ide by side with the
first. An awful faintness and trembling seized him as he approached it
and bent his head close down to the marble. The jagged shadows of the
cedar-branches played across the surface, but by the uncertain light he
could read the name "Imogen Pinckney," and below it the inscription,
"Wir hoffen auf Wiedersehen."

HENRY A. BEERS.

STUDIES IN THE SLUMS.

VI.--JAN OF THE NORTH.

"You're wanted at 248, and they said go quick. It's Brita, I shouldn't
wonder. Lord pity her, but it's a wild night to go out! Seems like as if
the Lord would have hard work to find anybody, with the rain an' sleet
pourin' an' drivin' so't you can't see a foot before your face. But He
will."

"Yes, He will," the doctor's quiet voice answered. "Poor little Brita! I
am glad her trouble is almost over. Will you come? Remember how dreadful
the place is."

"More so for me than for you?"

"Surely, for I have been in the midst of such for twenty years, and
among them all have never known a worse den than that in which these
poor souls are stranded. If I could only see a way out for them!"

The doctor had not been idle as she spoke, and stood ready now in thick
gray waterproof and close bonnet, her face a shade graver than its
always steady, gentle calm. Jerry followed, his badge of deputy sheriff
hastily put on, for the alley was one of the worst in the Fourth Ward,
and, well as she was known through its length and breadth, here the
bravest might shrink from going unattended. Out into the night, the wild
wind and beating rain seeming best accompaniments to the brutal revelry
in the dance-houses and "bucket-shops" all about. Here, one heard the
cracked and discordant sounds from the squeaking fiddles or clarionets
of the dance-music, and there, were shouts and oaths and the crash of
glass as a drunken fight went on, undisturbed by policeman and watched
with only a languid interest by the crowd of heavy drinkers. Up Cherry
street, past staggering men, and women with the indescribable voice that
once heard is never forgotten, all, seemingly regardless of the storm,
laughing aloud or shrieking as a sudden gust whirled them on. Then the
alley, dark and noisome, the tall tenement-houses rising on either side,
a wall of pestilence and misery, shutting in only a little deeper
misery, a little surer pestilence, to be faced as it might be.

"It's hell on earth," said Jerry as we passed up the stairs, d