No sooner had the young men left Dyball's by the regular entrance, and gaining the stairs, descended to the street, than from the floor of the hall close to the wine room there arose the form of a woman.
She was of somewhat above the ordinary stature, but of withered features and attenuated form, while her long gray hair, hanging in a tangled mass down her neck and shoulders, and a pair of wild, restless eyes ever moving in their shrunken sockets, lent to her whole appearance an air of hopeless misery painful to behold.
Her dress neat, but shabby and worn; a faded shawl and a cheap woolen hood being the only outer wraps she wore.
And this strange creature crept after the two young men in the darkness and storm, dogging their steps as they moved down the Bowery towards Chatham Square never taking her restless eyes from their moving figures for so much as a moment of time.
[CHAPTER III.]
AN UNHEEDED WARNING—FRANK MANSFIELD FINDS HIMSELF IN A BAD FIX.
The storm had now greatly increased, and the whitened flakes were rapidly covering sidewalk and street, as well as the forms of such belated pedestrians as hurried past, while the glass in the lighted store fronts glistened with frost like so many diamonds in the light of the flickering street lamps scattered here and there.
Now, the Webster National Bank, as is well known to every one, is located on the corner of Rector street and Broadway, directly opposite the high wall, ever rising as the street descends, upon the top of which lies the ancient burial ground surrounding Trinity Church.
Bustling with life and activity during the business hours of the day, at night no more lonely spot can be found in all New York than this.