osed the door
below on the last of the down-stairs worshippers. He passed along the
aisles below, with his long poker which screwed down the gas. I saw at
once that he had no intent of exploring the galleries. But I loitered
outside till I saw him lock the doors and depart; and then, happy in the
thought that Miss Jones was in the safest place in New York,--as
comfortable as she was the night before, and much more comfortable than
she had been any night upon the canal, I went in search of my own
lodging.

"To the respectable boarding-house?"

Not a bit, reader. I had no shillings for respectable or disrespectable
boarding-houses. I asked the first policeman where his district station
was. I went into its office, and told the captain that I was green in
the city; had got no work and no money. In truth, I had left my purse in
Miss Jones's charge, and a five-cent piece, which I showed the chief,
was all I had. He said no word but to bid me go up two flights and turn
into the first bunk I found. I did so; and in five minutes was asleep in
a better bed than I had slept in for nine days.

That was what the Public did for me that night. I, too, was safe!

I am making this story too long. But with that night and its anxieties
the end has come. At sunrise I rose and made my easy toilet. I bought
and ate my roll,--varying the brand from yesterday's. I bought another,
with a lump of butter, and an orange, for Fausta. I left my portmanteau
at the station, while I rushed to the sexton's house, told his wife I
had left my gloves in church the night before,--as was the truth,--and
easily obtained from her the keys. In a moment I was in the
vestibule--locked in--was in the gallery, and there found Fausta, just
awake, as she declared, from a comfortable night, reading her morning
lesson in the Bible, and sure, she said, that I should soon appear. Nor
ghost, nor wraith, had visited her. I spread for her a brown paper
tablecloth on the table in the vestibule. I laid out her breakfast for
her, called her, and wondered at her toilet. How is it that women always
make themselves appear as neat and finished as if there were no
conflict, dust, or wrinkle in the world.

[Here Fausta adds, in this manuscript, a parenthesis, to say that she
folded her undersleeves neatly, and her collar, before she slept, and
put them between the cushions, upon which she slept. In the morning they
had been pressed--without a sad-iron.]

She finished her rep