"Him an' I lived in the same building in East Fourteenth Street there," he said. "That is to say, he lived top floor back and I was janitor. That was a good many years ago, but whenever I get an introduction to anybody that's been in New York, I allus take an interest. I'd like to know whatever become of him." He scrupulously waited for our question, and then sat down beside the oven door and laid his axe across his knees. "It was that hard winter," he told us, "about a dozen years ago. I'd hev to figger out just what year, but most anybody on the East Side can tell you. Coal was clear up an' soarin', an' vittles was too--everybody howlin' hard times, an' the Winter just commenced. Make things worse, some philanthropist had put up two model tenements in the block we was in, an' property alongside had shot up in value accordin' an' lugged rents with it. Everybody in my buildin' 'most was rowin' about it. "But John Loneway, he wasn't rowin'. I met him on the stairs one mornin' early an' I says, 'Beg pardon, sir,' I says, 'but you ain't meanin' to make no change?' I ask him. He looks at me kind o' dazed--he was a wonderful clean-muscled little chap, with a crisscross o' veins on each temple an' big brown eyes back in his head. 'No,' he says. 'Change? I can't move. My wife's sick,' he says. That was news to me. I'd met her a couple o' times in the hall--pale little mite, hardly big as a baby, but pleasant-spoken, an' with a way o' dressin' herself in shabby clo'es that made the other women in the house look like bundles tied up careless. But she didn't go out much--they had only been in the house a couple o' weeks or so. 'Sick, is she?' I says. 'Too bad,' I says. 'Anything I can do?' I ask him. He stopped on the nex' step an' looked back at me. 'Got a wife?' he says. 'No,' says I, 'I ain't, sir. But they ain't never challenged my vote on 'count o' that, sir--no offence,' I says to him respectful. 'All right,' he says, noddin' at me. 'I just thought mebbe she'd look in now and then. I'm gone all day,' he added, an' went off like he'd forgot me. "I thought about the little thing all that mornin'--layin' all alone up there in that room that wa'n't no bigger'n a coal-bin. It's bad enough to be sick anywheres, but it's like havin' both legs in a trap to be sick in New York. Towards noon I went into one o' the flats--first floor front it was--with the kindlin' barrel, an' I give the woman to understand they was somebody sick in the house. She was a great big creatur' that I'd never see excep' in red calico, an' I always thought she looked some like a tomato ketchup bottle, with her apron for the label. She says, when I told her, 'You see if she wants anything,' she says. 'I can't climb all them stairs,' she answers me. "Well, that afternoon I went down an' hunted up a rusty sleigh-bell I'd seen in the basement, an' I rubbed it up an' tied a string to it, an' 'long in the evenin' I went upstairs an' rapped at Mr. Loneway's door.