tumble. However,
it's my motto _never to give up_; so, of course I gained the top at
last, and, opening a door, found myself in a garret, piled up as high
as my waist with old rags, and old papers, and old bits of bones.

"Go down, I say! Don't want you,--don't want anybody. I've got a
dreadful pain----. Go down,--there's nothing here;--go down, I say,"
growled a voice, from a pile of rags in the corner.

I passed by this growling man, without noticing him; for, in the middle
of the room was a woman, (oh, so miserable a looking creature!) with
her hands crossed hopelessly in her lap, and so buried up in the piles
of rags about the floor, that I could see nothing but her head and
shoulders.

She was quite young,--not more than twenty. She was not that old man's
wife, nor his daughter, nor his sister--but _that was her home_; and
every day she went out with him and scraped the gutters, and refuse
barrels, for old rags and papers; and then came back and emptied them
out upon the garret floor at night, to pick them over. One whole year
she had lived in that dirty den. How came she here? Listen, and I will
tell you.

Mary once lived in the country, amid sweet, green fields, and
clustering vines, and shady trees, and murmuring brooks. Her father was
a good old farmer, as happy and contented with his few acres, as if he
owned all Great Britain. Mary was his only child. Her mother died when
she was a very little girl. Mary could not even remember how she
looked; but her father often used to part her hair away from her white
forehead, and say, "You are so _like_ your mother, Mary"--and then Mary
would run to the little mirror, over the dresser, and see a sweet pair
of hazel eyes, and clusters of rich, brown hair falling over rosy
cheeks and snowy shoulders; and then she'd toss her curls, and run back
again to her father. Mary knew that her mother must have been very
pretty.

Mary had an uncle, named Ralph. He was a bad man; but Mary's father was
so good and honest himself, that it was hard to make him believe
anybody was _dis_-honest. So he lent his brother large sums of
money--(Ralph all the while promising to pay him at a certain time.) By
and by, Ralph got away all his money, and the old farm, too, with all
the cows and horses, and sheep and oxen; and then Mary's father worried
so much that it made him very sick, and he soon died, leaving poor Mary
without a penny in the world.

Uncle Ralph told her to go to the city