“Down in the cellar after the tramp. He flew by us to the kitchen. Hester had forgotten and left the cellar door open. Shut and lock the door of the room you are in. I will be right up.”
Our poor Mary did as she was bid, and as we heard afterward, Mrs. Martin followed her husband to the cellar. As the tramp had not
shown fight, they were not afraid of him, and they said afterward they knew he must be a slight, frail creature, perhaps only a boy, for he dashed by so quickly and smoothly, and bent over as if he were on all fours.
Well, by the time they got a lantern and went down into their big, old-fashioned cellar, Mr. Tramp was nowhere to be seen. There is a great deal of stuff in our cellar. I went down there one day on our Mary’s shoulder. There are trunks and boxes, and plants and barrels, and old furniture, and shelves of china, and a storeroom and coal rooms, and a furnace room, and a lot of other things—a very paradise of hiding places.
No lights would go on yet, so the two Martins poked about with their lantern, passing several times a heap of bearskin rugs that the furnace man had thrown in a corner to shake in the morning.
“Could he be there?” said Mrs. Martin, at last.
“There’s no other place,” said Mr. Martin, and he prodded the rugs with his stick. “Come out, you—we won’t hurt you.”
They heard a touching groan, then “Jus’ a
crumb—jus’ a crumb,” in a voice that Mrs. Martin said afterward was hoarse and broken like that of an old man who has been drinking too much all his life.
“Get up, you beggar,” said Mr. Martin, for he was pretty tired and excited by this time. “If you don’t come out, you’ll get a walloping.”