Pushing open the gate, I entered the yard, and walked around the dwelling, my footsteps echoing in the hushed solitude of the deserted place.  Hark! was that a human voice?

I paused to listen.

The sound came, once more, distinctly to my ears, I looked around, above, everywhere, but perceived no living sign.  For nearly a minute I stood still, listening.  Yes; there it was again—­a low, moaning voice, as of one in pain or grief.  I stepped onward a few paces; and now saw one of the doors standing ajar.  As I pushed this door wide open, the moan was repeated.  Following the direction from which the sound came, I entered one of the large drawing-rooms.  The atmosphere was stifling, and all as dark as if it were midnight.  Groping my way to a window, I drew back the bolt and threw open the shutter.  Broadly the light fell across the dusty, uncarpeted floor, and on the dingy furniture of the room.  As it did so, the moaning voice which had drawn me thither swelled on the air again; and now I saw, lying upon an old sofa, the form of a man.  It needed no second glance to tell me that this was Judge Hammond.  I put my hand upon him, and uttered his name; but he answered not.  I spoke more firmly, and slightly shook him; but only a piteous moan was returned.

“Judge Hammond!” I now called aloud, and somewhat imperatively.

But it availed nothing.  The poor old man aroused not from the stupor in which mind and body were enshrouded

“He is dying!” thought I; and instantly left the house in search of some friends to take charge of him in his last, sad extremity.  The first person to whom I made known the fact shrugged his shoulders, and said it was no affair of his, and that I must find somebody whose business it was to attend to him.  My next application was met in the same spirit; and no better success attended my reference of the matter to a third party.  No one to whom I spoke seemed to have any sympathy for the broken-down old man.  Shocked by this indifference, I went to one of the county officers, who, on learning the condition of Judge Hammond, took immediate steps to have him removed to the Alms-house, some miles distant.

“But why to the Alms-house?” I inquired, on learning his purpose.  “He has property.”

“Everything has been seized for debt,” was the reply.

“Will there be nothing left after his creditors are satisfied?”

“Very few, if any, will be satisfied,” he answered.  “There will not be enough to pay half the judgments against him.”

“And is there no friend to take him in,—­no one, of all who moved by his side in the days of prosperity, to give a few hours’ shelter, and soothe the last moments of his unhappy life?”

“Why did you make application here?” was the officer’s significant question.

I was silent.

“Your earnest appeals for the poor old man met with no words of sympathy?”

“None.”