"Well, spec him house good enough, but spec he folks dat lib dare, not 'zactly straight up and down like dog hind leg." "Why, Peter, what do you mean? Is not that Mr. Ingram, whose name I see on the door, and whom I know as apparently a gentleman of wealth and leisure, for I have often seen him associating with gentlemen about the hotels; is he not the gentleman of the house?" "Gentlum! Lord, sir, he is dat woman's man, her pimp, she gives him all dem fine clothes and gold rings, and he gets fellows to come an see her gals." "Mercy on me! The outside of the platter is made clean, while the inside is full of dead men's bones." "Dat's just what Agnes says; she says, she find dead men's bones in the ashes, and buttons, and bits of burnt woman's clothes in a pile in the cellar, and she seed woman's ghost dare, and she won't stay in dat house no how can fix um, and dat's what it mean 'bout I got dis trunk; did you see how I get him, massa?" "Yes, I did, and I want to know something about why you 'get him' at this time of night out of that cellar. The ghost story won't do; if she was afraid of ghosts she would not go down into that cellar at night any more than she would go down to her grave. It won't do." "Oh, sir, the ghost goes upstairs every night, to stay in the room where she was seduced. None of the girls in the house will stay in that room. They gave it to me when first I went there. I did not know it was haunted then, but I found out afterwards that it was, for she told me so, and how she was shut up in the coal cellar, and starved, and suffocated to death, and then cut up, and part of her body burned, and part buried in lime and ashes, and how, if I would look in one corner of the cellar, I would find some of her bones, and I did; and then I determined to run away, and that is why I am hero." "And what are you going to do now?" "I am going home with Peter, I have got nowhere else to go, and then I shall try to get a place." "A place! Why, Peter, is not this one of the girls of that house?" "Why, no, not 'zactly; but 'spose you go wid us in my house, he close by here now, and she tell you all about herself. I spec she not a bad gal, sir." "Go ahead then;" and he shouldered his load, and went a few steps farther, and then turned into a dark alley, where I should have hesitated about following the burglars, but now followed the honest, good-hearted wood-sawyer, and his protege with delightful pleasure, up the long, dark alley into the centre of the block, and there was a tenant house, inhabited by the better class of blacks. Compared with some of those full of foreigners, it was a little paradise. Up, up to the sixth story, that is where the poor live; here is where the poor legless Negro flower-seller lives, with his nice little family; a door opened as we approached, and a light shined out, and a voice said: "Is dat you, Peter? Has you got her, Peter? Thank God for that!"