University of Virginia Library

25. Chapter XXV.
Peleg Ferret's Monday.

MR. PELEG FERRET rose betimes on the Monday
following his interview with Mordecai Kolephat;
for the recollection of certain pecuniary inducements suggested
by his Hebrew employer made the thrifty agent
anxious to begin his search for that gentleman's lost child.
The fear and trembling of Kolephat College tenantry
began at an earlier hour, even, than was usual on weekly
rent-days, and consequently there were more numerous
threats of ejectment, more earnest appeals for lenity, and,
perhaps, a more generally diffused panic, from roof to
cellar of the rickety premises, than had been known
during the previous hard months of the winter season.

The seamstress, Margaret, had, as usual, been ready
with her scanty savings, to meet the agent's summons.
Old Mallory had resigned, in dismay, a few of the silver
coins that he clutched beneath his bed-covering. The
ancient Irishwoman, who occupied a rear room on the
third floor (and whose children, at service, paid her rent);
the little German tailor, sitting cross-legged all day in a
wretched apartment, eight feet square, where, with a consumptive
wife, he toiled, ate, drank, or sang (half-stifled,

while warmed, by the open furnace that heated his iron
goose); the four young girls, in front rooms, who wore
gandy ribbons, and were never without money; the old
negro cripple, who did odd jobs for the neighborhood,
and burrowed in a kennel-like closet under the staircase;
the beetle-browed Englishman who stole out after nightfall
and crept back near morning, to abuse his delicate
wife, and who, the rumor ran, was a burglar or river-thief;
the shabby genteel gentleman, on the first floor, who wore
a rusty brown coat and napless hat, and bought ink by
the penny's worth at the grocery, and whom Mr. Ferret
employed occasionally to post his accounts, and who was
said to be writing a story-book; the rheumatic man, in
the cellar, who was once a cartman and owned a horse,
but had been run over and shattered to pieces, and now
lay bed-ridden, while his wife took in slop-work to keep
both out of the alms-house; the small widow, in a cap,
with a sea-faring son, who sometimes came home, and got
drunk daily while he stayed ashore; the black man, who
worked on the wharves, and lived with his white wife in
a decently-kept room at the head of the first flight of
stairs; the asthmatic female, in a yellow turban, who took
seven men boarders, in her two rooms, and sent her boy
out to beg broken victuals wherewith to supply her table;
the bright-eyed French flower-worker, on the first-floor,
who embroidered and chirped all day long; the family of
three young women, and their aged mother, who picked
wool sixteen hours a day; the Italian people who kept
dry maccaroni in the upper story; the Swiss boys, living
in a back shed, and raising spearmint in boxes, to sell to
the keepers of bar-rooms; the beggar-woman, who came
home at night with an infant, and gave it gin and paregoric
to stupefy it till morning; the —

But, O tenants of Kolephat College! why shall I
enumerate your characteristics? why dwell upon your
wretched vocations, your miserable life, your vile associations,
your uncivilized habitudes? Suffice it, now, that
Peleg Ferret, as was his wont, traversed the dingy close,
from damp and noisome basement to shattered, rain-soaked
attic, collecting here and there his dues—menacing the
tardy, brow-beating the timid, and seasoning his demands
with coarse jests, low innuendoes, and fierce abuse—till
the tenant-house, as was customary when he visited it,
scethed and boiled, as it were, with all the bitter feelings
that are begotten of misery, malice, and petty tyranny.

Little recked Peleg, it is true, of these results of rent-day
faithfulness, since he beheld in them only the perversity
of tenant-nature; nevertheless, it is not probable
that the collector's own disposition was ameliorated by
his exercise of duty, or that, when at length he ascended
to the dilapidated upper stories of the building, and
knocked at the door of Phil Keeley's garret-room, his
brow was anything the less frowning, or his voice more
placid in its tones.

Phil Keeley's garret had undergone no improving
change since the agent's visit on the previous week. The
wind blew keenly as before, through crannies in the
broken shingle roof, and water stood in dirty pools upon
the rat-eaten floors, or oozed darkly from the rotten
plastering. Ferret knocked once, and then, without

waiting for a response, opened the door, and walked
forward.

