Below him lay a narrow alley strewn with broken glass that sparkled in the sunlight, and beyond that stretched a vista of bright streets.

As we strolled around, Sampson paused on occasion to make a mental note of potential trouble signs: an alley strewn with garbage nobody had bothered to pick up; a sign in Spanish in several windows, complaining about the lack of a park in the vicinity where children can play.

He seemed to take pleasure in leading audiences into blind alleys strewn with false clues to the meaning of his work.

After receiving a tip from a source whom the police did not identify, about 35 detectives crept down the alley, strewn with rubble and sand, that leads to the building.

Jerome M. Hauer, the field marshal in the Giuliani administration's escalating war on rats, led a gaggle of reporters and television camera crews yesterday afternoon through the Highbridge section of the Bronx to the battlefield: an alley strewn with garbage.

Along Bethel Street, the Rev. Calvin Keene of Memorial Baptist Church pointed to houses that looked as if they had been bombed and an alley strewn with debris.

The bugbears broke into a run, turning down an alley strewn with stones and debris.