s pure than itself. The sleet fell where
cold and cheerlessness seemed to be the natural state of
things. Few people ventured into the streets, and those few
looked and moved as if they felt it a sad morning, which
probably they did. The very horses stumbled along their way,
and here and there a poor creature had lost footing entirely
and gone down on the ice. Slowly and carefully picking its way
along, the stage-coach drew up at last at its pace in Court
St.

The disease had spent itself, or Winthrop's excellent
constitution had made good its rights; for he got out of the
coach feeling free from pain, though weak and unsteady as if
he had been much longer ill. It would have been pleasant to
take the refreshment of brushes and cold water, for his first
step; but it must have been a pleasure paid for; so he did not
go into the house. For the same reason he did not agree to the
offer of the stage-driver to carry him and his baggage to the
end of his journey. He looked about for some more humble way
of getting his trunk thither, meaning to take the humblest of
all for himself. But porters seemed all to have gone off to
breakfast or to have despaired of a job. None were in sight.
Only a man was shuffling along on the other side of the way,
looking over at the stage-coach.

"Here, Jem -- Tom -- Patrick!" -- cried the stage-driver, --
"can't you take the gentleman's trunk for him?"

"Michael, at your service, and if it's all one t' ye," said
the person called, coming over. "I'm the boy! Will this be the
box?"

"That is it; but how will you take it?" said Winthrop.

"Sure I'll carry it -- asy -- some kind of a way," said Michael,
handling the trunk about in an unsettled fashion and seeming
to meditate a hoist of it to his shoulders. "Where will it go,
sir-r?"

"Stop, -- that won't do -- that handle won't hold," said the
trunk's master. "Haven't you a wheelbarrow here?"

"Well that's a fact," said Michael, letting the end of the
trunk down into the street with a force that threatened its
frail constitution; -- "if the handle wouldn't hould, there'd
be no hoult onto it, at all. Here! -- can't you let us have a
barrow, some one amongst ye? -- I'll be back with it afore
you'll be wanting it, I'll engage."

Winthrop seconded the application; and the wheelbarrow after a
little delay came forth. The trunk was bestowed on it by the
united efforts of the Irishman and the ostler.

"Now, don't let it run away from you, Pa