poken in Italian. The man looked at him with pleased
surprise, and made the concession. The porter of the store, in a red
worsted cap, had drawn near. Ristofalo bade him roll the barrel on its
chine to the rear and stand it by the hydrant.

"I will come back pretty soon," he said, in Italian, and went away.

By and by he returned, bringing with him two swarthy, heavy-set, little
Sicilian lads, each with his inevitable basket and some clean rags. A
smile and gesture to the store-keeper, a word to the boys, and in a
moment the barrel was upturned, and the pair were washing, wiping, and
sorting the sound and unsound apples at the hydrant.

Ristofalo stood a moment in the entrance of the store. The question now
was where to get a dollar. Richling passed, looked in, seemed to
hesitate, went on, turned, and passed again, the other way. Ristofalo
saw him all the time and recognized him at once, but appeared not to
observe him.

"He will do," thought the Italian. "Be back few minute'," he said,
glancing behind him.

"Or-r righ'," said the store-keeper, with a hand-wave of good-natured
confidence. He recognized Mr. Raphael Ristofalo's species.

The Italian walked up across Poydras street, saw Richling stop and look
at the machinery, approached, and touched him on the shoulder.

On parting with him he did not return to the store where he had left the
apples. He walked up Tchoupitoulas street about a mile, and where St.
Thomas street branches acutely from it, in a squalid district full of
the poorest Irish, stopped at a dirty fruit-stand and spoke in Spanish
to its Catalan proprietor. Half an hour later twenty-five cents had
changed hands, the Catalan's fruit shelves were bright with small
pyramids--sound side foremost--of Ristofalo's second grade of apples,
the Sicilian had Richling's dollar, and the Italian was gone with his
boys and his better grade of fruit. Also, a grocer had sold some sugar,
and a druggist a little paper of some harmless confectioner's dye.

Down behind the French market, in a short, obscure street that runs from
Ursulines to Barracks street, and is named in honor of Albert Gallatin,
are some old buildings of three or four stories' height, rented, in John
Richling's day, to a class of persons who got their livelihood by
sub-letting the rooms, and parts of rooms, to the wretchedest poor of
New Orleans,--organ-grinders, chimney-sweeps, professional beggars,
street musicians, lemon-peddlers, rag-pickers