nd the voluble Italian
fruiterer.

There were other needy people whom the Corner House girls remembered at
this season with substantial gifts. Petunia Blossom, and her shiftless
husband and growing family, looked to "gran'pap's missus" for their
Thanksgiving fowl. And this year Seneca Sprague came in for a share of
the Corner House bounty.

Since the fatal day when Billy Bumps had secured a share of the
prophet's generous thatch, Ruth had felt she owed Seneca something. The
boys plagued him as he walked the streets in his flapping linen duster
and broken straw hat; and older people were unkind enough to make fun of
him.

Seneca followed the scriptural command to the Jews regarding swine--and
more, for he ate no meat of any kind. But the plump and luscious pig was
indeed an abomination to Seneca.

One day when Ruth went to market she saw a crowd of the market
loiterers teasing Seneca Sprague, the man having ventured among them to
peddle his tracts.

The girl saw a smeary-aproned young butcher slip up behind the old man
and drop a pig's tail into one of the pockets of his flapping duster.

To the bystanders it was a harmless joke; to Seneca, Ruth knew, it would
mean infamy and contamination. He would be months purging his conscience
of the stain of "touching the unclean thing," as he expressed it.

The girl went up to Seneca and spoke to him. She had a heavy basket of
provisions and she asked the prophet to carry it home for her, which he
did with good grace.

When they arrived at the old Corner House Ruth told him if he would
remove the linen coat she would sew up a tear in the back for him; and
in this way she smuggled the "porker's appendage," as Neale O'Neil
called it, out of the prophet's pocket.

"And you ought to see the inside of that shack of his down on Bimberg's
wharf," Neale O'Neil said. "I got a peep at it one day. You know it's an
old office Bimberg used to use before he moved up town, and it's
attached to his store-shed, and at the far end.

"Seneca's got a little stove, and a cupboard, a cot to sleep on, a chair
to sit in, and the walls are lined with bookshelves filled with old
musty books."

"Books!" exclaimed Agnes. "Does he read?"

"Why, in his way, he's quite erudite," declared Neale, smiling. "He
reads Josephus and the Apocrypha, and believes them quite as much
inspired as the rabbinical books of the Old Testament, I believe. Most
of his other books relate to the prophetical writings