“Say, reverent, we don’t want no bedclothes. Sleepin’ in the Park’ll learn you how to do without sheets.” “My daughter, Mrs. Ralph Coningsby, could undoubtedly supply you with some.” “Say, reverent, that ain’t our way. We don’t pass the buck on no one. What we haven’t got we do without till we can pay for it ourselves. But that old house ain’t doin’ nothing but sit on its haunches; and if I could just get Tiger into the next bed to mine at night—we don’t want no bedclothes nor nothing but what we lay down in—and take him along with me when I go to work by day, so as to keep my search-lights on him, like—” Rufus Legrand had already sufficiently weighed the proposal. “I’m sure I don’t see why you shouldn’t sleep in the old place as long as you like, Beady, if you can only make yourselves comfortable.” “Say, reverent, now you’re shouting.” So another accident settled the fate of Miss Smedley’s lifelong home; and before many weeks the Down and Out was in full possession. It was in full possession of the house with the refuse the heirs had not considered good enough to take away—three iron bedsteads that the servants had used; an equal number of humble worn-out mattresses; two tolerably solid wooden chairs, three that needed repairs, which were speedily given them; some crockery more or less chipped and cracked; and a stained steel-engraving of Franklin in the _salon_ of Marie Antoinette. True to its principles, the club accepted neither gifts of money nor contributions in kind. Its members were all graduates of the school of doing without. To those who came there a roof over the head was a luxury, while to have a friend to stand by them and care whether they went to the devil or not was little short of a miracle. But by the time Billy Pyncheon had been brought in by old Colonel Straight, gratitude, sacrifice, and enthusiasm on the part of one or another of the members had adequately fitted up this house to which Lovey and I were on the way. It had become, too, the one institution of which the saloon-keepers of my acquaintance were afraid. We were all afraid of it. It had worked so many wonders among our pals that we had come to look on it as a home of the necromantic. Missions of any kind we knew how to cope with; but in the Down and Out there was a sort of wizardry that tamed the wildest hearts among us, cast out devils, and raised the nearly dead. I myself for a year or more—ever since I had seen the spell it had wrought on Pyn, for whom from the first I had felt a sympathy—had been haunted by the dread of it; and here I was at the door. The door when we got to it was something of a disappointment. It was at the head of a flight of old-time brownstone steps, and was just like any other door. About it was nothing of the magical or cabalistic Lovey and I had been half expecting.