The horror was of course immediately reported to the police, who came and killed the dogs and then arrested Clampitt. A newspaper and police investigation of his life revealed nothing save that he was assumed to be an old junk-dealer who was eccentric, a solitary, without relatives or friends. He claimed to have kept the dogs for protection, also that he had been set upon by youths of the vicinity and stoned, which was true. Even so, he was held for weeks in jail pending this investigation of his connections. No past crimes being found, apparently he was released. But so terrified was he then by the furore his savage dogs had aroused that he disappeared from this region and was heard of no more. His old rag yard was abandoned. But I often wondered about him afterwards, the years he spent there alone. * * * * * And then _Old Ragpicker_, whom I have described in _Plays of the Natural and the Supernatural_, and who was as described. And Hurstwood. * * * * * As interesting a type as I ever knew was an old hunchback who, as I understood, had had a small music business in the Bowery, years and years ago when that street was still a vaudeville center, a sort of theatrical Broadway. Through experience he had come by a little knowledge of popular songs and songbooks and had engaged in the manufacture and sale of these things. But times changed and public taste varied and he was not able to keep up with it all. From little business to no business was an easy step, and then he failed and took lodgings in one of the side streets off the Bowery, below Fourth Street, eking out a precarious existence, heaven only knows how. Age had hounded him even more than ill success. His naturally dark skin darkened still further and his black eyes retreated into gloomy sockets. I used to see him at odd times, at a period when I lived in a vicinity near the Bowery, wending a lonely way through the crowded streets there, but never until he accosted me one night in the dark did I realize that he had become a beggar. A mumbled apology about hunger, a deprecating, shamefaced cough, and he was off again, the richer for a dime. In this case, time, to say nothing of life, had worked one of those disturbing grotesqueries which arrest one. He was so very somber, furtive, misshapen and lean, a veritable masque of a man whose very glance indicated inconsolable disappointment and whose presence, to many, would most certainly have come as an omen of failure. A hall-bedroom, a lodging-house cot, an occasional meal, some hidden corner in which to be at peace, in which to brood, and then a few years later he was found dead, alone, seated before a small table, his head leaning upon his arms in the shabby little room in which he dwelt. I know this to be true, for from time to time I made effort to hear of him. What, think you, would he have to say to his Creator if he might? * * * * *