The room was filled with smoke that puffed out from
the foul chimney, and by the hearth, on which a few chips
were burning, Keeley's wife sat, or rather squatted, her
elbows resting on her knees, and her clenched hands
supporting her chin, while she gazed vacantly into the
embers. On her knees, at a little distance, appeared her
daughter, Moll, and between the two was an old basket,
in which were some fragments of cold meat and stale
bread, the collection of a begging excursion from which
the child had just returned. Moll was gnawing ravenously
at a bone clutched in both her hands, and neither
she nor her mother seemed to be aware of the agent's
approach, till his harsh voice grated suddenly upon their
ears, and his scowling countenance looked down upon
them.

“Umph! enjoyin' yourselves—plenty to eat, I see; but
where's the whisky-bottle?”

At the first word, Moll had dropped her bone, and
cowered affrightedly away, but the woman glanced up
defiantly, with teeth set and lips drawn down at the
corners, but without answering Ferret's taunt.

“Where's that skulkin' husband of your'n?” pursued
the collector, in a loud tone. “I gave you warnin' last
week to stir your stumps from these premises, and here
you are hangin' on, with near three weeks' rent doo. D'ye
think I'm goin' to stand that, old woman?”

Still no reply came from Mrs. Keeley, though her eyes
glared upwards, in dull fierceness, mingled with an

expression of despair. To another than Ferret, who was
too accustomed to all shapes of wretchedness to trouble
himself about making distinctions, the miserable woman
would have appeared the very incarnation of human
squalor. Her arms were bare, and so shrunken that
hardly more than the bones, with shrivelled blue skin
drawn over them, were visible; her forehead was stamped
with the yellow signet of consumption's last stage; her
checks were hollowed, and her lips so distorted that teeth
and gums protruded from between them. It was manifest
that she was dying from starvation and neglected
disease; but Peleg Ferret saw in her atrophied form only
a delinquent debtor, and her silence under his remarks
merely served to increase his ill humor.

“Look here, old woman—hain't you got no tongue, or
be you drunk? leastwise you might cuss a little, so I'd
know it was you, and no mistake, you old catamaran!
'Twon't do to sham sick on me! I'm up to you, and out
you go before this day's over—jes' you make up your
mind to that, Miss Keeley.”

Ferret had advanced, as he was speaking, shoving
roughly past the child Moll, who had begun to moan
bitterly, terrified at his threatening looks. He now stood
with arms akimbo immediately over the drunkard's wife,
whose voice was heard, for the first time, in reply to
his words; not, indeed, in the quick, querulous manner
that was natural to the woman's temperament, but with
hoarse intonation, yet solemn distinctness.

“Ferret!” began Mrs. Keeley, “stoop down, man, till
I whisper a word in your ear! I'm dyin' Ferret, an' ye'll

be obleeged to take me out o' this, feet foremost. But
my blessin' to ye, for your good deeds, Ferret—d'ye mind
me?”

Her long, bony arm was upraised, till the attenuated
hand touched the agent, and made him shrink back from
the contact. Her eyes grew preternaturally bright, and
she set her teeth together, so that the gums were exposed
between the receding lips. No wonder Peleg Ferret
changed color, and stepped back a pace; for if the woman's
glance had possessed basilisk power, it could not
have glittered with more intense and unearthly hatred
than it now exhibited.

“Ye gave the drink to Phil, till ye made him a sot an'
a ruffian; ye brought us down from a decent home to
this wild beast's den, that ye call Kolephat College—ye
brought us from a comfortable bit an' sup to starvation
and nakedness; an' now ye're come for your rint, Ferret
—ye're come for your rint!”

As the woman paused, the agent tried to turn from the
glance which shot out of her eyes, but she threw herself
upwards, with a spasmodic effort, and clutching at his
garments, held him firmly.

“Ye'll hear—ye'll hear me, Ferret,” she shricked, in a
paroxysm of excitement, the reaction of her previous
unnatural calmness. “Hold by, till I pray for you,
Ferret — may the orphan's curse cling to ye! — Phil
Keeley's wife will meet you at the bar o' God! may your
heart wither out of your breast, and your soul go down
to the black pit o”' —

Peleg Ferret's yellow face grew crimson with fear and

rage, as with a great effort he withdrew his gaze from
that of Mrs. Keeley, and, uplifting his heavily shod foot,
dealt the miserable woman a violent kick which forced
her back upon the floor. Then, ere the shrieking Moll
could reach her mother's side, he strode, with a wrathful
malediction, out of the garret, and down the rickety
stairs, until he emerged into the alley, and thence sought
his grocery. Hither summoning two brutal-featured
negroes, a species of familiars attracted by the love of
poisonous whisky around the purlieus of all such places—
wretches in whose lineaments depravity struggled with
stolidity, for the blotting out of human traits—he
whispered to them a few words, serving out to each
a glass of some execrable spirits, and hurrying them
away. Then, turning to a nook behind his bar, wherein
stood a high-raised desk, Peleg proceeded to count the
sum total of his cash receipts, entering each item, as he
proceeded, in sundry dingy books before him.

