With fresh resolution, he bent again to his oars, noting with a quick eye that the current had carried him far down-stream while he stopped to look upon the holy edifice.
Landing presently at the wharf, he was stunned by the hush of the streets.

This was not like the city of twenty thousand people he had left three months before.

In blank bewilderment he stood, turning to each quarter for some solution of the mystery.

Perceiving at length that there was really no life either way along the river, he started wonderingly up a street that led from the waterside,--a street which, when he had last walked it, was quickening with the rush of a mighty commerce.
Soon his expression of wonder was darkened by a shade of anxiety.

There was an unnerving quality in the trance-like stillness; and the mystery of it pricked him to forebodings.