The streets had emptied themselves of their rushing throngs, the patter of feet and the murmur of voices had given place to measured individual marches here and there, the dripping of cave-spouts and the flapping of awnings could be heard tattling of showers past and future, and the last organ-grinder had left the ungrateful city to its slumbers, when the poor girl first became conscious that she had been lugging hither and thither her entire outfit of wardrobe, valuables, and keepsakes.  Aggravated by fatigue, her indecision as to how she should dispose of herself was gradually sinking into despair, and the official guardians of the night, who had doubtless noticed her as she passed and repassed through their beats, were beginning to make up their official minds, generally and severally, that the case might by-and-by require their benevolent interference, when she was startled by a female voice from behind.

“Arrah, stop there, ye rinaway jade!  I know ye by yer big bag, ye big thafe, that ye are!”

Glad at any voice addressed to her, and gladder at this than if it had been more familiar or more friendly, our forlorn maiden turned and said, in the sweetest voice imaginable,—­

“Oh, no, my friend, I am not a thief.”

“Och, I beg your pardon, honey!  I thought sure it was Bridget, that’s jist rin away wid a bagful of her misthress’s clo’es and a hape o’ mine, and it’s me that’s bin all the way down to Pat Mahoney’s in North Street to git him to hunt her up; and the Blessed Mother forgive me, whin I seen you in the dark, stalin’ along like, wi’ that bag, I thought it was herself it was, sure.  Och, ye’re a swate lass, I see, now; but what makes ye out this time o’ night, dear?”

“Well, I’m too late for the train, you see, and I really don’t know what to do or where to go,” said the Yankee girl, putting on the air natural to such circumstances, with the readiness of her race.

“Och, I see, that’s the mailing o’ the bag, thin.  Poor thing! ye jist come along wid me.  I’ll lift the bag for ye, me darlint, an’ I’ll pit clane sheets on Bridget’s bed, and ye’re welcome to slape there as long as ye like; for the Blessed Mother knows it’s powerful tired ye’re lookin’, it is.  I’m cook for more nor twinty years for the Hopkinses in Bacon Street, and I can make ye jist as welcome in my quarthers as if it was nobody but meself that owned it at all at all.”

“Oh, my dear woman, I thank you kindly!  That bag was beginning to grow heavy,” replied the overjoyed outcast; and presently, with a ready eye to business, she added, “And since Bridget is gone, who knows but I can take her place?  I came to the city on purpose to find something to do, and I can do anything that is not dishonest.”

“Och! the likes o’ ye take her place?  Niver a bit of it!  Why!  I see by the gas-light ye’re a leddy as iver was at all at all; and ye could niver come in the shoes of sich a thafe as Bridget Maloney, as is gone, and the Divil catch her!”