Seth responded to the chorus of answering “good nights,” and the twain started out. Tom not only carried the bag, but took his companion’s arm--much to Seth’s satisfaction, for he felt very tired, and it seemed unusually difficult for him to shake off his sleepiness. Tom was more talkative than ever, and he seemed to be saying extremely clever things, but Seth somehow did not follow their meaning, and he could think of nothing to say in reply. They were in a dark side street now. “Ah, I thought he’d be open!” said Tom, abruptly, stopping before a place, through the closed shutters of which long horizontal threads of light gleamed. “Let’s go in and have a night-cap. It’ll set you straight in a minute.” The curious reluctance to speak, of which Seth had felt vaguely conscious all along, now prompted acquiescence as the easiest course, and he followed Tom into a small, low room, thick with cigar-smoke and the odor of kerosene, where four or five men, with their hats tilted over their eyes, were playing cards: there was a pile of money in the centre of the table, to which each in turn seemed to be adding from a smaller heap before him. They were so much engrossed in the game that they only nodded at Tom, and Seth felt relieved at escaping the ordeal of being introduced to them. At Tom’s suggestion he took a little glass of brandy--“to do their duty by the National debt,”--what ever that meant. It was burning, nauseous stuff, which brought the tears to his eyes, but it made him feel better. It especially enabled him to talk, which he proceeded to do now with a fluency that surprised him. Tom was evidently much impressed by his remarks, saying little, it is true, but gripping his arm more closely. Thus they walked to Tom’s lodgings--a tall, dark brick house opposite a long line of coal sheds. The hall was so dark that Seth, in trying to follow his guide, stumbled over an umbrella-rack, and fell to the floor. Tom assisted him to rise, with a paternal “steady now, steady; that’s it, lean on me,” and so helped him up the two flights of steep, narrow stairs. In all the world, it seemed to Seth, he could not have met a more amiable or congenial friend than Tom, and he told him so, as they climbed the stairs, affectionately leaning upon his arm, and making his phrases as ornate in diction and warm in tone as he could. “Here we are,” said Tom, opening a door, and lighting a lamp which revealed a small, scantily furnished room, in extreme disorder. “Make yourself at home, my boy. Smoke a pipe before you go to bed?” “Oh, mercy, no. I thinks--do you know, I feel a little dizzy.” “Oh, you’ll be all right in the morning. Just undress and pile into bed. I’ll smoke a pipe first.” Half an hour after Seth’s first day in the World had closed in heavy slumber, Tom looked at him before blowing out the light, and smiled to himself: “He _is_ about as fresh as they make ’em.” CHAPTER XII.--THE SANCTUM.