"No!"

"Yas'm, dey sho did. Dat man done tuck de smallpox; all on 'em ketched
it, ev'y las' one, off'n dat no 'count Joe Cribbins, an' now dat dey
got de new pes'-house finish', dey haul 'em off yon'eh, yas'day.
Reckon dat ain' make no diffunce in my urrant runnin'. Dat Dago man,
he outer he hade two day fo' dey haul 'em away, an' ain' sen' no mo'
messages. So dat spile _my_ job! Hit dass my luck. Dey's sho' a
voodoo on Lize Mo'ton!"

Bertha, catching but fragments of this conversation, had no
realization that it bore in any way upon the mystery of Toby; and she
stumbled homeward through the twilight with her tired eyes on the
ground.

When she opened the door of the tiny room, the landlady's lean black
cat ran out surreptitiously. The bird-cage lay on the floor, upside
down, and of its jovial little inhabitant the tokens were a few yellow
feathers.

Bertha did not know until a month after, when Leo Vesschi found her at
the restaurant and told her, that out in the new pest-house, that
other songster and prisoner, the gay little chestnut vender, Pietro
Tobigli, had called lamentably upon the name of his God and upon
"Libra Ogostine," and now lay still forever, with the corduroy
waistcoat and its precious burden tightly clenched to his breast. Even
in his delirium they had been unable to coax or force him to part from
it for a second.