Out on Layte Street the flashy throng was still pouring toward the Fulton Ferry.
"I wonder if I dare," mused the lad, as he walked around the corner and paused before No.

192 Layte Street.

The sober splendor of the richly decorated old five-story brownstone told of the vanished glories of the ante-bellum days.
A stately mansion in whose halls there had been royal cheer in the departed days when Brooklyn had its proud burghers and New York its simple citizens of worth.

But the pressure of commerce, the havoc of the bridge construction, the onrush of warehouse, shop, and the pressure of the street railway octopus had left the sedate mansion a relic of better days in an incongruous medley of little shops, doubtful lodging-houses, vile man-traps, and clustering saloons.
Here the Juggernaut car of King Alcohol was rolling on remorselessly, crushing out all life save the frenzied dream of the dipsomaniac.
But the lad paused and shook his head as he noted the windows of the old English basement tightly barred.

The parlor floor, bearing the gilded sign, "Parisian Millinery Repository," was darkened, and, above, the three upper floors presented only an array of undraped windows solidly shut off by white-enamelled inside folding blinds.
The decorous-looking main entrance bore but one card, in script, "Raffoni, Musical Director." For years the neighborhood had forgotten its curiosity over the foreign-looking men and women who passed the vigilant Cerberus at the stately oaken door.