“You see,” continued the man, lifting a lid, “we burn a cross on the coffins of the Catholics, and the Protestants get no mark. The boxes with the chalk mark on are the ones that’s to be buried to-morrow. This man here, miss,” holding the lid up, “was a street-car driver; want to see him, mam?” Penelope’s aunt shook her head negatively. “He struck, and could not get work afterwards, so as he and his family was starvin’, he made them one less by committing suicide.” “It is so hard to die,” Penelope said with a shudder. “Hard? Not a bit, miss; death’s a great boon to poor people. This ’ere fellow,” holding another lid while Penelope gazed with dry, burning eyes down on a weather-beaten face, which, seared with a million premature wrinkles, wore a smile of rest, “he was a tramp, they ’spose. Fell dead on Sixth Avenue, an’ he had nothin’ on him to identify him. And this ’ere woman who lies next the Park mystery girl, though she do smile like she got somethin’ she wanted--an’ they nearly all smile, miss, when they’ve handed in their ’counts--she were a devil. She’s done time on the island, and they’ve had her in Blackwell’s Insane Asylum, but ’twan’t no good; soon as she got out she was at her old tricks. Drink, drink, if she had to steal it, an’ fight an’ swear! They picked her up on a sidewalk the last time and hauled her to the station-house, but when mornin’ come an’ they called her she didn’t show up; an’ when they dragged her out, thinkin’ she was still full, they found she’d got a death sentence and gone on a last trip to the island where they never come back.” A little woman, stumpy, fat and old, in a shabby black frock and plain black bonnet, came in with one of the keeper’s assistants. She held a coarse white cotton handkerchief in her hand, and her wrinkled, broad face with its fish-like mouth, thick, upturned nose and watery blue eyes, looked prepared to show evidence of grief when the search among the labelled rough-boxes was successful. “Mrs. Lang,” read the man who was assisting the woman in her search, “from the Almshouse?” “Yes, that was her name, true enough. The Lord rest her soul!” the woman responded fervently, and the man slid the lid across the box, and the little old woman, holding the handkerchief over her stubby nose, peeped in. “Yes, that’s her; that’s Mrs. Lang. Poor thing! Ah! she do look desolate,” she wailed. “She hasn’t a fri’nd in all the world,” she continued, looking with her weak eyes at Penelope, who sympathetically stopped by her. “She was eighty years old, and paralyzed from her knees down. Poor thing, they took her to the Almshouse not quite a month ago, and she looks like she’d had a hard time, sure enough. Poor Mrs. Lang, she do look desolate.” The man closed the box as if he had given her time enough to weep, and the wailing woman went out. “What becomes of the bodies of these poor unfortunates?” asked Penelope, with a catch in her voice.