The Pioneer soon found that the Rector's statements as regards the moving habits of the people were correct. After short intervals between visits he frequently found persons in whom he had become interested gone, and not a trace of them remaining, their places being occupied by others. This was the case one afternoon in a house round the corner,--one of the houses included in the block, and which we for weighty reasons have regarded as part of the Court. The visitor was walking upstairs, when he met a new arrival of so strange a type that he was arrested as by an apparition. It was evidently a little girl of meagre form and aged expression of countenance, but here the likeness to our species grew doubtful. Her ethnology was not clearly developed as she stood with bare shoulders of raven blackness, her lank light hair being tied up in a bunch with pieces of rag, while the face and hands were of a yellowish, dirty hue. The object was startled at meeting the stranger, and was about to retreat, when he stopped her by asking a question. She answered in a sharp, precocious manner, and the following dialogue took place. "My good child, who are you?" "Black Poll: that me. And I goes to the gaff, and I does the changes, and jumps 'Jim Crow;' and when I ain't black I sings 'Charming Judy O'Calligan.' That me!" "Do your father and mother live here?" "What a stunner! cos I ain't got no mother: she died of cholera. Dusty, what does the bones, is my uncle. He took me out of the workus, and I earns him lots,--ten shills a week." "How many of you are there?" "Oh, a lot! We ain't together. Billy Mutton is our guv'nor; and Dusty has took that ere sky-parlour, and they all comes here to be blacked up."