I know more about his case than anybody else; I knew too much of it, in that bygone day, to relish speaking of it.

That tramp was wandering about the streets one chilly evening, with a pipe in his mouth, and begging for a match; he got neither matches nor courtesy; on the contrary, a troop of bad little boys followed him around and amused themselves with nagging and annoying him.

I assisted; but at last, some appeal which the wayfarer made for forbearance, accompanying it with a pathetic reference to his forlorn and friendless condition, touched such sense of shame and remnant of right feeling as were left in me, and I went away and got him some matches, and then hied me home and to bed, heavily weighted as to conscience, and unbuoyant in spirit.

An hour or two afterward, the man was arrested and locked up in the calaboose by the marshal--large name for a constable, but that was his title.

At two in the morning, the church bells rang for fire, and everybody turned out, of course--I with the rest.