whose red-tiled roofs and quaint church steeples rose gaily against the clear blue sky. The captain suggested to me to visit the famous towns of Edam and Hoorn, but 1 declined to go on shore. My one desire was to reach the ancient city in which Mrs. Van Brandt had been left deserted. As we altered our course to make for the promontory on which Enkhuizen is situated, the wind fell then shifted to another quarter, and blew with a force which greatly increased the difficulties of navigation. I still insisted, as long as it was possible to do so, on holding on our course. After sunset, the strength of the wind abated. The night came without a cloud; and the starry firmament gave us its pale and melancholy light. In an hour more the capricious wind shifted back again in our favour. Towards ten o'clock we sailed into the desolate harbour of Enkhuizen.

The captain and crew, fatigued by their exertions, ate their frugal suppers, and went

to rest. In a few minutes, I was the only left awake in the boat.

person

me.

I ascended to the deck, and looked about

Our boat was moored to a deserted quay. Excepting a few small vessels visible near us, the harbour of this once prosperous place was a vast solitude of water, varied here and there by dreary banks of sand. Looking inland, I saw the lonely buildings of the Dead City-black, grim and dreadful, under the mysterious starlight. Not a human creature, not even a stray animal, was to be seen anywhere. The place might have been desolated by a pestilence, so empty and so lifeless did it now appear. Little more than a hundred years ago, the record of its population reached sixty thousand. The inhabitants had dwindled to a tenth of that number when I looked at Enkhuizen now!

I considered with myself what my next course of proceeding was to be.

The chances were certainly against my discovering Mrs. Van Brandt if I ventured alone and unguided into the city at night. On the other hand, now that I had reached the place in which she and her child were living, friendless and deserted, could I patiently wait through the weary interval that must elapse before the morning came and the town was astir ? I knew my own self-tormenting disposition too well to accept this latter alternative. Whatever came of it, I determined to walk through Enkhuizen, on the bare chance of passing the office of the fishery, and of so discovering Mrs. Van Brandt's address.

First taking the precaution of locking my cabin door, I stepped from the bulwark of the vessel to the lonely quay, and set forth upon my night wanderings through the Dead City.

CHAPTER XVIII.

UNDER THE WINDOW.

I SET the position of the harbour by my pocket-compass, and followed the course of the first street that lay before me.

On either side, as I advanced, the desolate old houses frowned on me. There were no lights in the windows, no lamps in the street. For a quarter of an hour at least I penetrated deeper and deeper on my way into the city, without encountering a living creature with only the starlight to guide me. Turning by chance into a street broader than the rest, I at last saw a moving figure, just visible ahead, under the shadows of the houses. I quickened my pace, and found myself fol

lowing a man in the dress of peasant. Hearing my footsteps behind him, he turned and looked at me. Discovering that I was a stranger, he lifted a thick cudgel that he carried with him, shook it threateningly, and called to me in his own language (as I gathered by his actions) to stand back. A stranger in Enkhuizen at that time of night was evidently reckoned as a robber in the estimation of this citizen! I had learnt on the voyage, from the captain of the boat, how to ask my way in Dutch, if I happened to be by myself in a strange town; and I now repeated my lesson, asking my way to the fishing office of Van Brandt. Either my foreign accent made me unintelligible, or the man's suspicions disinclined him to trust me. Again he shook his cudgel; and again he signed to me to stand back. It was useless to persist. I crossed to the opposite side of