It came more speedily than I thought, though the manner of it was not left to landlord and tenants. Christmas, her fifth in the house, had filled her purse again. Tenants were less liberal, it is true, but she must have had at least five or six pounds, to which a turkey and plum pudding had been added by our neighbour across the hall, who was of a generous turn. She had therefore the essentials of what passes for a merry Christmas, but how much merriment there was in hers I had no way of telling. On holidays in London I keep indoors if I can, not caring to face the sadness of the streets or the dreariness of house-parties, and I did not go downstairs on Christmas Day, nor on Boxing Day which is the day after. Mrs. Haines, if she came up, did not present herself at our chambers. I trust she was gay because, as it turned out, it was her last chance for gaiety at this or any other season. In the middle of the night following Boxing Day she was seized with one of her mysterious attacks. A lodger was with her, but, from fright, or stupidity, or perhaps worse, called no one till dawn, when she rang up the housekeeper next door and vanished. The housekeeper next door went at once for the doctor who attends to us all in the Quarter. It was too late. Mrs. Haines was dead when he reached the house. Death was merciful, freeing her from the evil fate that threatened, for she was at the end of everything. She went out of the world as naked as she came into it. Her rooms were empty, there was not so much as a crust of bread in her kitchen, in her purse were two farthings. Her only clothes were those she had just taken off and the few rags wrapped about her for the night. Destitution could not be more complete, and the horror was to find it, not round the corner, not at the door, but in the very house, and, worse, to know that it deserved no pity. As she had sown, so had she reaped, and the grave was the kindliest shelter for the harvest. The day after, her sister appeared, from where, summoned by whom, I do not know. She was a decent, serious woman, who attended to everything, and when the funeral was over, called on all the tenants. She wanted, she told me, to thank us for all our kindness to her sister, whom kindness had so little helped. She volunteered no explanation, she only sighed her regrets. She could not understand, she said. Nor could I. No doubt, daily in the slums, many women die as destitute. But they never had their chance. Mrs. Haines had hers, and a fair one as these things go. Her tragedy has shaken my confidence in the reformers to-day who would work the miracle, and, with equal chances for all men, transform this sad world of ours into Utopia. _Our Beggars_ [Illustration: CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE FROM OUR WINDOWS] VIII OUR BEGGARS I know our Beggars by their ring. When the front door-bell is pulled with insolent violence, "That," I say to myself, "is a Beggar," and I am usually right.