"I have wondered very much what had become of Mr.Wheeler.I had not seen him for a long time." When they went into the garret, the old man was half-lying, half-sitting, propped on his left elbow.

In his right hand he held his cane, with which he continually tapped the floor, as he poured out a volley of angry reproaches to his son "'Siah," a young man of eighteen or twenty years old, who sat on a roll of leather at a safe distance from his father's lair.

As the door opened, and he saw Mercy entering with his wife, the old man's face underwent the most extraordinary change.

Surprise, shame, perplexity, bravado,--all struggled together there.
"God bless my soul! God bless my soul!" he exclaimed, trying to draw the comforters more closely about him.
Mercy went up to him, and, sitting down by his side, began to talk to him in a perfectly natural tone, as if she were making an ordinary call on an invalid in his own home.

She said nothing to suggest that he had done any thing unnatural in hiding himself, and spoke of his severe cold as being merely what every one else had been suffering from for some time.