"Then why don't you go home?"
Home! Barnhurst shuddered at the thought. Home! Anything, anything but that!
There was something, too, in the singular gayety of Arthur's tone, which struck him with more terror than the most boisterous threat. Underneath this gayety, like floods of burning lava beneath a morning mist, there rolled and swelled a tide of unfathomable emotion.
"Let us walk on," said Barnhurst, faintly; and they walked on, arm in arm—the false clergyman with the very terror of death in his heart—the poor mechanic with a face immovably calm, but with the fire of an irrevocable resolution in his eyes. They walked on: up Broadway, and into the region where sits the sullen Tombs, and through the maze of streets, where vice and squalor, drunkenness and crime, hold their grotesque revel all night long. Through the Five Points they walked, confronted at every step by a desperate or abandoned wretch, their ears filled with the cries of blasphemy, starvation and mirth,—mirth, that was very much like the joy of nethermost hell. Into Chatham street they walked, and up the Bowery, and once more across into Broadway, where the delicate outlines of Grace Church, with its fairy-like sculpture work, were dimly visible in the night. Toward the North River, and through narrow alleys, where human beings were herded together in the last extreme of misery, they walked; and then into broad streets, whose splendid mansions, dark without from pavement to roof, were bright within with rich men's revels,—revels, drunken and foul beyond the blush of shame.
It was a strange, sad march, which they took in the silent night, through the vast Empire City.
And at every step Arthur gathered the Red Book closer to his side.
And behind them, in all their march, even from the moment when they left the Battery, two figures followed closely in their wake—unseen by Arthur or by Barnhurst,—two figures, tracking every step of their way with all a bloodhound's stealth and zeal.