inanities between barmaids and their admirers were shorn of that vacuous vivacity which generally distinguishes the intercourse of those parties. Dejection and dulness reigned in all the waking world.
In no part of the city were matters quite so bad as in the vicinity of Catchpole Square, North district, where, an hour after midnight, Constable Pond was cautiously feeling his way towards the border-line of his beat, hoping there to meet with human companionship in the person of Constable Applebee, who, himself animated by a similar hope in respect of Constable Pond, was advancing from an opposite direction. On this miserable night one crumb of comfort-oh, but it was more than a crumb; it might have been called a whole loaf-had fallen to the share of Constable Pond. He had not thought it likely that his wife would have ventured from the house, nor, lonely as he was, did he wish it; but when, an hour or so before midnight, he heard the familiar bird-call, he joyfully responded.
"Why, Polly, Polly!" he exclaimed, passing his arm around her. "My senses don't deceive me, do they?"
"I hope they don't," said Polly, drawing his arm tighter. "You wouldn't do this to another woman, I'm sure of that."
"You may be, Polly, you may be. Not to Queen Victoria herself with her gold crown on. Well, this is a surprise! Such a surprise, Polly, as makes up for all."
He gave her a great hug. He did not consider the regulations-not he!
"I'm afraid it's cold," said Polly, putting the bottle of coffee into his hand, and paying good interest for the hug. "It was boiling hot when I started."
"What a brick you are!" said Constable Pond, extracting the cork with his teeth, and applying himself to the refreshment. "It's ever so much better than three-star. Here, take a pull yourself." She did. "Polly, you're a angel!"
She laughed, but did not dispute it, and they remained a short time in fond dalliance. A strange hour for Cupid's pranks, but that urchin has no conscience. Polly proposed to walk the beat with her husband all through the night, but this was such an alarming infringement of the regulations that he would not listen to it. So he escorted her to the end of his beat, and would have escorted her farther, but she would not listen to that.
"Can you find your way home?" he asked, in doubt.
"Blindfold," she answered promptly.
"You may as well have the empty bottle," he said. "Hold it by the neck, and if anybody comes up to you give him a crack on the head with it. Another kiss, Polly!"
As she walked away she blew on her bird-call every few yards, to which her husband did not fail to respond; and if desolation did not fall upon him when he could hear it no longer it was because of the impression which Polly's thoughtful love had produced upon him. "Good little woman," he said. "A regular trump, that's what she is." But a couple of hours' loneliness sent his spirits down again, and now he was seeking his brother-constable Applebee to cheer him up with the friendly word. With the advance of the night the fog continued to deepen, and he got into a state of muddle as to his whereabouts. His progress was painfully slow. The white mist blinded and deceived him; his footsteps were noiseless; and but for the striking of the hour from a neighbouring church he might reasonably have fancied that he was traversing a city of the dead.
"Saint Michael's Church," he soliloquised, with a feeling of relief. "I didn't hear it when it struck last. Where could I have been-and where am I now? It can't be fur off, though whether it's to the right of me or the left of me, or before me or behind me, I'll be hanged if I can tell. What street am I in-Riley Street or Silver Street? If it's Riley Street I ought to come upon Applebee in a minute or two, unless he's at the other end of the beat. If it's Silver Street I'll have to tack."
That he should be puzzled was not to be wondered at, for the streets he named were so precisely alike in every detail and feature that they might have been turned out of one mould. Their frontage was the same, their height was the same, their depth was the same, and each had the same number of rooms of exactly the same shape and dimensions, and the same number of chimney pots placed in exactly the same positions. When this mathematical demon of architecture receives its death-blow a joy will be added to existence.
While Constable Pond stood debating whether to tack or creep straight on he saw in the distance what might be likened to a dead star-the misty glimmering of a despondent light; and on the chance of its indicating the presence of Constable Applebee he boldly challenged it.
"Hallo, there!" he cried.
"Hallo, there!" came the echoing answer.
There was little life in their voices; they seemed to linger, as though they had not sufficient power to effectually pierce the thick air.
"Is that you, Applebee?"
"Yes, it's me. Is it Pond?"
"Yes."
"Your voice sounds strange. Come slow."
Each advancing with caution, a friendly grasp of hands presently united them.
CHAPTER VI
IT WAS GONE! THROUGH DEADMAN'S COURT
"What a night!" then exclaimed Constable Pond.
"The worst I ever saw," responded Constable Applebee. "It's a record, that's what it is. We had a bad spell in December-lasted two days-you remember it, Pond?
"Should think I did."
"It was nothing compared to this. I'd sooner walk through a foot and a half of snow than through such a fog. It gets into the eyes, and into the chest, and into the head; you can squeeze it through your fingers. When it's snow you know where you are; there it is, at your feet; it don't mount. It gives a man fair play; this don't. I've been looking for you everywhere. Where did you get to?"
"Hard to say. As fur as I know I haven't been off my beat."
"Same here. Anything to report?"
"No. Have you?"
Constable Applebee gave no direct reply, but branched off into what, apparently, was another subject. "Look here, Pond. Are you a nervous man?"
"Not particularly," answered Constable Pond, with a timid look around.
"But you don't like this sort of thing?"
"Who would?"
"Ah, you may say that. If fog was fog, and nothing else, I'd put up with it. And why? Because we've got to."
"A true bill," said Constable Pond, assenting.
"But it brings something else along with it. That's what I complain of-and what I mostly complain of is shadders."
"What do you mean?" inquired Constable Pond.
"What I say. Shadders. I don't call myself a nervous man, but when you see something stealing along a yard or two ahead of you, and you go to lay hold of it and it vanishes-yes, Pond, vanishes-it's enough to give a man the creeps."
"It'd give me the creeps."
"Very well, then," said Constable Applebee, as though a matter which had been in dispute was now settled. "Put a substantial body in my way and I'll tackle it. But how can you tackle it when it melts and disappears? You call out, 'Now, then, what are you up to?' and you don't get a whisper in reply. Ain't that enough to aggravate a man?"
"More than enough; I know how I should feel over it. But look here, Applebee, it ain't imagination, is it?"
"Imagination!" exclaimed Constable Applebee, in a voice of scorn. "What! Me! Why, I don't suppose, from the day I was born to this blessed night of white fog, that if it was all reckoned up I've had imagination enough to fill a two-ounce bottle."
This new view of the quality of imagination in relation to quantity seemed to impress Constable Pond, who turned it over in his mind without feeling himself equal to offer an opinion on it.
"A fog like this always serves me the same way," said Constable Applebee. "There was a black fog when I was born I've heard my mother often say. That's why, perhaps."
"But what happened?" asked Constable Pond. "You haven't told me that."
"This happened. I see a shadder creeping along the