“Yes, Madame,” returns Tom, with an expression of sincerity.  “The Judge got her away from him; and this morning he was arraigned before that same Judge for examination, and Mr. Snivel was a principal witness, and there was enough found against him to commit him for trial at the Sessions.”  Discovering that this information is exciting her emotions, Tom pauses, and contemplates her with steady gaze.  She desires he will be her guide to the Poor-House, and there assist her in searching for Mag Munday, whom, report says, is confined in a cell.  Tom having expressed his readiness to serve her, they are soon on their way to that establishment.

A low, squatty building, with a red, moss-covered roof, two lean chimneys peeping out, the windows blockaded with dirt, and situated in one of the by-lanes of the city, is our Poor-House, standing half hid behind a crabbed old wall, and looking very like a much-neglected Quaker church in vegetation.  We boast much of our institutions, and this being a sample of them, we hold it in great reverence.  You may say that nothing so forcibly illustrates a state of society as the character of its institutions for the care of those unfortunate beings whom a capricious nature has deprived of their reason.  We agree with you.  We see our Poor-House crumbling to the ground with decay, yet imagine it, or affect to imagine it, a very grand edifice, in every way suited to the wants of such rough ends of humanity as are found in it.  Like Satan, we are brilliant believers in ourselves, not bad sophists, and singularly clever in finding apologies for all great crimes.

At the door of the Poor-House stands a dilapidated hearse, to which an old gray horse is attached.  A number of buzzards have gathered about him, turn their heads suspiciously now and then, and seem meditating a descent upon his bones at no very distant day.  Madame casts a glance at the hearse, and the poor old horse, and the cawing buzzards, then follows Tom, timidly, to the door.  He has rung the bell, and soon there stands before them, in the damp doorway, a fussy old man, with a very broad, red face, and a very blunt nose, and two very dull, gray eyes, which he fortifies with a pair of massive-framed spectacles, that have a passion for getting upon the tip-end of his broad blunt nose.

“There, you want to see somebody!  Always somebody wanted to be seen, when we have dead folks to get rid of,” mutters the old man, querulously, then looking inquiringly at the visitors.  Tom says they would like to go over the premises.  “Yes-know you would.  Ain’t so dull but I can see what folks want when they look in here.”  The old man, his countenance wearing an expression of stupidity, runs his dingy fingers over the crown of his bald head, and seems questioning within himself whether to admit them.  “I’m not in a very good humor to-day,” he rather growls than speaks, “but you can come in—­I’m of a good family-and I’ll call Glentworthy.  I’m old-I can’t get about much.  We’ll all get old.”  The building seems in a very bad temper generally.