nge, for the sake of
little Abe as well as his wife, and the child.

At the thought of the child, the pedler gave a sudden start and was
wide awake on the instant. Little Abe was their own, and though he had
come in the gloom of that dismal basement, he had been the one ray of
sunshine that had fallen into their dreary lives. But the child was a
rent baby. In the crowded tenements of New York the lodger serves the
same purpose as the Irishman's pig; he helps to pay the rent. "The
child"--it was never called anything else--was a lodger. Flotsam from
Rivington Street, after the breaking up of a family there, it had come
to them, to perish "if the Lord so willed it" in that basement.
"Infant slaughter houses" the Tenement House Commission had called
their kind. The father paid seventy-five cents a week for its keep,
pending the disclosure of the divine purpose with the baby. The
Grunschlags, all unconscious of the partnership that was thus thrust
upon them, did their best for it, and up to the time the trouble with
the gas began it was a disgracefully healthy baby. Since then it had
sickened with the rest. But now, if the worst came to the worst, what
was to become of the child?

The pedler was not given long to debate this new question. Even as he
sat staring dumbly at nothing in his perplexity, little Abe crawled
out of the yard with the news that "mamma was most deaded;" and though
it was not so bad as that, it was made clear to her husband when he
found her in one of her bad fainting spells, that things had come to a
pass where something had to be done. There followed a last ineffectual
interview with the landlord, a tearful leave-taking, and as the
ambulance rolled away with Hansche to the hospital, where she would be
a hundred times better off than in Hester Street, the pedler took
little Abe by the hand, and, carrying the child, set out to deliver it
over to its rightful owners. If he were rid of it, he and Abe might
make a shift to get along. It was a case, emphatically; in which two
were company and three a crowd.

He spied the father in Stanton Street where he was working, but when
he saw Adam he tried to run away. Desperation gave the pedler both
strength and speed, however, and he overhauled him despite his
handicaps, and thrust the baby upon him. But the father would have
none of it.

"Aber, mein Gott," pleaded the pedler, "vat I do mit him? He vas your
baby."

"I don't care what you do with her," said