Once within the door, and in the better light afforded even by the dingy windows, Crawford had a better opportunity to observe the old woman, and he now found no difficulty in recalling something more than the name. She might have been sixty-five or seventy years of age, to judge by the wrinkles on her face and the white of her eyebrows, though her hair was hidden under a gaudy and dirty cotton plaid handkerchief and her tall form seemed little bowed by age. Two coal-black eyes, showing no diminution of their natural fire, gleamed from under those white eyebrows; and on the portions of the cheeks yet left smooth enough to show the texture of the skin, there were deep gashes that had once been the tattooing of her barbarian youth and beauty. Her hands were withered, much more than her face, and seemed skinny and claw-like. Her dress, which had once been plaid cotton gingham, was fearfully dirty and unskilfully patched with other material; and the frayed silk shawl thrown around her old shoulders might have been rescued from a rag-heap in the streets to serve that turn. The room, as Crawford readily noticed, was almost as remarkable in appearance as the old woman herself. There was nothing singular in the bare floor, the pine table and two or three broken chairs; for something very like them, or worse, can be found in almost every miserable tenement where virtue struggles or vice swelters, in the slums of the great city. Neither was there anything notable in the smoke-greased walls and ceiling, the miserable fire-place with one cracked kettle and a red earthen bowl, and the wretched bed of rags stuck away in one of the corners, on which evidently both the old crone and Master Jeffy made their sad pretence at sleep.