Since their arrival in the city a fortnight before, old David had manifested a growing irresponsibility. Deprived of his accustomed occupations and transferred to the streets of the metropolis, he had become like a ship without a rudder. So far, his driftings had been as pleasant as they were aimless, but more than once he had been lost, more than once, following the lead of his errant curiosity, had barely escaped serious accident. And there was no telling how soon the threatening dangers of the new existence might overwhelm him. Insensibly, in the midst of his delight, he looked to the young girl for guidance. She it was who had settled them in their present quarters, three small rooms at the top of an old building in lower New York, rooms selected because of their cheapness and because two windows overlooked a wharf at which foreign ships were tethered while a third window looked toward the west. She it was who had added to their meagre stock of house plenishings at push-carts and cheap shops. Indeed, she it was who had assumed entire responsibility for the undertaking. Nora Gage, who now received a lower wage than formerly, and in consequence performed only such duties as she chose, grumbled constantly. The poor fare on which Rachel and the old man subsisted filled her with disgust, and she would have gratified her gastronomic preferences out of her savings of twenty years, had it not been that the queer foreign foods, in which the markets of the neighbourhood abounded, were not to her taste. Even old David at moments was inclined to be fractious, and Rachel, who had wilfully played the part of Fate to these two, was forced to listen as patiently as she could to their criticisms. On the afternoon in question when she emerged from the house with her grandfather, the old man scowled; for the street was dank with mist and clamorous with the roar of the nearby "elevated." "This ain't a nice street," he complained, "I don't like the smell on it, and with everything swallowed up in the fog so, we can't see the only thing worth seein'--the ships." "But perhaps we can later; when we come back the fog may be gone," Rachel comforted him. However, a touch of the cold and damp seemed to threaten her own heart. By dint of timid inquiries, at the end of two hours' weary searching, the bewildered pair found themselves in a Broadway office of the Middletown road. But the clerk to whom they made known their quest, shook his small, well-combed head at them. "It's to Philadelphia you ought to have gone, Uncle," he said, while a smile wrinkled the flesh beneath his prominent eyes. "We know nothing about your car shops here. As for this letter, it's a bit ancient," and he handed it back. Rachel flushed. "My grandfather wishes to obtain work in New York," she said. "We showed you the letter merely as a credential, thinking perhaps you might know Mr. Nicholas Hart--if he is still living," she added with a pang of fear.