A brief space sufficed to transact this rent-day business,
after concluding which, the collector once more sallied out
upon the street, and bent his steps away from the locality
of Kolephat's tenant-house. The effects of his interview
with Mrs. Keeley were still noticeable in the soured looks
that he cast about him, but, at the same time, other subjects
occupied the man's thoughts. He had golden prospects
before him, contingent on a successful search for the
Jew's lost child, and as he proceeded on his way, a dozen
schemes to compass his pursuit were entertained and dismissed
in rapid succession. At length, however, a plan
appeared to shape itself before his crafty mind, as was

apparent from the expression of satisfaction that began to
be manifest in his features, and the quickened pace with
which he traversed the thoroughfares.

Mordecai Kolephat, in his interview with the collector,
had been unable, it is true, to give any certain data
whereon to base a clue to the whereabouts of the stolen
girl; but the little that he had gleaned from the rag-picker's
dying revelation, and which he imparted to
Ferret, afforded the latter sufficient matter for, at least,
shrewd conjecture; and it was Peleg's resolution, in the
first place, to direct his scrutiny to the occupants of the
tenant-house neighborhood wherein Old Pris had breathed
her last. With this determination uppermost, he soon
found himself in the wretched pile of buildings, wherein
dwelt the yellow dwarf Josh and his negress mother.

Ferret was no stranger to the domain which he now
entered upon, for he had long regarded it with respect as
a “paying property,” and looked forward to a speedy
agency of the premises, in behalf of their owner, Kolephat.
He knew that it was densely populated, and that,
therefore, a snug per centage could be realized out of the
collection of its rents. It is true, the wooden hovels in
the rear of its brick fronting were not of the cleanest
description, nor devoted to the most sweet-smelling purposes;
being inhabited by hordes of German rag-pickers
and gatherers of bones in streets and gutters, who penetrated
to their peculiar district through two narrow alleyways,
and there lived, amid a surrounding of filth and
malaria that would seem to be deadly to all human existence,
and yet apparently exercised very little deleterious

influence upon the poison-proof denizens within. Peleg
Ferret had sniffed the effluvia of rag-pickers' abodes on
other visits before this, and knew how great heaps of
bleaching market bones, canine and feline skeletons, fragments
of mangled hides, with putrid meat clinging to
them, and piles of garbage dragged from sink and sewer,
were to be encountered by one who should seek them.
He had seen, on other occasions, the long rope-lines
extending from windows and chimneys of the wooden
huts, and strung with dense bunches of rags, of every
color, fluttering in the wind, which caught up their diseased
and infectious exhalation to bear it away to other
neighborhoods, depositing continually the seeds of slow
decline or quick, unsparing disease. He was aware, likewise,
that the tenants of those interior dwellings were
crowded by threes, and fours, and often sevens, in narrow,
close, and unventilated rooms, wherein they breathed the
noxious gases generated by their own personal squalor
and by vile concomitants of their wretched trade; that
they devoted single apartments to the usage of sleeping,
and eating, and rag-washing, and the boiling of bones,
whence arose an atmosphere of fœtid steam, densifying in
cold air, or brooding above their roofs in clouds charged
with venomous matter. All these things were familiar to
Peleg Ferret, though little recked he of their consequences;
for he looked upon the tenant-house and its
inmates as the field and subjects of his business thrift, and
classified them merely by two qualifications—the “paying”
and the “non-paying”—in the former of which category
he placed the rag-pickers and bone-gatherers, and in the
latter an indistinguishable mass of various pauper designations.

