r three times come in here, and always appeared so nervous
when she inquired about Mag Munday? and you recollect how she would not
be content until we had told her a thousand different things concerning
her. She wanted, she said, a clue to her; but she never could get a clue
to her. There is something more than we know of connected with this
letter," and she lays the old damp stained and crumpled letter on the
table, as the old servant enters bearing on a small tray their humble
supper.

"Now, sit up, my daughter," says the old man, helping her to a sandwich
while she pours out his dish of tea, "our enjoyment need be none the
less because our fare is humble. As for satisfying this lady about Mag
Munday, why, I have given that up. I told her all I knew, and that is,
that when she first came to Charleston--one never knows what these New
Yorkers are--she was a dashing sort of woman, had no end of admirers,
and lived in fine style. Then it got out that she wasn't the wife of the
man who came with her, but that she was the wife of a poor man of the
name of Munday, and had quit her husband; as wives will when they take a
notion in their heads. And as is always the way with these sort of
people, she kept gradually getting down in the world, and as she kept
getting more and more down so she took more and more to drink, and drink
brought on grief, and grief soon wasted her into the grave. I took pity
on her, for she seemed not a bad woman at heart, and always said she was
forced by necessity into the house of Madame Flamingo--a house that
hurries many a poor creature to her ruin. And she seemed possessed of a
sense of honor not common to these people; and when Madame Flamingo
turned her into the street,--as she does every one she has succeeded in
making a wretch of,--and she could find no one to take her in, and had
nowhere to lay her poor head, as she used to say, I used to lend her
little amounts, which she always managed somehow to repay. As to there
being anything valuable in the dress, I never gave it a thought; and
when she would say if she could have restored to her the dress, and
manage to get money enough to get to New York, I thought it was only the
result of her sadness."

"You may remember, father," interrupts Maria, "she twice spoke of a
child left in her charge; and that the child was got away from her. If
she could only trace that poor child, she would say, or find out what
had become of it, she could forget her