sty should insult with sweet contrast that sordid gloom.

The heat only made it worse. Half-naked children played in the foul
gutters with the pigs, which roamed freely at large, and comfortably at
home in the purlieus of the docks and the quarter of poverty. Carts
jostled by with hogsheads, and boxes, and bales; the red-faced carmen,
furious with their horses, or smoking pipes whose odor did not sweeten
the air, staring, with rude, curious eyes, at the lady making her way
among the casks and bales upon the sidewalks. There was nothing that
could possibly cheer the eye or ear, or heart or imagination, in any
part of the street--not even the haggard faces, thin with want, rusty
with exposure, and dull with drink, that listlessly looked down upon
her from the windows of lodging-houses.

The door of one of these was open, and Amy Waring went in. She passed
rapidly through the desolate entry and up the dirty stairs with the
broken railing--stairs that creaked under her light step. At a room upon
the back of the house, in the third story, she stopped and tapped at the
door. A voice cried, "Who's there?" The girl answered, "Amy," and the
door was immediately unlocked.

CHAPTER XX.

AUNT MARTHA.

The room was clean. There was a rag carpet on the floor; a pine bureau
neatly varnished; a half dozen plain but whole chairs; a bedstead, upon
which the bedding was scrupulously neat; a pine table, upon which lay a
much-thumbed leather-bound family Bible and a few religious books; and
between the windows, over the bureau, hung a common engraving of Christ
upon the Cross. The windows themselves looked upon the back of the stores
on South Street. Upon the floor was a large basket full of work, with
which the occupant of the room was evidently engaged. The whole room had
an air of severity and cheerlessness, yet it was clear that every thing
was most carefully arranged, and continually swept and washed and dusted.

The person who had opened the door was a woman of nearly forty. She was
dressed entirely in black. She had not so much as a single spot of white
any where about her. She had even a black silk handkerchief twisted about
her head in the way that negro women twine gay cloths; and such was her
expression that it seemed as if her face, and her heart, and her soul,
and all that she felt, or hoped, or remembered, or imagined, were clad
and steeped in the same mourning garments and utter gloom.

"Good-morning, Amy," sai