d good feeling
of his people.

Miss Silence had been waiting for her opportunity to apply the great
doctrine, and it came at last in a very trivial way.

"Myrtle does n't want brown bread. Myrtle won't have brown bread. Myrtle
will have white bread."

"Myrtle is a wicked child. She will have what Aunt Silence says she
shall have. She won't have anything but brown bread."

Thereupon the bright red lip protruded, the hot blood mounted to her
face, the child untied her little "tire," got down from the table,
took up her one forlorn, featureless doll, and went to bed without
her supper. The next morning the worthy woman thought that hunger and
reflection would have subdued the rebellious spirit. So there stood
yesterday's untouched supper waiting for her breakfast. She would not
taste it, and it became necessary to enforce that extreme penalty of
the law which had been threatened, but never yet put in execution. Miss
Silence, in obedience to what she felt to be a painful duty, without any
passion, but filled with high, inexorable purpose, carried the child up
to the garret, and, fastening her so that she could not wander about and
hurt herself, left her to her repentant thoughts, awaiting the moment
when a plaintive entreaty for liberty and food should announce that the
evil nature had yielded and the obdurate will was broken.

The garret was an awful place. All the skeleton-like ribs of the roof
showed in the dim light, naked overhead, and the only floor to be
trusted consisted of the few boards which bridged the lath and plaster.
A great, mysterious brick tower climbed up through it,--it was the
chimney, but it looked like a horrible cell to put criminals into. The
whole place was festooned with cobwebs,--not light films, such as
the housewife's broom sweeps away before they have become a permanent
residence, but vast gray draperies, loaded with dust, sprinkled with
yellow powder from the beams where the worms were gnawing day and night,
the home of old, hairy spiders who had, lived there since they were eggs
and would leave it for unborn spiders who would grow old and huge like
themselves in it, long after the human tenants had left the mansion
for a narrower home. Here this little criminal was imprisoned, six,
twelve,--tell it not to mothers,--eighteen dreadful hours, hungry until
she was ready to gnaw her hands, a prey to all childish imaginations;
and here at her stern guardian's last visit she sat, pallid, chill