But, before venturing into the interior close, inhabited
by the rag-picking community, the agent knocked at the
door of Josh, the mulatto, which was speedily opened by
that personage. Some considerable alteration had taken
place in the appearance of the apartment since the visit
of Mordecai Kolephat and the death of Old Pris. The
broken casement had been glazed, and now admitted some
light of day to the interior, before so dark, and a flock
mattress, and clothing, with a few cheap articles of furniture,
relieved the dingy basement of the aspect of naked
misery that it had previously worn. A fire was burning
on the hearth, and altogether the place seemed comfortable—a
change attributable to the dwarf's exalted fortune,
as the possessor of the windfall brought by his
lottery speculations.

But, if in point of a few necessary comforts the mulatto
appeared to have bettered his condition, it was manifest,
likewise, that he had not been unmindful of the superfluities
of domestic life; for at this time there was another
occupant of the apartment in addition to Josh and the
dreaming hag, his mother. A girl of scarce eighteen
years of age, with prepossessing features and not ungraceful
figure, was reclining upon the bed, beside which sat
the negress, and the two were drinking some hot beverage
redolent of stale lemons and whisky. Ferret noticed
these features of the dwarf's room, at a glance, as Josh
removed a short pipe from his mouth, and invited him to
enter.

“Walk in, master! Jes' say what I kin do for you,”
said the mulatto, with a roll of his eyes that indicated a
somewhat deep indulgence in liquor, even at this early
hour of the day.

“I want to talk to you about a woman that died
here—`Old Pris,”' remarked the agent, in seating himself.

“Ugh!” rejoined the dwarf, as though something unpleasant
had been recalled. “That ole critter is a mortal
sight o' consequence since she went dead. There's ole
Mr. Kolephat—he buried her, and” —

“Well,” replied Ferret, “it might be worth while to
find out su'thin' about her, an' you mightn't lose nothin'
by it.”

“Well, sit down, master,” said the mulatto. “Don't be
skeered at my folks,” he continued, observing that his
visitor's eyes were directed towards the female portion of
his family. “That ar' ole woman's my mother, an' the
young 'un's my wife.” The last words were accompanied
by a chuckling laugh, which disclosed his discolored teeth
and red gums.

Ferret looked keenly at the young girl, who only
laughed, in a low tone, as she sipped her whisky; whereupon
the agent laughed, also, and winked at the mulatto,
saying—“You've got a nice wife, now, hain't you?”

Peleg Ferret then thought no more of the yellow
dwarf's attractive-looking companion, who lolled upon the
bed, but proceeded to his category of inquiries concerning
the dead rag-picker and her recent associations. And
why, indeed, should the agent of tenant-houses have manifested

wonder that a deformed mulatto could induce a
young white girl to abandon her own race and live with
him, in his negro-den, with a hag mother? What marvel
could Ferret discover in the union of that distorted African
offshoot, yellow-skinned and grizzled-locked, with a
flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, and delicate-featured woman of
Teutonic blood? Such consortings were to his eyes no
new phase of tenant-house life; for many were the blacks
and whites, of every grade, that the agent had collected
his dues from, in the course of a business life. Peleg
Ferret did not philosophize upon the matter—did not
affect to account for the practical amalgamation so usual
to his sight—did not speculate upon the moral and physical
destitution that must precede the period at which a
youthful white girl could resign herself to the society of a
depraved and grotesque negro, merely because he might
procure her for a season wherewith to eat, to drink, and
to be clothed. What had the tenant-house agent to do
with morals or decency, among the miserable denizens
under his supervision? His business was to take the
system as he found it, and out of it make the most.
Consequently, after the first scrutinizing glance at the
dwarf's helpmate, Peleg Ferret troubled himself no more
about her. And in this, Peleg Ferret imitated the Christian
world, that has so long contented itself with casual
notice of the wrongs and shames in its midst, passing
speedily to other themes, and becoming absorbed in other
interests.

“Old Pris was mixed up a good deal with organ-grinders,
and such people—heh?” suggested the agent,

after a few preliminary inquiries. “Didn't ye ever hear
of any young g'rl she used to have around?”

“No, master—not any g'rl that I ever heerd of,” returned
Josh. “She was a critter that used to keep to
herself, and folks thought she had a pile o' money somewhere;
but I never seed any.”

“Didn't leave you nothin', then?” said Ferret, closing
his left eye, and throwing back his head. “You took her
in—but you didn't git anything, heh?”

