Struck with surprise, if not with apprehension, he shrank back into the
over-jutting porch of an old residence, with sculptured armorial
bearings of some family long ago abased in its pride. Here he peered,
not without anxiety.

By the exact programme carried out in cities by the divisions of its
population, a new contingent were coming from their resting-places to
substitute themselves for the honest toilers on the thoroughfares; each
cellar and attic in the rookeries were exuding the horrible vermin
which shun the wholesome light of day.

The spruce trees, stuck in tubs of sand at a beer-house beyond the
bridge, shuddered as though in disgust at this horde of Hans hastening
to invade the district of hotels, supper-houses and gaming clubs, to beg
or steal the means to survive yet another day.

For ten or fifteen minutes the stranger watched the beggars stream
individually out of the mazes and, to his horror, form like soldiers for
a review, along the street before him, up to the end of the bridge at
one extremity and far along at the other end of the line. Some certainly
spied him, for these wretches could see as lucidly as the felines in the
night--their day from society having reversed their conditions. But,
though these whispered the warning to one another, and he was the object
of scrutiny, no one left his place, and soon as their backs were turned
to him, he had no immediate uneasiness as regarded an attack, or even a
challenge upon his business there.

Probably the good citizens were not ignorant that this meeting of the
vagrants took place each evening, for not only were all store-doors