ement, whose
vocation it was to accost and convert into a purchaser every passer-by
who chanced even to look, at his goods. I was most unfavorably impressed
with all that I saw about the shop. When I went in, the impression
deepened. There sat the proprietor in his shirt-sleeves, a
vulgar-looking creature, smoking a cigar; neither did he rise or cease
to puff when I accosted him. Why should he? I was only a sewing-girl. I
told him my business,--that my friend had been ill and unable to
complete her work, but that she was now recovering, and would return it
before many days. Putting on a sneer so sinister and vicious that it was
long before I ceased to carry it in my memory, he replied,--

"It's of no consequence,--I've seen to it. She's too late."

Though the man's manner was offensive, yet I attached no particular
meaning to his words. But on reaching home, my mother showed me an
advertisement in a widely circulated penny-paper which we took, warning
the poor sick sewing-girl to return her work immediately, on pain of
being prosecuted. There was her name in full, and the number of the
house in the little court where she lived. My mother was almost in tears
over the announcement. We knew the family well; they were extremely
poor, had been greatly afflicted by sickness, while the mother was a
model of patient industry, with so deep a sense of religious obligation
that nothing but her perfect reliance on the wisdom and goodness of God
could have supported her through all her multiplied afflictions. Her
husband had been for years a miserable drunkard, as well as dreadfully
abusive of his wife and family. The daughter had sat next to me at
school, to and from which we had been in the daily habit of going
together. I had a strong affection for her. It was natural that I should
be overwhelmed with indignation at the man who had perpetrated this
wanton outrage, and excited with alarm for my poor friend, should she be
made acquainted with it. All day I was in an agony of apprehension for
her. It was impossible for me to go to her, as she lived a great way
off, and we, too, had work on our hands which was pressingly required at
the end of the week.

But that evening I stole off to see her. I had no sooner set foot within
the narrow court than it was apparent that something had gone wrong.
There was a group of neighbors gathered round the door, conversing in a
subdued tone, as if overtaken by a common calamity. They told me tha