ere do you live?"

"Over dere," pointing off to the jungle of decrepit sheds. "Me an'
him, we worked in de mills; but dere ain't no work fer us now. Dey's
on half time."

"Take me to your home," she said firmly.

The boy looked his astonishment. "Dere ain't nobody to home," he
replied. "De ol' man an' woman works in de mills daytimes."

"Come-a home wi' me," spoke up the boy's companion, a bright-faced
little urchin of some ten years who had given his name as Tony Tolesi.
"We lives in de tenements."

Carmen looked at him for a moment. "Come," she said.

Up the main street of the town they went for a short distance, then
turned and wended their course, through narrow streets and byways,
down toward the mills. In a few minutes they were in the district
where stood the great frame structures built by the Ames company to
house its hands. Block after block of these they passed, massive,
horrible, decrepit things, and at last stopped at a grease-stained,
broken door, which the little fellow pushed open. The hall beyond was
dark and cold. Carmen followed shivering, close after the boy, while
he trotted along, proud of the responsibility of conducting a visitor
to his home. At the far end of the hall the lad plunged into a narrow
staircase, so narrow that a stout man could not have mounted it. Up
four of these broken flights Carmen toiled after him, and then down a
long, desolate corridor, which sent a chill into the very marrow of
her bones.

"Dis is where we lives, Missy," announced the little fellow. "Miss-a
Marcus, she live in dere," pointing to the door directly opposite.
"She ain't got only one arm."

He pushed open the door before which they had halted. A rush of foul
air and odors of cooking swept out. They enveloped the girl and seemed
to hurl her back. A black-haired woman, holding a crying baby in her
arms, rose hastily from an unmade bed at one side of the room. Two
little girls, six or eight years of age, and a boy still younger,
ranged about their mother and stared in wide-eyed wonder.

"Dis-a lady, she come to visit," announced Carmen's guide abruptly,
pointing a dirty finger at her.

The woman's face darkened, and she spoke harshly in a foreign tongue
to the little fellow.

"She say," the boy interpreted, as a crestfallen look spread over his
face, "she say she don't spik _Inglese_."

"But I speak your language," said the girl, going quickly to her and
extending a hand. Then, in that soft tongue