Phipps snickered.

“And Phipps, make a basket of cold meat and goodies, and put in with the clothes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Phipps, remember:—­seven o’clock, sharp, and no soldiering.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Phipps, here is a cigar that cost twenty-five cents.  Do it up in a paper, and lay it away.  Keep it to remember me by.”

This joke was too good to be passed over lightly, and so Phipps giggled, took the cigar, put it caressingly to his nose, and then slipped it into his pocket.

“Now make yourself scarce,” said his master, and the man retired, entirely conscious that the person he served had some rascally scheme on foot, and heartily sympathetic with him in the project of its execution.

Promptly at seven the next morning, the rakish pair of trotters stood before the door, with a basket and a large bundle in the back of the rakish little wagon.  Almost at the same moment, the proprietor came out, buttoning his overcoat.  Phipps leaped out, then followed his master into the wagon, who, taking the reins, drove off at a rattling pace up the long hill toward Tom Buffum’s boarding-house.  The road lay entirely outside of the village, so that the unusual drive was not observed.

Arriving at the poor-house, Mr. Belcher gave the reins to his servant, and, with a sharp rap upon the door with the butt of his whip, summoned to the latch the red-faced and stuffy keeper.  What passed between them, Phipps did not hear, although he tried very hard to do so.  At the close of a half hour’s buzzing conversation, Tom Buffum took the bundle from the wagon, and pitched it into his doorway.  Then, with the basket on his arm, he and Mr. Belcher made their way across the street to the dormitories and cells occupied by the paupers of both sexes and all ages and conditions.  Even the hard-hearted proprietor saw that which wounded his blunted sensibilities; but he looked on with a bland face, and witnessed the greedy consumption of the stale dainties of his own table.

It was by accident that he was led out by a side passage, and there he caught glimpses of the cells to which Miss Butterworth had alluded, and inhaled an atmosphere which sickened him to paleness, and brought to his lips the exclamation:  “For God’s sake let’s get out of this.”

“Ay! ay!” came tremblingly from behind the bars of a cell, “let’s get out of this.”

Mr. Belcher pushed toward the light, but not so quickly that a pair of eyes, glaring from the straw, failed to recognize him.

“Robert Belcher!  Oh, for God’s sake!  Robert Belcher!”

It was a call of wild distress—­a whine, a howl, an objurgation, all combined.  It was repeated as long as he could hear it.  It sounded in his ears as he descended the hill.  It came again and again to him as he was seated at his comfortable breakfast.  It rang in the chambers of his consciousness for hours, and only a firm and despotic will expelled it at last.  He knew the voice, and he never wished to hear it again.