that?" continued the clerk.

"Your honor mightn't like to know."

"By all means! It is, in fact, necessary that you should give an account
of yourself," said the clerk.

Old Hurricane once more raised his head, opened his ears and gave close
attention.

One circumstance he had particularly remarked--the language used by the
poor child during her examination was much superior to the slang she had
previously affected, to support her assumed character of newsboy.

"Well, well--why do you pause? Go on--go on, my good boy--girl, I mean
I" said the Recorder, in a tone of kind encouragement.

CHAPTER VI.

A SHORT, SAD STORY.

"Ah! poverty is a weary thing!
It burdeneth the brain,
It maketh even the little child
To murmur and complain."

"It is not much I have to tell," began Capitola. "I was brought up in
Rag Alley and its neighborhood by an old woman named Nancy Grewell."

"Ah!" ejaculated Old Hurricane.

"She was a washwoman, and rented one scantily furnished room from a poor
family named Simmons."

"Oh!" cried Old Hurricane.

"Granny, as I called her, was very good to me, and I never suffered cold
nor hunger until about eighteen months ago, when Granny took it into her
head to go down to Virginia."

"Umph!" exclaimed Old Hurricane.

"When Granny went away she left me a little money and some good clothes
and told me to be sure to stay with the people where she left me, for
that she would be back in about a month. But, your honor, that was the
last I ever saw or heard of poor Granny! She never came back again. And
by that I know she must have died."

"Ah-h-h!" breathed the old man, puffing fast.

"The first month or two after Granny left I did well enough. And then,
when the little money was all gone, I eat with the Simmonses and did
little odd jobs for my food. But by and by Mr. Simmons got out of work,
and the family fell into want, and they wished me to go out and beg for
them. I just couldn't do that, and so they told me I should look out for
myself."

"Were there no customers of your grandmother that you could have applied
to for employment?" asked the Recorder.

"No, sir. My Granny's customers were mostly boarders at the small
taverns, and they were always changing. I did apply to two or three
houses where the landladies knew Granny; but they didn't want me."

"Oh-h-h!" groaned Major Warfield, in the tone of one in great pain.

"I wouldn't have that old fellow's c