spoon, was stirring the contents of a large pot in which
some terrible-looking ingredients were cooking. On a small bed in a
corner lay a little boy. Every now and then a shiver convulsed his
frame, his face was deadly pale, and his hands almost transparent,
while his great black eyes glittered with the wild delirium of fever.
Sometimes he would give a deep groan, and then the old beldame would
turn angrily and threaten to strike him with her wooden spoon.

"But I am so ill," pleaded the boy.

"If you had brought home what you were told, you would not have been
beaten, and then you would have had no fever," returned the woman
harshly.

"Ah, me! I am sick and cold, and want to go away," wailed the child; "I
want to see mammy."

Even Tantaine felt uneasy at this scene, and gave a gentle cough to
announce his presence. The old woman turned round on him with an angry
snarl. "Who do you want here?" growled she.

"Your master."

"He has not yet arrived, and may not come at all, for it is not his day;
but you can see Poluche."

"And who may he be?"

"He is the professor," answered the hag contemptuously.

"And where is he?"

"In the music-room."

Tantaine went to the stairs, which were so dingy and dilapidated as to
make an ascent a work of danger and difficulty. As he ascended higher,
he became aware of a strange sound, something between the grinding
of scissors and the snarling of cats. Then a moment's silence, a loud
execration, and a cry of pain. Tantaine passed on, and coming to a
rickety door, he opened it, and in another moment found himself in what
the old hag downstairs had called the music-room. The partitions of
all the rooms on the floor had been roughly torn down to form this
apartment; hardly a pane of glass remained intact in the windows; the
dingy, whitewashed walls were covered with scrawls and drawings in
charcoal. A suffocating, nauseous odor rose up, absolutely overpowering
the smell from the neighboring tanyards. There was no furniture except a
broken chair, upon which lay a dog whip with plaited leather lash. Round
the room, against the wall, stood some twenty children, dirty, and in
tattered clothes. Some had violins in their hands, and others stood
behind harps as tall as themselves. Upon the violins Tantaine noticed
there were chalk marks at various distances. In the middle of the room
was a man, tall and erect as a dart, with flat, ugly features and lank,
greasy hair hanging down on his