of intervals were recited on her piano; on the second-floor-front was a wood-engraver who took to photography to pay his rent.  On the second-floor-back was a dressmaker who could not collect her bills; while in the rear was a laundress who washed for the tenants.  Lastly, there was Mrs. Martha Munger, Stephen Carlin’s sister, who occupied the third floor both front and back, over the laundress’s quarters, the one chimney serving them both.

While the evil eye of the skylight, despite its dishonorable calling, might have been put to some good use during the day, it can be safely said that it was of no earthly, and for that matter of no heavenly, use during the night.  Nor did anything else in the way of illumination take its place.  My Lady Dowager’s patrons were too poor or too stingy to furnish even a single burner up and down the three flights.  The excuse was that the rays of the arc-light, blazing away on the opposite side of the street, were not only powerful enough to shine through the weather-beaten hall door covering the entrance but, still further, to illuminate the rickety staircase—­the very staircase up which Stephen Carlin was now groping in answer to Martha’s letter.

She had heard his heavy tread on the creaky steps, and was watching for him with the door ajar—­an inch at first, and then wide open, her kerosene lamp held over the railing to give him light.

“Oh, but I’m glad you’ve come, Stephen.  I was getting worried.  I was afraid maybe you didn’t get the letter.  It’s black dark outside, isn’t it?” and she glanced at the cheap clock on the mantel behind her.  “Come in, the kettle was boiling over when I heard you.  I’ll talk to you in a minute.”

He followed with only a pressure of her hand, and, without a word of greeting, seated himself near a table.  In the same quiet, silent way he watched her as she busied herself about the apartment, lifting the kettle from the stove, adjusting the wick of the lamp which had begun to smoke from the draft of the open door, taking from a shelf two cups and saucers and from a tin bread box a loaf and some crackers.

When, in one of her journeys to and fro, she passed where the light of the lamp fell full upon her round face, framed in its white cap and long strings, he gave a slight start.  There were dark circles below her eyes and heavy lines near the corners of her mouth—­signs he had not seen since the month she had spent in the Marine Hospital when the plague was stamped out.  He noticed, too, that her robust figure, with its broad shoulders and capacious bosom, restful pillow to many a new-born baby, seemed shrunken—­not in weight, but in its spring, as if all her alertness (she was under fifty) had oozed out.  It was only when she had completed her labors and taken a chair beside him, her soft, nursing hand covering his own, that his mind reverted to the tragedy which had brought him to her side.  Even then, although she sat with her face turned toward his, her eyes reading his own, some moments passed before either of them spoke.  At last, in a wondering, dazed way, she exclaimed:  “Have you, in all your life, Stephen, ever heard anything like it?”