“That poor critter didn't have nothin',” returned Josh.
“And when old Kolephat come here, she was a-lyin' jes'
under them steps—a-dyin' fast. Mother, yander, said she
had some pawn-tickets, but we couldn't find any when
they laid her out.”

“Some pawn-tickets—what for?”

“Dunno, master—must ha' been lost; 'cause they wan't
nowhere when they washed the corpse.”

The agent mused a moment, and then asked—

“Didn't nobody give you a shillin' for takin' care of
her?”

“Yes—Kolephat—he guv me a five-dollar bill, he did
—and, yes, that ar' g'rl that come with ole Maria—she
guv me a quarter, kind o' sly.”

“What g'rl?” asked Ferret, abruptly.

“Why, the g'rl that come with ole Maria.”

“And who's Maria?”

“Why, she's the mother of all the organ-grinders,”
answered Josh, with a chuckle, at his own humor, which
almost strangled him. “She lives out in the rear, ye see,
and Ole Pris used to be thick with her.”

“That's enough!” muttered Peleg Ferret to himself;
and then rising, asked the mulatto to direct him to the
dwelling-place of Maria, which the dwarf did, with some
circumlocution. Then, in order to impress his informant
with a proper sense of the honor he had enjoyed in conversing
with a distinguished visitor, the agent remarked
that he should very shortly, it was probable, attend to
Mr. Kolephat's business in “these ere premises.” Under
cover of this piece of information, so conveyed, Mr. Ferret
backed out of the dwarf's room, relieving himself of the
necessity of disbursing any small coin to the communicative
proprietor, who thereupon returned to the society of
his blue-eyed wife, whose lips he kissed before turning to
another draught of whisky. The yellow dwarf was an
independent man, for he had made lucky “hits,” and had
a “dreaming” mother.

Peleg Ferret picked his path across the muddy outdoor
space that intervened between the extremity of the
entry, on which was situated the dwarf's room, and a
narrow rear portion of the building, occupied principally
by organ-grinders and other foreign vagrants, and forming
one side of an angular court, bordered by two alleys that
conducted into an inner area dwelt in by rag-pickers and
bone-gatherers. Ascending the stairs, of familiar gloom
and filthiness, the agent reached a landing, the narrow
window of which overlooked a collection of wooden huts,
with mounds of bones in front, and thousands of particolored
rags fluttering over their roofs and porches. At
the bases of the bone-hills dozens of hungry-looking dogs
were stretched at length, gnawing the more savory fragments,

and occasionally howling in horrible concert.
Under a pine shed were piled several bales of washed
rags, roped and secured, in readiness for market, and near
the aperture of an alley leading out to the street stood a
small handcart, whereto a brace of dogs was harnessed,
and from which an old woman was unloading the product
of her morning's tour, in the shape of wet or frozen rags,
bones, shreds of paper, sticks of wood, and a variety of
east-away rubbish, raked from the streets—“unconsidered
trifles,” in the eye of the world, but to the chiffonnier the
means of existence, and often the foundation of fortune.

Ferret paused not, however, to observe, save by a
passing glance, the motley appearance of this rag-pickers'
domain, but proceeded, according to the direction that he
had received from the dwarf, to a room into which the
reader has been already introduced, as that of Monna
Maria and her Italian family.

Early as it was in the forenoon, all the active men and
most of the children belonging to the establishment had
long since emerged upon the streets, dispersing to their
several itinerancies. The superannuated greybeard remained,
however, sitting on his block, and drivelling over
his beads, and the mother of the household, with the
younger women, was engaged in various manipulations.
Monna Maria—her forbidding face bent down—was busied
in knitting, and scarcely raised her eyes, when the visitor,
after waiting for the door to be opened to his knock,
walked into the apartment, and began to survey the group
with his crafty glance.

Peleg Ferret was accustomed, like Jobson of Foley's

Barracks, “to do with all sorts o' tenants;” nevertheless,
the indifference with which his advent was regarded rather
abashed his customary self-possession. For a minute or
two he remained standing in the middle of the floor, his
gaze passing from the dotard, with his rosary, to the old
woman, and then scanning the other females, who had
silently resumed their employments. At length he asked,
in a tone that was intended to be conciliatory, if “all the
folks were at home,” to which sapient interrogatory the
Italians made no answer whatever.

