"George!" cried the miserable suppliant, clasping his bony hands convulsively, and whimpering as he had whimpered when he begged his bread in the streets of New York, "you can't mean to turn me out of doors on such a night. Look at me. It was as much as I could do to crawl to this room. I have walked every step of the way from Liverpool; my wretched limbs have been frost-bitten, and ulcered, and bruised, and racked with rheumatism, and bent double with cramp. I came over in an emigrant vessel, with a herd of miserable creatures who had tried their luck on the other side of the Atlantic, and had failed, like me, and were coming home to their native workhouses. You don't know what some of your emigrant ships are, perhaps. People talk about the Black Hole of Calcutta, and the Middle Passage; but let them try the cabin of an emigrant vessel, and they'll have a pretty fair idea of what human beings have to suffer when Poverty drives the ship. I landed in Liverpool with half-a-dollar in my pocket, and I've had neither decent food nor decent shelter since I landed. Give me some hole to lie in, George, till you can get me an order for the nearest hospital. It's a toss-up whether I ever come out of it." "Do you think I'd sleep under the roof that sheltered you?" cried George. "Why not?" "Why not! Because I'm afraid of you. Because I'd as soon have a cobra for my companion, or a wolf for my bedfellow. I know you. I've seen what you can do, and how you can do it. And if you could do those things when the only pressure upon you was one that you could have cast off by going through the _Gazette_, what would you _not_ do now when you are as desperate as a famished wolf, and governed by no better law than that which governs a wolf--the law of self-preservation? Am I to trust a tiger because he tells me he is hungry? No, Phil Sheldon; neither will I trust you." "You will give me some money--enough to keep me alive for a week or two." "Not one sixpence. I'll establish no precedent; I'll acknowledge no tie between us. You'd better march. I don't want to send for a policeman; but if you won't go quietly, you must do the other thing." "You mean that?" "Most emphatically yes." "I didn't think it was in you to be so hard upon me," faltered the wretch in that faint hoarse voice which had grown fainter and hoarser during this interview.