She was too cunning to be entrapped by any such expedients; and when the train stopped at Harlem, she got out, with the intention of walking into the city. Deeming it imprudent to follow the principal street, in which some of the terrible policemen might be lying in wait for her, she made her way to one of the less travelled thoroughfares, in which she pursued her way towards the city. The street she had chosen led her through the localities inhabited by the poorer portions of the population. The territory through which she was passing was in a transition state: broad streets and large squares had been laid out, in anticipation of vast improvements, but only a little had been accomplished in carrying them out. There were many tasty little houses, and many long blocks of buildings occupied by mechanics and laborers, and occasionally a more pretentious mansion.
In some of the most ineligible places for building, there were houses, or rather hovels, constructed in the roughest and rudest manner, apparently for temporary use until the march of improvement should drive their tenants into still more obscure locations. Fanny passed near one of these rude abodes, which was situated on a cross street, a short distance from the avenue on which she was journeying to the city. In front of this house was a scene which attracted the attention of the wanderer, and caused her to forget, for the time, the great wrong she had committed, and the consequences which would follow in its train.
In front of the house lay several articles of the coarsest furniture, and a man was engaged in removing more of the same kind from the hovel. He had paused for a moment in his occupation, and before him stood a woman who was wringing her hands in the agonies of despair. Fanny could hear the profane and abusive language the man used, and she could hear the piteous pleadings of the woman, at whose side stood a little boy, half clothed in tattered garments, weeping as though his heart would break.
Fanny was interested in the scene. The woman's woe and despair touched her feelings, and perhaps more from curiosity than any other motive, she walked down the cross-street towards the cottage. Being resolute and courageous by nature, she had no fear of personal consequences. She did not comprehend the nature of the difficulty, having never seen a tenant forcibly ejected from a house for the non-payment of rent.
"You'll kill my child! You'll kill my child!" cried the poor woman, in such an agony of bitterness that Fanny was thrilled by her tones.
"Isn't it a whole year I've been waiting for my rint?" replied the man, coarsely. "Didn't ye keep promisin' to pay me for a twelvemonth, and niver a cint I got yet?"
"I would pay you if I could, Mr. O'Shane."
"If ye could! What call have I to wait any longer for me money?"
"My husband has gone to the war, and I haven't heard a word from him for a year; but I'm sure he will send me some money soon—I know he will."
"What call had he to go to the war? Why didn't he stay at home and take care of his childer? Go 'way wid ye! Give me up me house!"