“Well, if ye hain't got tongues, or don't understand
English, I'm sort o' blocked,” muttered the agent to himself;
but at this moment the old woman raised her eyes,
and inquired, in tolerably intelligent language, concerning
his business in their apartment.

“You can talk, can you?” ejaculated Ferret. “Well,
now, that's clever, anyhow. S'posin' I ask you, if you
ever knew a rag-pickin' old critter called Old Pris?”

“What would you know about the dead?” demanded
Monna Maria, in a measured voice, while her eyes darted a
searching glance, as she leaned partially forward, pausing
in her task.

Ferret hesitated a moment, and then said—

“I'd like to find some of her friends.”—

“She had no friends,” was the chilling response.

“Well, somebody that knowed her—somebody that
knowed about her and the child she stole—and about the
pawn-tickets she had—that's all.”

The agent uttered these words slowly, keeping his eyes
fixed upon the woman's face; and he saw, at once, that

she was startled with their abrupt meaning; for her
glance fell before his, and her frame apparently trembled,
But, whatever might be her emotion, the Italian concealed
it instantly, and rejoined—

“Why come you here to ask such questions? What
know I about your lost children and pawn-tickets? Have
I stolen from you?”

“Well,” drawled the crafty agent, perceiving, at once,
that the woman was desirous of eluding his scrutiny, and
that, whatever she might know concerning the object of
his search, she was, for some reason, evidently unwilling
to disclose it—“Well, ma'am, no offence, I hope—only
there's a large reward offered to find out something about
the child that Old Pris stole away, and they said you
knew somethin' about the critter. It 'ud be wu'th your
while, ma'am, if ye did—that's a fact.”

“There was a boy stolen?” inquired the Italian, nodding
her head.

“A boy—well, it might be a boy,” returned Peleg.
“Did you know about a boy?”

“The child of a heretic,” went on the woman, in an
evasive manner. “All heretics are damned, and their
children with them.”

“That's comfortable,” remarked Ferret. “Nice—don't
you think?”

“What do you come here for?” suddenly exclaimed
Monna Maria, dropping her knitting needles. “If a
heretic lost his child, the child was saved from perdition.”

“That's your opinion, is it?” said Ferret, who began to
conjecture that the Italian was either deranged, or endeavoring

to mislead him by assuming to wander in her
mind. “Now, I'd like to have you explain what you
mean by a heretic?”

“It is he who forsakes the True Church,” answered
Monna Maria.

“That's the Roman Church—hain't it?” asked Ferret.
“Well, is a Jew a heretic?”

“Accursed!” exclaimed Monna Maria.

“And a Protestant, too, I s'pose?”

“There is no hope for either, or for their children,”
cried the woman, vehemently, as she rose suddenly, and
stood with her gaunt figure erect before Ferret, her long
arms extended, as if to thrust him away. But as she
made this movement, something that fell from her bosom
to the floor caught the agent's quick eye, and, stooping
immediately, he possessed himself of it. A single glance
discovered to him that it was a pawn-ticket, and he
instantly divined a connection of this scrap of paper with
the deceased rag-picker, perhaps with the living child that
had been stolen.

Monna Maria's aspect became wilder, as she beheld the
ticket in her visitor's hand. Stamping her foot upon the
floor, she attempted to clutch Ferret's arm, and failing in
that, demanded fiercely that what she had dropped should
be restored to her. But Ferret, familiar with such demonstrations
on the part of females, and perceiving that, in
pursuit of his quest, he had now gained an important
clue, adroitly avoided the woman's hands, while he thrust
the scrap of paper into his pocket.

“You can have this 'ere ticket, ma'am, after a certain

person has seen it, an' if any damage is done, I'm responsible—d'ye
hear?” said the agent, quietly. “So jes' stop
your caterwaulin', if you please.”

But the Italian virago was not one to be intimidated by
Ferret's coolness. No sooner did she lose sight of the
pawn-ticket, as it was transferred to her visitor's pocket,
than, with a shrill, cat-like cry, she turned suddenly
towards a shelf, and took from it a long, sharp-bladed
knife, or stiletto. Then, while the agent was speaking,
she glided quickly past him, her black eyes fixed upon his,
and, before he was aware of her intention, stood, brandishing
the weapon, between himself and the door, as if
defying his egress without a deadly struggle.

