THE BRASS BOWL
mustache, and drawing down over his eyes the brim of a rusty plug hat, he thrust fat hands into the pockets of his shabby trousers and lounged against the polished pillar even more energetically than before: if that were possible. An unromantic, apathetic figure, fitting so naturally into his surroundings as to demand no second look even from the most observant; yet one seeming to possess a magnetic attraction for the eyes of the hall-boy of the apartment hotel (who, acquainted by sight and hearsay with the stout gentleman's identity and calling, bent upon him a steadfast and adoring regard), as well as for the policeman who lorded it on the St. Nicholas Avenue corner, in front of the real-estate office, and who from time to time shifted his contemplation from the infinite spaces of the heavens, the better to exchange a furtive nod with the idler in the hotel doorway.
Presently,—at no great lapse of time after the short and thick-set man had stowed away his watch,—out of the thronged sidewalks of Seventh Avenue a man appeared, walking west on the north side of
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