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No; I promise you that I will not; and again I tell you that I seek to do you no harm."

"Well, then, they call me Mother Shipley, because of all these childher that I looks after; but that ain't my right name," said the hag, with a frightful leer. "Now, what good have ye got by learning that ?"

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That is one thing that I wished to know; but you must answer me more questions yet. Have you a child here they call Henry Selby ?"

"No; he used to be here; but its weeks since the young imp of Satan ran away. He's dead, for anything I know or care;-drowned himself, maybe, because I guv him a bating, the vagabond. He was a good riddance, for he was the worst of all this set, and they be all young imps of the d- -1."

"Then you have no desire to see him again ?"

"Haven't I?-By me sowl, if I catch hold of him, I'll tear his hair out of his head ;-look here-he threw a stool at me, afore he cut off, and knocked me down,-or he wouldn't have gone away so easily ;" and she showed the mark of a severe contusion on her brow. "Wouldn't I like to skin the young villain ?" and she clutched the air with her skinny fingers, as if in anticipation of the punishment she intended to inflict upon the child, if ever she got him into her clutches again. "You are not the mother of the child—that is, of Henry Selby ?"

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Me! do I look like as if I was the little wretch's mother ?" His mother killed herself with drink, after her husband was hanged. Ha! ha! do ye hear that ?-But why do ye ax me? sorra another question I'll answer."

Joseph Carter had heard enough; he felt a sensation of unutterable horror and disgust as he gazed upon the bestial wretch lying before him. He threw her the money he had promised, and turned to leave the room.

The old hag clutched the coin, and shouted, "Now for drink-drink-drink-till me brain's distracted, and Beelzebub takes possession of me!"

As Joseph was hurrying away from this frightful scene, he turned and said, "I would ask you one more question: What do you employ these children in, and how came they under your care ?"

"Go and find out," was the reply. "I shan't answer another question to plaze ye. Ye'd better get away as quickly as ye can."

So Joseph thought; and finding he could get no further information, he hastened down the stairs,-his ears greeted

by shouts and blasphemous imprecations, as he descended. He did not feel safe until he had reached the open street, and he seemed to feel a relief, as though from suffocation, when he snuffed the comparatively purer air-foul as that was. He hastened into Broadway. "That child, with my consent, shall never be sent back to this horrible abode," he said to himself, "if I have to support him myself."

He went to the store of his employer. The bundle of clothing had been sent, as had been promised, and he carried it home with him to his wife.

He then related to her what he had seen, and reiterated the observation :-that he could not send the child back again to that abode of sin and misery.

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But, Joseph," said his wife, "what are we to do with a child who has been brought up in such a place, and amongst such wretches? I ask you, can he be a fitting companion for our children ?-a fit inmate of our house? Poor as it is, it is decent."

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He is not-not now, at least, but we can strive to make him so, Mary. What happiness it would be, if we could rescue him from the life of shame and infamy to which he seemed doomed; perhaps Providence has ordained that it shall be so. At all events, we must support him for awhile, until I can look about and find what can be done in his behalf. I will speak to Mr. Blunt again."

Mrs. Carter was fain to acquiesce; indeed she sincerely pitied the poor helpless child. It was only her love for her own children and her fears lest they would be contaminated by the presence and companionship of this child of vice and crime, that led her to be so reluctant to give him shelter. She felt, and so did her husband, that they were not in a position to support the offspring of strangers unknown to them, and, perhaps, indeed most likely, of debauched and depraved characters. Joseph had not told his wife what the old woman had said of the fate of the child's parents. He did not think it necessary, for it might not be true; but she agreed with her husband that they could not conscientiously send the child back. Nay, common humanity, setting aside Christian charity, forbade it.

And so Henry Selby became an inmate of Joseph Carter's family. Day after day, for some time, Joseph and his wife talked over various plans by means of which they could get quit of what they felt to be a grievous burthen; but they could arrive at no conclusion. Henry continued to reside with them, and in time came to be considered as one of the

when Uncle Joseph got well, come to live with them again, they prevailed upon him to consent.

Mr. Blunt sent for him that evening, and he was thenceforward regularly installed as a denizen of his kitchen-he continuing to send him to the school, whither he had for some months past gone regularly with the Carters' children.

Joseph laid long on a bed of sickness: but he was eventually restored to health and strength, although his shoulder and arm were always weak afterwards. But here we will leave him for a time, while we take occasion, in the next chapter, to introduce certain other characters to the notice of our readers.

CHAPTER V.

BRETHREN IN MISFORTUNE-THE PAWNBROKER'S SHOP-AN UNEXPECTED MEETING CREATES AN ENDURING FRIENDSHIP-THUS MISERY MAKES STRANGE BED-FELLOWS.