This change of incident was quite unlooked-for on the
part of the somewhat timid, though unscrupulous, collector
of Mordecai Kolephat's rents. To be tongue-lashed by
Xantippean tenants, had generally afforded him a piquant
passage-at-arms, in which his own Billingsgate vocabulary
was usually more than enough to silence any adversary;
nay, to be occasionally grappled by a bellicose Amazon
somewhat the worse for liquor, had never caused flinching
on the part of the truculent agent—inasmuch as a backhanded
blow or straightforward kick was, in most cases,
as in his interview with Mrs. Keeley, sufficient to settle all
female opposition; but in the present instance, when a
gaunt and powerful Italian hag, armed with a keen dagger,
disputed his right of way, while two others, with
darkening countenances, seemed ready to rush to her
assistance, it is not to be wondered at if Peleg Ferret
grew somewhat nervous, and, in view of all the circumstances,

appeared rather more inclined to parley than to
fight. He stood irresolute a moment, with foot advanced,
and one hand rubbing his smoothly-shaved chin—then, in
a tone of much more suavity than he had previously seen
fit to use, remarked—

“You're goin' agin the law, and can be put in prison—
don't you know that?”

The woman, in reply, only made an impatient gesture,
signifying a demand for the restoration of her property.

“What good is a pawn-ticket?” pursued Peleg.
“'Tain't no family jewel, I reckon. What do you consider
such a piece o' paper wu'th? I'm willin' to pay you anything
reasonable. That's fair—ain't it? Come, you and
I can settle it, I guess.”

But no audible response to these cajoling words came
from the gloomy Italian woman, whose bright eyes wandered
not from his own, and who pointed the stiletto
downward, as though indicating the place where Ferret
had deposited the ticket. Peleg began to feel really
uncomfortable, under the regards of those glittering eyes,
that were triplicated by the orbs of two other quite as
fierce-looking females. He thrust one hand into his
pocket, and began to fumble for the scrap of paper that
he had feloniously appropriated; for the unpleasant
thought occurred to him, that however autocratic he
might be in his own domain of Kolephat College, he was
here, in a strange tenant-house, of very little account at
all, and far more liable to receive a fatal thrust from a
well-driven dagger, than if, instead of being Peleg Ferret,
he was simply some vagabondizing organ-grinder, or other

garlic-scented foreigner, to whom stiletto-playing was
natural as eating maccaroni. He was on the point, therefore,
after a few reflections like this, of drawing out the
pawn-ticket, for the purpose of restoration, when a low
knock startled both himself and the Italian woman, and
the next instant the door was lightly opened, and an
astonishing presence became suddenly visible, within the
threshold, and just behind his armed antagonist.

Well might Peleg Ferret, coarse-grained and flinty-souled
though he was, look with wonder at the vision of
loveliness disclosed to his gaze. A child of ten years,
graceful and symmetric as a fawn, with face of surprising
beauty—dark, lustrous eyes, rosy lips, forehead low and
broad, and covered with clustering curls that hung thickly
over her dazzling neck and shoulders; her figure clothed,
or rather draped, with a short, semi-transparent gauze
robe, bedizened with spangles and brilliants of paste, her
clear-veined bosom half-exposed, as well as her lower
limbs, below the tunic edges, which were clad in flesh-colored
stockings, while the small and exquisitely shaped
feet below were cased in white satin slippers, clasped by
glittering buckles—such was the strange but radiant
object that lightened, as it were, within the dusky tenant-room,
making it, all at once, redolent of fairy land.

The agent drew back an instant, almost frightened at
the apparition, but a second glance revealed to his practised
eye the meretricious character of what he beheld.
There were beauty and grace before him, it was true, and
sparkling, buoyant childhood. A light, ringing laugh,
melodious as a bird-song, broke, moreover, from the

parted lips of the young maid; but Peleg saw upon her
form the tawdry trappings of a cheap theatre, the gewgaws
and finery of some humble stage; for he, shrewd
agent, and experienced collector of rents, had often encountered
in bar-rooms and garrets the coryphees and
ballet-nymphs of scenic life — encountered them, poor
wretches! on his weekly rounds, receiving from their
thin, cold hands, as they shivered in fireless rooms, the
hard-earned dollar of rent, wrung from the miserable
wages of their nightly exposures on the unhealthy boards
of theatres. Speedily, therefore, as his cold glance fell
upon the gauze-robed vision, the transient charm of her
luminous entry faded from his mind, and he beheld a
lovely child, it is true, but only a child of the foot-lights,
of the tenant-house, of the streets.

