"I will go with her, of course," replied the stranger, resuming his seat in the carriage with benevolent alacrity, while the Commissioner returned to his office and hastily wrote a letter to the resident physician, beseeching him to bestow especial care on the unknown patient who seemed so ill, and so completely alone in the world. CHAPTER XIV. BELLEVUE AND A NEW INMATE. A gloomy home for one like this; So pure, so gentle and so fair,-- Must her sweet life, in weariness, Go out for lack of human care? The carriage which bore Mrs. Chester paused before the gates at Bellevue. The gloomy and prison-like buildings loomed in heavy and sombre masses before the stranger, as he leaned from the carriage to deliver his order to the gatekeeper. The Hospital, with its walls of dark stone blackened by age, its sombre wings sweeping out from the main building and lowering above the massive walls, struck him with a feeling of gloom. It seemed like a prison that he was entering. The Hospitals were drear to him, and the dull, heavy atmosphere seemed full of contagion. He looked at the poor creature thus unconsciously brought there, perhaps to die, and his heart swelled with compassion. The gate swung open, and down a paved causeway leading to the water, bounded on one side by a high stone wall, and on the other by a bakery and various workshops belonging to the institutions, the carriage was driven. The wharf in which this causeway terminated, was full of lounging inmates; some were attempting to fish in the turbid water; others leaning half asleep against the wall, and some were grouped together, not in conversation, but basking lazily in the sunshine. Before it reached this wharf the carriage turned and was driven through an iron-studded gate, into an open and paved court that ran along the front of the main Alms House. The hospitals were some distance back of this building, but here the sick and dying must be brought first, for their names were to be registered in the Alms House books before they could be permitted to die in peace. As the carriage drove in, up came the swarm of idlers from the wharf, dragging themselves heavily along, laughing stupidly at the ponderous gambols and grimaces of a huge idiot boy, who, on seeing a new arrival, rolled rather than walked up from the water with his hand extended, crying out--money--money. It was all the language the poor creature possessed. He had learned to beg, and that was knowledge enough for him. In everything else he was the merest animal that crawled the earth. Yet, the other paupers followed him as they would have chased a dog or tame animal of any kind, whose gambols broke the monotony of their idleness. Up came this idiot boy to the carriage, leering in upon its inmates, and rolling from side to side, with his hand out, mumbling that one word over and over between his heavy lips: and up came the gang of paupers, gazing in also with stupid curiosity.