s on uneven
stones and the dragging of wet rags.

Struck with surprise, if not with apprehension, he shrank back into the
over-jutting porch of an old residence, with sculptured armorial
bearings of some family long ago abased in its pride. Here he peered,
not without anxiety.

By the exact programme carried out in cities by the divisions of its
population, a new contingent were coming from their resting-places to
substitute themselves for the honest toilers on the thoroughfares; each
cellar and attic in the rookeries were exuding the horrible vermin
which shun the wholesome light of day.

The spruce trees, stuck in tubs of sand at a beer-house beyond the
bridge, shuddered as though in disgust at this horde of Hans hastening
to invade the district of hotels, supper-houses and gaming clubs, to beg
or steal the means to survive yet another day.

For ten or fifteen minutes the stranger watched the beggars stream
individually out of the mazes and, to his horror, form like soldiers for
a review, along the street before him, up to the end of the bridge at
one extremity and far along at the other end of the line. Some certainly
spied him, for these wretches could see as lucidly as the felines in the
night--their day from society having reversed their conditions. But,
though these whispered the warning to one another, and he was the object
of scrutiny, no one left his place, and soon as their backs were turned
to him, he had no immediate uneasiness as regarded an attack, or even a
challenge upon his business there.

Probably the good citizens were not ignorant that this meeting of the
vagrants took place each evening, for not only were all store-doors
closed hermetically, but the upper windows no longer emitted a
scintillation of lamplight. The spy by accident concluded that he would
raise his voice for help all in vain as far as the tradesmen were
concerned. But he was brave, and he let increasing curiosity enchain him
continuously.

From time out of mind the sage in velvet has serenely contemplated
Diogenes in his tub; not that our philosopher seemed the treasurer of an
Alexander!

Ranged at length in a long row, cripples, the blind, the young, the
aged, it was a company of mendicants which eccentric painters would have
given five years of life to have seen. Except for consumptive coughs,
the misstep of a wooden leg of which the clumsy ferule slipped on a
cobblestone, and the querulous whimper of a child, half-starve