foot, and heartily sympathetic with him in the project of its execution.

Promptly at seven the next morning, the rakish pair of trotters stood
before the door, with a basket and a large bundle in the back of the
rakish little wagon. Almost at the same moment, the proprietor came out,
buttoning his overcoat. Phipps leaped out, then followed his master into
the wagon, who, taking the reins, drove off at a rattling pace up the
long hill toward Tom Buffum's boarding-house. The road lay entirely
outside of the village, so that the unusual drive was not observed.

Arriving at the poor-house, Mr. Belcher gave the reins to his servant,
and, with a sharp rap upon the door with the butt of his whip, summoned
to the latch the red-faced and stuffy keeper. What passed between them,
Phipps did not hear, although he tried very hard to do so. At the close
of a half hour's buzzing conversation, Tom Buffum took the bundle from
the wagon, and pitched it into his doorway. Then, with the basket on his
arm, he and Mr. Belcher made their way across the street to the
dormitories and cells occupied by the paupers of both sexes and all ages
and conditions. Even the hard-hearted proprietor saw that which wounded
his blunted sensibilities; but he looked on with a bland face, and
witnessed the greedy consumption of the stale dainties of his own table.

It was by accident that he was led out by a side passage, and there he
caught glimpses of the cells to which Miss Butterworth had alluded, and
inhaled an atmosphere which sickened him to paleness, and brought to his
lips the exclamation: "For God's sake let's get out of this."

"Ay! ay!" came tremblingly from behind the bars of a cell, "let's get
out of this."