Few of the roomers were home in the house opposite.

They were out for the evening, or for dinner, at least, and the face of the building was dark and cold, the light from the street lamp glinting unevenly on the windowpanes.

He had sat there staring at the old house so many hours in the past that it was beginning to be like a face to him, to be studied as one might study a human being.

And the people it sheltered, the old hag who kept the door, the sneering man and Caroline Smith, were to the house like the thoughts behind a man's face, an inscrutable face.

But, if one cannot pry behind the mask of the human, at least it is possible to enter a house and find-- At this point in his thoughts Ronicky Doone rose with a quickening pulse.