"Three pair back, ma'am," said the woman, who appeared like a cook, actual, past, or potential. "But he's not in. There's no telling how soon he will come. What name did you say? Drastus what? Sibbie-mole? Oh no, ma'am. Beg pardon. I listened as far as Drastus, and answered because it's such a curious name. Ours name is Fenton. But, let's see. What manner of young man might yours be? Like a foreigner, with a large nose and black eyes, and plays the fiddle, and wears his hair long? Dear me, ma'am, the very same! His room's three pair back. You wish to wait for him? This way, then, ma'am." Emmie, in whom all processes of thought had stopped in amazement, followed the landlady as best she could up three flights of dark stairs, and entered through the door flung open for her. They stood in a little room that received the day through a sky-light. Emmie dropped, sitting on the edge of the narrow bed and knotted her little gloved fingers together in silence. She was so pale that the landlady felt alarmed and asked if she were feeling ill. She shook her head, and continued looking about fearfully and in wonder. There was little to see, nothing that might not have belonged to any one in the wide world as well as to that boy; not one of these sordid appurtenances reminded her of him, except the music on the table--but any fiddler might have just such music. She rose to her feet as if jerked by a hidden string, and walked stiffly towards the door, saying, "It is evidently not the one. This one's name is Drastus Fenton, you say. The one I seek is Dorastus Sibbemol. Good-morning, ma'am." But near the door she stopped, her eyes widening upon an object set upright in the corner--a black wooden box, very old, scarred and worm-eaten, mournfully resembling a child's coffin. She went back to the bed, and limply leaned against the wall. She stared over at the box, with its peculiar wrought-iron hinges and handle. "Has he been here long?" she asked, faintly, at last, of the blowzy woman who was looking at her with some concern, and at the same time, in view of the lady's respectability, trying to smooth down her untidy hair. She thought a moment and judged he might have been there half a year. Emmie wrung her hands in an aimless way. She felt little of pain as yet, or indignation; only vague throes and convulsions of change, a working of all the atoms in heart and brain trying to adjust themselves to something new. "And he is poor!" she murmured.