Down the dark street the man wandered, his hands sunk deep in his pockets, his head low between his shoulders,--only to suddenly galvanize into intensity, and to stop short that he might hear again the voice which had come to him.

At one side was a big house,--a house whose occupants he knew instinctively, for he had seen the shadow of a woman, hands outstretched, as she passed the light-strewn shade of a window on the second floor.

More, he had heard her voice, supplemented by gruffer tones.

And then it came again.
It was pleading, and at the same time angered with the passion of a person approaching hysteria.

A barking sentence answered her, something that Fairchild could not understand.