One day, about a month after the disposal of Joe the miller, Hare was again on the track of the unfortunate, and this time, as it was said, sent out by his colleague, as if the latter had wished to seek in repetition the assuagement of familiarity. Alas! the old search. You cry me mercy, and I would forbear did I not know that truth must bear her crown amidst the lying conventionalities of refinement; and virtue, who is her companion, looks to her for strength, while she shines the brighter for the proximity of vice. Yes, the old threading through the mazes of human beings,--now passing between the ripe and the raw, the full-blooded youth and the tottering beggar, the rich and the poor--apportioning the meed of his approbation according to the selective affinities of the possible. Polypheme had no tastes; this man was refined. Yea, even like the good philanthropist who passes by those who do not require his help, and turns kindly to the maimed and the blind and the miserable, his were claimed by those on whom the hard and heavy hand of calamity had pressed. The goddess pitied Iphigenia, and made her a priestess, not because she was beautiful and the daughter of a great king, but because she was unfortunate. But on this occasion the searcher was _sought_. While standing on the High Street holding the button of the ragged coat of an old man who pleased him, and whose escape, seeing he was a dipsomaniac, would be nothing short of miracle, there came up to him an Irishwoman, also advanced in years, apparently a weary tramp, her shoes covered with dust, and her poor clothes looking as if she had slept in them all night among straw. She was a stranger in a strange city, and by her side was a little boy whom she held by the hand, for he was one of God's stricken--deaf and dumb--with that wistful peering of the eyes which is as often the effect of the infirmity as of the habit of solicitation. She told him that she was from Ireland, that she was on the search for some one of her countrymen or countrywomen whom she knew, and from whom she intended to claim that privilege of friendship and assistance which the people of that country, with all their faults, are so liberal in according. Was there need for a bond of confidence? He himself was of the ould country, and would he not assist a country-woman with a charge so helpless, so pitiful, so burdensome, except for the love which bore it? Nay, did he not know the very person she sought? and did she not reside in Log's lodgings, whereto he would be so delighted to lead her? Happy escape for the button-held, and yet strange freak of the mind as it works awry often for an opposite; for he seemed, as he departed, to envy the new comer, who had thus secured the friendship of one now possessed of money, and not backward in shewing it.