“Bless my soul!  Didn’t tell her,—­bad habit, bad habit.  Never do make people understand.  Come on, child,—­come on!  I’ve got a clock like yours.  Don’t want it.  Never use it.  Run down twenty years ago.  Guess we can find it.  Come on, come on!” he exclaimed.

“But, Mr. Wheeler,” said Mercy, half-frightened at his manner, yet trusting him in spite of herself, “do you really want to sell the clock?  If you have no use for it, I’d be very glad to buy it of you, if it looks even a little like our old one.  I will bring my mother to look at it.”

“Fine young woman! fine young woman!  Good face.  Never mistaken in a face yet.  Don’t sell clocks:  never sold a clock yet.  I’ll give yer the clock, if yer like it.  Come on, child,—­come on!” and he laid his hand on Mercy’s arm and drew her along.

Mercy held back.  “Thank you, Mr. Wheeler,” she said.  “You’re very kind.  But I think my mother would not like to have you give us a clock.  I will buy it of you; but I really cannot go with you now.  Tell me where the clock is, and I will come with my mother to see it.”

The old man stamped his foot and his cane both with impatience.  “Pshaw! pshaw!” he said:  “women all alike, all alike.”  Then with an evident effort to control his vexation, and speak more slowly, he said, “Can’t you see I’m an old man, child?  Don’t pester me now.  Come, on, come on!  I tell you I want to show yer that clock.  Give it to you ’s well ’s not.  Stood in the lumber-room twenty years.  Come on, come on!  It’s right up here, ten steps.”  And again he took Mercy by the arm.  Reluctantly she followed him, thinking to herself, “Oh, what a rash thing this is to do!  How do I know but he really is crazy?”

He led the way up an outside staircase at the end of the Brick Row, and, after fumbling a long time in several deep pockets, produced a huge rusty iron key, and unlocked the door at the head of the stairs.  A very strange life that key had led in pockets.  For many years it had slept under Miss Orra White’s maidenly black alpacas, and had been the token of confinement and of release to scores of Miss Orra’s unruly pupils; then it had had an interval of dignified leisure, lifted to the level of the Odd Fellows regalia, and only used by them on rare occasions.  For the last ten years, however, it had done miscellaneous duty as warder of Old Man Wheeler’s lumber-room.  If a key could be supposed to peep through a keyhole, and speculate on the nature of the service it was rendering to humanity, in keeping safe the contents of the room into which it gazed, this key might have indulged in fine conjectures, and have passed its lifetime in a state of chronic bewilderment.  Each time that the door of this old storehouse opened, it opened to admit some new, strange, nondescript article, bearing no relation to any thing that had preceded it.  “Old Man Wheeler” added to all his other eccentricities a most eccentric way of collecting his debts.  He had dealings of one sort or another with everybody.  He drove hard bargains, and was inexorable as to dates.  When a debtor came, pleading for a short delay on a payment, the old man had but one reply,—­