place, within doors and without, about midnight may have helped to cast
this doubt upon his identity;--he seemed to be visiting now for the
first time the streets and neighborhoods nearest his own, and his feet
stumbled over the accustomed walks. In his quality of houseless
wanderer, and--so far as appeared to others--possibly worthless
vagabond, he also got a new and instructive effect upon the faces which,
in his real character, he knew so well by their looks of neighborly
greeting; and it is his belief that the first hospitable prompting of
the human heart is to shut the door in the eyes of homeless strangers
who present themselves after eleven o'clock. By that time the servants
are all abed, and the gentleman of the house answers the bell, and looks
out with a loath and bewildered face, which gradually changes to one of
suspicion, and of wonder as to what those fellows can possibly want of
_him_, till at last the prevailing expression is one of contrite desire
to atone for the first reluctance by any sort of service. The
contributor professes to have observed these changing phases in the
visages of those whom he that night called from their dreams, or
arrested in the act of going to bed; and he drew the conclusion--very
proper for his imaginable connection with the garroting and other
adventurous brotherhoods--that the most flattering moment for knocking
on the head people who answer a late ring at night is either in their
first selfish bewilderment, or their final self-abandonment to their
better impulses. It does not seem to have occurred to him that he would
himself have been a much more favorable subject for the predatory arts
than any of his neighbors, if his shipmate, the unknown companion of his
researches for Mr. Hapford, had been at all so minded. But the faith of
the gaunt giant upon which he reposed was good, and the contributor
continued to wander about with him in perfect safety. Not a soul among
those they asked had ever heard of a Mr. Hapford,--far less of a Julia
Tinker living with him. But they all listened to the contributor's