"What's to be done? What's to be done?" the poor cripple asked himself, wringing his hands, when he was notified that unless he paid his back rent within twenty-four hours, he and his family would be put into the street.
With despair in his heart he hastened out, and sold everything of any value that was yet left to him in order to avoid this disgrace.
"And then we'll get out of this unlucky street!" cried the mother, sobbing and wiping the hot tears from her eyes.
After a short family council it was decided to move over to New York.
"No one knows me there; I can get any kind of employment in New York—and work is easier to find there than it is here," said Martin to comfort his sobbing wife.
A week later found the sorely-tried family in one of the great barracks of tenements in the lower part of the city. As a whole, the neighborhood could not be surpassed for lack of comfort, and little more appeared in the three bare rooms tenanted by the Martin family.
Eugene's condition had improved, although he was still confined to his bed; but the poor father's mind was even more tormented by the fearful spectre of poverty, and yet—in busy, populous New York, surely, there was work to be found!
He was going upstairs one day when he was stopped by a woman who was a stranger to him. She opened an adjoining door, and asked him to step into the room. Her husband was lying there sick in bed and groaning with pain.
"Excuse me," began the woman, "my husband is a street-cleaner—he sweeps Fifth Avenue," she added, with a proud intonation. "For twenty-five years—mind that—he had done his duty; and now the commissioners send for him today and here he is, sick in bed and can't sweep his Fifth Avenue!" She went on with great loquacity, without paying any heed to the embarrassed face of her new neighbor.
"If you will take his place I will give you his whole day's wages!" she shouted, handing him the money together with the broom.