eir wet clothes.
Rodney's feet, too, had become very sore, and he walked in great
and constant pain.

In the afternoon of the fourth day they stopped on the banks of
the Delaware, five or six miles from Philadelphia, to wash their
clothes, which had become filthy in travelling through the dust
and mud. As they had no clothing but what they wore, there was
nothing else to be done but to strip, wash out their soiled
garments, and lay them out on the bank to dry, while they swam
about the river, or waited on the shore, with what patience they
could summon.

A little after sunset they reached the suburbs of the great
city; and now the sore feet and wearied limbs of the boy could
scarcely sustain him over the hard pavements. Yet Bill urged him
onward with many an impatient oath, on past the ship-yards of
Kensington,--on, past the factories, and markets, and farmers'
taverns, and shops of the Northern Liberties,--on, through the
crowded thoroughfares, and by the brilliant stores of the
city,--on, into the most degraded section of Southwark, in
Plumb-street, where Bill said a friend of his lived. This friend
was an abandoned woman, who lived in a miserable frame cabin,
crowded with wicked and degraded wretches, who seemed the
well-known and fitting companions of Rodney's patron. The woman
for whom he inquired was at a dance in the neighborhood, and
there Bill took the boy in search of her.

They went up a dark alley, and were admitted into a large room
filled with men and women, black and white, the dregs and
outcasts of society.

A few dripping candles, placed in tin sconces along the bare walls,
threw a dim and sickly glare over the motley throng. A couple of
negro men, sitting on barrels at the head of the room, were drawing
discordant notes from a pair of cracked, patched, and greasy
fiddles. And there were men, whose red and bloated faces gave
faithful witness of their habitual intemperance; and men, whose
threadbare and ragged garments betokened sloth and poverty; and
men, whose vulgar and ostentatious display of showy clothing, and
gaudy chains, and rings and breast-pins, which they did not know
how to wear, indicated dishonest pursuits; and men, whose blue
jackets and bluff, brown faces showed them to be sailors; and men,
whose scowling brows and fiendlike countenances marked them as
villains of the blackest and lowest type. And there were women,
too, some old--at least, they looked so--and haggard; some young,