And the little one herself paused, faltered, and shrank
back, beneath the narrow, crafty look of the strange man
in Monna Maria's apartment. Poor child! it was evident
that, in her low knock, and sudden appearance, she had
sought, in the innocent merriment of her heart, to cause a
little surprise to her Italian friends; for it was Ninetta,
the youthful dansense, who, on her way to a morning
rehearsal, clad in her poor finery, had taken off at the
door a thick cloak that sheltered her, and removed the
thick, long boots in which her small feet had been hidden,
in order to enter at once, like a fairy just evoked, thus
pleasantly to greet the youngsters whom she expected
were within, and, perhaps, to call a smile to Monna
Maria's morose countenance. Poor child, indeed! trembling
and ready to burst into tears, she stood, a moment,

while the door remained ajar, and then, slowly retreating,
caught up her thick cloak and boots, that she had let
fall outside the threshold, and hastily throwing the former
over her shoulders, bounded past the Italian woman and
her strange visitor, and sank sobbing in a corner of the
room, between the two young women, who immediately
flew to her.

Peleg Ferret, meantime, had not been idle. His cunning
eye, while it measured the dancing girl, her beauty,
and the fustian which covered it, watched, at the same
time, the movements of his adversary, whose attention,
attracted momentarily by Ninetta's appearance, was the
next instant diverted by the child's rapid transit across
the floor. In that instant, the agent sprang forward,
struck a violent blow upon Monna Maria's uplifted arm,
and then, stooping to avoid any missile, darted along the
dark passageway, and down the steep staircase, at a speed
which presently bore him out of reach of pursuit, and
safe upon the street pavement in front of the tenant-house.
Arrived there, he walked leisurely, drawing from
his pocket the pawnbroker's ticket that he had been so
near relinquishing to the Italian Amazon.

It was of the common stamp of duplicates, two or three
figures designating its number in a multitude of pledges;
and when Mordecai Kolephat examined it sharply afterwards,
when listening to Ferret's account of his search,
the old man shook his head doubtfully. Nevertheless, it
was a clue, and he lost no time in accompanying his agent
to the dingy shop of the money-lender whose receipt it
purported to be: a memorial-place of shattered fortunes,

ruined hopes, despairing efforts, in the guise of many a
cherished relic of the past, piled together upon dusty
shelves, or thrust out of sight in recesses of gloomy
drawers. But the date of the ticket was remote, and no
satisfactory information could be obtained respecting that
which it purported to represent. The trinket might have
long since been sold, was the pawnbroker's opinion; could
have been of little value, from the fact that but a few
shillings had been loaned upon it. It might or might not
be among the accumulated rubbish of years; but, to
oblige the respected Mr. Kolephat, his books would be
ransacked, and, if possible, the article should be traced.
So the rich man left the money-lender's door, surmounted
by triple-balls, no wiser than he came, but with bowed
head and dejected air.

Peleg Ferret, however, did not seem to be discouraged;
but Peleg was a shrewd business-man, and well knew his
own interest. He had evinced commendable zeal, in
obtaining even so slight a memorial of Old Pris as the
duplicate was believed to be, and knew, consequently,
that this fact would go deeply to his credit in the old
man's memory. But the collector did not disclose to
Kolephat the conjectures that possessed his own mind,
linking the dancing-child whom he had seen for a moment
in Monna Maria's apartment with the Hebrew's long-lost
daughter. He had not even adverted to his meeting with
the beautiful child, because, as a faithful agent, he knew
the value of caution, and resolved to nurse, as it were, his
present relations with Mordecai, the better to secure his
own interest, when success should reward his perseverance

in the search. With this view, therefore, he preserved
strict silence regarding his intentions, only assuring the
melancholy old man that he should be unrelaxing in the
task committed to his care; to which the Jew, with
broken voice, replied, in parting from him—

“Ferret, I confide in you! Leave no stone unturned,
and you shall be—richly rewarded!”

“I'll take care o' that,” muttered the agent to himself,
as he turned away. “Whatever is found out must be
found out by me! Leave me alone for takin' care of
No. 1.”

And, pleased with this estimate of himself, Peleg Ferret
resolved upon making himself further acquainted with the
theatrical protége of Monna Maria, the Italian.