as a young couple seeking the home in which their future life
would centre. Who would dream that on this sunny morning, and in a
prosaic street-car, the actors of a sad, sad tragedy were on their
way to its unsuspected scenes? Who would dream that Mildred and
her father, of all others, were the actors?

"Millie," said Mr. Jocelyn, "I fear the place to which I shall at
first take you may shock you a little. It's an old Revolutionary
mansion, gray and rather dilapidated, but it reminded me of some of
our residences in the South; and, although perhaps no better--perhaps
not so good--it is still quite unlike the stereotyped tenement-house
abomination prevailing in this city. This ancient abode of colonial
wealth took my fancy. It suggested our own changed fortunes by
its fall to its present uses. And yet the carving around and above
the doors and windows, much of which still remains, and the lofty
ceilings all remind one of past better days that can never return
to the poor house, but which we must bring back as soon as possible.
I shall never be content or happy, Millie, until I have placed my
dear ones in the sphere to which they really belong; but for the
present I do not see how we can pay rent for anything much better
than rooms in the old mansion. As far as I can learn, the people
who live in it are poor, but quiet and respectable."

Her father's opium-tinged description caught Mildred's fancy also,
but when she saw the building her heart sank at the prospect. To
her a tenement-house was as yet a vague, untested reality, and the
one before her was indeed old and dilapidated, gray and haggard
with more than a century's age.

The mansion having been built to face the river, its front was not