giving him a description of the stolen property, he discussed ways and means of recovering it, and to prevent her from relapsing into her former depressed condition, occasionally imprinted a consolatory salute upon her cheek, from which he had previously wiped the wet tracks of the tears that had now some time ceased gushing, for there had been a salty taste to the first osculations, which while not actually disagreeable, had not been to his liking.