' says she. 'May ye niver want
the worth of it,' says I. And the pint was not long in, when Mary got a
little the worse of it, and let all out about the money. 'You won't
whisper it, Mrs. Murphy,' says she, 'if I'd tell ye in confidence by
what manes I got the lift?'"

"'Not in the wide world, Mary,' says I; 'ye may trust me for that same.'
'Shure didn't I raise it from the pocket of an auld woman in spectacles,
that watched the fool beyant dig up the corporation.' 'An' it'll not do
yerself much good,' says I, liftin' the same, and cuttin' away to the
house. 'You won't whisper it?' says she."

"I can confirm the truth of that same," rejoins a brusque-figured man,
rising from his pallet, and speaking with regained confidence. "Mary
looked in at the Blazers, and being the worse of liquor, showed a dale
of ready money, and trated everybody, and gave the money to everybody,
and was wilcome wid everybody. Then Mrs. McCarty got aboard of her
ginerosity, and got her into the Rookery, where the Miss McCartys
thought it would not be amiss to have a quart. The same was brought in,
and Mary hersel' was soon like a dead woman on the floor, jist--"

"And they got the money all away?" interrupts the detective.

"Faith, an' she'll not have a blessed dollar come daylight," continues
the man, resuming his pallet.

The detective bids Mrs. Murphy good night, and is soon groping his way
over a rickety old floor, along a dark, narrow passage, scarce high
enough to admit him, and running at right angles with the first. A door
on the left opens into a grotto-like place, the sickly atmosphere of
which seems hurling its poison into the very blood. "Who's here?"
inquires the detective, and a voice, feeble and hollow, responds:
"Lodgers!"

The damp, greasy walls; the broken ceilings; the sooty fireplace, with
its shattered bricks; the decayed wainscoating--its dark, forlorn
aspect, all bespeak it the fit abode of rats. And yet Mr. Krone thinks
it comfortable enough (the authorities think Mr. Krone the best judge)
for the accommodation of thirteen remnants of human misery, all of whom
are here huddled together on the wet, broken floor, borrowing warmth of
one another. The detective's light falls curiously upon the dread
picture, which he stands contemplating. A pale, sickly girl, of some
eleven summers, her hair falling wildly over her wan features, lays upon
some rags near the fireplace, clinging to an inebriated mother. Here a
father, hea