Up and down, through street after street, looking with a longing eye at the young men busily employed in the various stores, and thinking how gladly he would now take the humblest employment, how gladly he would become porter, messenger, anything that was honest, if he could only get the chance! Wondering why, in so large a city, where there was so much work done, so much work to do, he could obtain no engagement, and feeling sick at heart and soul, as he saw how many there were in the same position as himself, wandered Charles Edwards, an emigrant from Europe, who, flush with hope, had set foot in the United States for the first time some two months previously-confident in his own mind that not only would the services he could perform be readily accepted and well remunerated, but even eagerly sought after. Alas! how had his hopes fallen. Well he knew those who like himself had had their bright anticipations destroyed. He had seen the well-known faces, radiant with hope when they first met his eye, gradually growing despondent and careworn; he had noticed the well-brushed and glossy clothing, by degrees, scarcely perceptible at first, but perceptible enough now, growing shabby and seedy, and the once buoyant, elastic step assuming a careless gait, such as characterizes those who have no definite object in view. When he had first set his foot in the city of New York he had been struck with the number of idle, yet active, intelligent-looking young men congregated on the Battery, and he had thought

how well off every one must be in this great city, how careless of labour, when they could thus afford to spend so many idle hours. But day after day, after his weary and fruitless round to seek for an engagement, he resorted to that wellknown lounging place to rest his weary limbs, in the only resting place that he could find without money to pay for it, except his boarding house, and he did not like to go thither except at meal times and of an evening, for he wished to keep up appearances as long as he could; he was already two or three weeks' board in debt to his landlady, and he fancied she began to look coldly upon him and to mistrust his weekly excuses, that he was expecting to get a good situation in the course of a day or two, when it should be his first care to reimburse her. It would never do to remain idle at home, although he was worse than idle when abroad, for his labour, his weary wanderings, brought him no return, but deeper dejection. No, to have remained at home, would have been at once to betray his hopeless condition to his prying landlady (little was he aware that she already knew it); besides, although each failure brought him fresh dejection, each new trial gave him fresh hope; and he had little now but hope, the last remaining friend of the unfortunate, to sustain him.

Still, although he had formed the acquaintance of two or three of his fellow-sufferers, by meeting with them day after day on his favourite seat on the Battery; though each intuitively knew the condition of the other, and each mutually pitied the other's excuses, it was astonishing how they strove to disguise their position, and told each other how, the next day-yes, and the next day again, they expected to get such and such a situation, and still kept on telling, though each day passed like the other, and still saw them at its close seated on the same seat, and telling a similar story.

Charles Edwards had possessed a watch and chain when he first arrived in New York, but the watch he no longer wore, although the chain still did duty, keeping needless guard over the empty vest-pocket. Among his fellow-boarders, although he did not know it until he had been for some weeks a resident of the boarding-house, was a young man in a similar position with himself. And one day at the dinner-table this young man, whose name was Hartley, asked Charles what was the hour. Of course, all eyes were directed to the pocket in which the end of the chain was inserted. Charles blushed and stammered. 'I have left it at the watchmaker's," he said; "it has been sadly out of repair lately."

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"And you still wear the chain for a sham!" was the thought

lesa reply, and various jokes were passed, which struck like daggers upon the feelings of the sensitive young man. He knew he had told a falsehood, because he lacked moral courage to tell the truth; he felt that the truth was suspected, and still he had not the moral courage to avow it. It had gone to a watchdealer's, if not a watchmaker's, who had so ample a supply of those articles of utility and ornament, that he might have supplied the ordinary demand of the city for watches.

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How many a bitter pang had it cost Charles Edward, before he could muster up courage to enter the precincts of that strange repository of heterogeneous materials, a pawnbroker's shop? How many a time, when he thought he had screwed his courage to the sticking point," had his heart failed him, and he had deferred the sacrifice till another day? How he fancied that the eyes of all the passers-by were fixed upon him as he passed apparently carelessly by the "three golden balls," on the opposite side of the street, casting a furtive, sidelong glance at the emblems of the "Lombards," and yet striving to look as though all the "golden balls" in the world were nothing to him: and what a sickening sensation arose in his breast as at last he made the dread resolve, and walking hastily along the back street in the rear of the shop, he made a sudden plunge, as he reached the dark, open doorway; and hastily ascending the stairs, as though the property he wished to pawn, to satisfy his present needs, were not his own, and he was fearful the police were at his heels-he rushed breathlessly into the narrow dark box, still keeping back from the counter, ashamed to make known his business. How strange appeared the shameless carelessness of the habitués of this dreadful place, to his imagination, who, scorning the secrecy of the boxes, crowded before the counter and teased the busy shopmen with their incessant demands to be attended to, or indulged in facetious jokes and pleasantries with each other and the clerks; and most of these persons lost to the feelings of shame, were women! and the articles they had brought to pledge, were what? Worn articles of clothing! domestic utensils! household furniture, of so little value that to sell it out and out would bring but the price of a meal!

The shop was emptied and refilled several times before Charles was seen in the dark corner where he had ensconced himself; but at length, a lesser rush than usual being at the counter, one of the young men came to the box.

"What can I do for you, sir, to-day ?" he asked, to Charles's surprise, in a respectful tone, very different to that he had used when dealing and bantering with the motley crew without.