ive. But you're alone.
Upstairs there's a whole family huddled into a room just like this. Two
of the kids sleep in the closet. It's things like that which have made
me the friend of the poor, and the mortal enemy of men and women who
spread themselves over a dozen big rooms and think themselves ill-used
if the gas burns poorly or a fireplace smokes. I'm off for the evening;
anything I can do for you?"

"Show me how I can win my way into such rooms as you've just talked
about. Nothing less will make me look up. I'd like to sleep in one
to-night. In the best bedroom, sir. I'm ambitious; I am."

A poor joke, though they both laughed. There Mr. Brotherson passed
on, and Sweetwater listened till he was sure that his too attentive
neighbour had really gone down the three flights between him and the
street. Then he took up his auger again and shut himself up in his
closet.

There was nothing peculiar about this closet. It was just an ordinary
one with drawers and shelves on one side, and an open space on the other
for the hanging up of clothes. Very few clothes hung there at present;
but it was in this portion of the closet that he stopped and began to
try the wall of Brotherson's room, with the butt end of the tool he
carried.

The sound seemed to satisfy him, for very soon he was boring a hole at
a point exactly level with his ear; but not without frequent pauses
and much attention given to the possible return of those departed
foot-steps. He remembered that Mr. Brotherson had a way of coming back
on unexpected errands after giving out his intention of being absent for
hours.

Sweetwater did not want to be caught in any such trap as that; so he
carefully followed every sound that reached him from the noisy halls.
But he did not forsake his post; he did not have to. Mr. Brotherson had
been sincere in his good-bye, and the auger finished its job and was
withdrawn without any interruption from the man whose premises had been
thus audaciously invaded.

"Neat as well as useful," was the gay comment with which Sweetwater
surveyed his work, then laid his ear to the hole. Whereas previously he
could barely hear the rattling of coals from the coal-scuttle, he was
now able to catch the sound of an ash falling into the ash-pit.

His next move was to test the depth of the partition by inserting his
finger in the hole he had made. He found it stopped by some obstacle
before it had reached half its length, and anxious to satisfy