On parting with him he did not return to the store where he had left the apples. He walked up Tchoupitoulas street about a mile, and where St. Thomas street branches acutely from it, in a squalid district full of the poorest Irish, stopped at a dirty fruit-stand and spoke in Spanish to its Catalan proprietor. Half an hour later twenty-five cents had changed hands, the Catalan's fruit shelves were bright with small pyramids--sound side foremost--of Ristofalo's second grade of apples, the Sicilian had Richling's dollar, and the Italian was gone with his boys and his better grade of fruit. Also, a grocer had sold some sugar, and a druggist a little paper of some harmless confectioner's dye. Down behind the French market, in a short, obscure street that runs from Ursulines to Barracks street, and is named in honor of Albert Gallatin, are some old buildings of three or four stories' height, rented, in John Richling's day, to a class of persons who got their livelihood by sub-letting the rooms, and parts of rooms, to the wretchedest poor of New Orleans,--organ-grinders, chimney-sweeps, professional beggars, street musicians, lemon-peddlers, rag-pickers, with all the yet dirtier herd that live by hook and crook in the streets or under the wharves; a room with a bed and stove, a room without, a half-room with or without ditto, a quarter-room with or without a blanket or quilt, and with only a chalk-mark on the floor instead of a partition. Into one of these went Mr. Raphael Ristofalo, the two boys, and the apples. Whose assistance or indulgence, if any, he secured in there is not recorded; but when, late in the afternoon, the Italian issued thence--the boys, meanwhile, had been coming and going--an unusual luxury had been offered the roustabouts and idlers of the steam-boat landings, and many had bought and eaten freely of the very small, round, shiny, sugary, and artificially crimson roasted apples, with neatly whittled white-pine stems to poise them on as they were lifted to the consumer's watering teeth. When, the next morning Richling laughed at the story, the Italian drew out two dollars and a half, and began to take from it a dollar. "But you have last night's lodging and so forth yet to pay for." "No. Made friends with Sicilian luggerman. Slept in his lugger." He showed his brow and cheeks speckled with mosquito-bites. "Ate little hard-tack and coffee with him this morning. Don't want much." He offered the dollar with a quarter added. Richling declined the bonus. "But why not?" "Oh, I just couldn't do it," laughed Richling; "that's all." "Well," said the Italian, "lend me that dollar one day more, I return you dollar and half in its place to-morrow." The lender had to laugh again. "You can't find an odd barrel of damaged apples every day."