it had ever owned, a coat of paint. The windows of the lower story
were guarded by a wire netting, behind which reposed the treasures of
the poor under the temporary guardianship of the pawnbroker. On one
side lay bits of finery, tawdry rings of plate and silver set with
sham diamonds and pearls, which if the product of nature, would have
bankrupted a Rothschild. In among them were infants' rattles and
spoons marked for life with the impress of baby teeth. Behind the
smaller articles hung a row of musical instruments, fifes and fiddles
sadly silent, and hinting of moody, mirth-robbed homes. Behind these
again, by the dim light within, Flint caught a glimpse of
miscellaneous piles of household articles wrung from the reluctant
owners who had already parted with vanity and mirth, and now must
banish comfort too.

The door on one side of the window stood open, and a rather dim light
within showed a bare hall-way with a worn shabby staircase leading to
the room above. Flint and Brady toiled up two flights. "The path to
heaven is not to be made too easy, is it?" said Flint, pausing to take
breath.

"No; did you expect elevators?" his friend asked with some asperity.

Flint's good humor was not to be shaken, however.

"To heaven? Why, yes. Angels' wings I've always understood were to be
at our service. Here it seems not."

At the door Brady stopped to drop a quarter into the basket labelled
"Silver contribution," held by a buxom and not unpleasing young woman
in the Army uniform.

"They understand the first principles of the church, I see," Flint
whispered. "They have dropped the communion, but they keep the
contribution-box."

Brady did not attend to him. As the two men entered, several turned to
look at them. Clearly they were not of the class expected. Brady,
however, nodded to one or two, and he and his friend sat down on a
bench near the door, in the corner of the hall. Flint wished it were
in order to keep his hat on to shield his eyes from the unshaded gas,
which struck him full in the face. But he resigned himself to that, as
well as to the heat and the odor, and charged it off to the account of
a new experience.

The interior was bare and cheerless, colorless save for the torn red
shades above the high dormer windows, and the crudely painted mottoes
over the platform and around the wall. "_Berry Hill for God!_"
sprawled along one side, flanked by "_Remember Your Mother's
Prayers!_" and in front the sinner