ss pit. A door opens to his touch, he enters a cave-like
room--it is the one from out which the light stole so curiously, and in
which all is misery and sadness. A few embers still burn in a great
brick fireplace, shedding a lurid glow over the damp, filthy walls, the
discolored ceiling, and the grotesque group upon the floor. "You needn't
come at this time of night--we are all honest people;" speaks a massive
negro, of savage visage, who (he is clothed in rags) sits at the left
side of the fireplace. He coaxes the remnant of his fire to cook some
coarse food he has placed in a small, black stew-pan, he watches with
steady gaze. Three white females (we blush to say it), their bare,
brawny arms resting on their knees, and their disfigured faces drooped
into their hands, form an half circle on the opposite side.

"The world don't think nothin' of us down here--we haven't had a bite to
eat to-night," gruffly resumes the negro.

"May them that have riches enjoy them, for to be supperless is no
uncommon thing wid us," interrupts one of the women, gathering about her
the shreds of her tattered garment, parting the matted hair over her
face, and revealing her ghastly features. The detective turns his light
full upon her. "If we live we live, if we die we die--nobody cares! Look
you yonder, Mr. Fitzgerald," continues the negro, with a sarcastic leer.
Turning his light to where the negro points, the detective casts a
glance into the shadow, and there discovers the rags move. A dozen pair
of glassy eyes are seen peering from out the filthy coverings, over
which lean arms and blanched hands keep up an incessant motion. Here an
emaciated and heart-sick Welsh girl, of thirteen (enciente) lays
shivering on the broken floor; there an half-famished Scotch woman, two
moaning children nestling at her heart, suffers uncovered upon a pallet
of straw. The busy world without would seem not to have a care for her;
the clergy have got the heathen world upon their shoulders. Hunger, like
a grim tyrant, has driven her to seek shelter in this wretched abode.
Despair has made her but too anxious that the grave or prison walls
should close the record of her sorrows. How tightly she with her right
hand presses her babe to her bosom; how appealingly with her left she
asks a pittance of the detective! Will he not save from death her
starving child? He has nothing to give her, turns his head, answers only
with a look of pity, and moves slowly towards t