" But the thought had made him the more anxious
to befriend the luckless soul fortune had cast in his way; and so the
two sallied out together, and rang doorbells wherever lights were still
seen burning in the windows, and asked the astonished people who
answered their summons whether any Mr. Hapford were known to live in the
neighborhood.
And although the search for this gentleman proved vain, the contributor
could not feel that an expedition which set familiar objects in such
novel lights was altogether a failure. He entered so intimately into the
cares and anxieties of his protege that at times he felt himself in some
inexplicable sort a shipmate of Jonathan Tinker, and almost personally a
partner of his calamities. The estrangement of all things which takes
place, within doors and without, about midnight may have helped to cast
this doubt upon his identity;--he seemed to be visiting now for the
first time the streets and neighborhoods nearest his own, and his feet
stumbled over the accustomed walks. In his quality of houseless
wanderer, and--so far as appeared to others--possibly worthless
vagabond, he also got a new and instructive effect upon the faces which,
in his real character, he knew so well by their looks of neighborly
greeting; and it is his belief that the first hospitable prompting of
the human heart is to shut the door in the eyes of homeless strangers
who present themselves after eleven o'clock. By that time the servants
are all abed, and the gentleman of the house answers the bell, and looks
out with a loath and bewildered face, which gradually changes to one of
suspicion, and of wonder as to what those fellows can possibly want of
_him_, till at last the prevailing expression is one of contrite desire
to atone for the first reluctance by any sort of service.
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