



Produced by Annie R. McGuire








[Illustration: HARPER'S ROUND TABLE]

Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All Rights Reserved.

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PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 1896. FIVE CENTS A COPY.

VOL. XVII.--NO. 845. TWO DOLLARS A YEAR.

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[Illustration]

CRESSY'S NEW-YEAR'S RENT.

BY L. A. TEREBEL.


Fred Hallowell was sitting at his desk in the _Gazette_ office, looking
listlessly out into the City Hall Park, where the biting wind was making
the snowflakes dance madly around the leafless trees and in the empty
fountain, and he was almost wishing that there would be so few
assignments to cover as to allow him an afternoon in-doors to write
"specials." The storm was the worst of the season, and as this was the
last day of December, it looked as if the old year were going out with a
tumultuous train of sleet and snow. But if he had seriously entertained
any hopes of enjoying a quiet day, these were dispelled by an office-boy
who summoned him to the city desk.

"Good-morning, Mr. Hallowell," said the city editor, cheerfully. "Here
is a clipping from an afternoon paper which says that a French family in
Houston Street has been dispossessed and is in want. Mr. Wilson called
my attention to it because he thinks, from the number given, the house
belongs to old Q. C. Baggold. We don't like Baggold, you know, and if
you find he is treating his tenants unfairly we can let you have all the
space you want to show him up. At any rate, go over there and see what
the trouble is; there is not much going on to-day."

Fred took the clipping and read it as he walked back to his desk. It was
very short--five or six lines only--and the facts stated were about as
the city editor had said. The young man got into his overcoat and
wrapped himself up warmly, and in a few moments was himself battling
against the little blizzard with the other pedestrians whom he had been
watching in the City Hall Park from the office windows.

When he reached Houston Street he travelled westward for several blocks,
until he came into a very poor district crowded with dingy
tenement-houses that leaned against one another in an uneven sort of
way, as if they were tired of the sad kind of life they had been
witnessing for so many years. The snow that had piled up on the
window-sills and over the copings seemed to brighten up the general
aspect of the quarter, because it filled in the cracks and chinks of
material misery, and made the buildings look at least temporarily
picturesque, just as paint and powder for a time may hide the traces of
old age and sorrow. Fred found the number 179 painted on a piece of tin
that had become bent and rusty from long service over a narrow doorway,
and as he stood there comparing it with the number given in his
clipping, a little girl with a shawl drawn tightly over her head and
around her thin little shoulders came out of the dark entrance and
stopped on the door-sill for a moment, surprised, no doubt, at the sight
of the tall rosy-cheeked young man so warmly clad in a big woollen
overcoat that you could have wrapped her up in several times, with goods
left over to spare.

"Hello! little girl," said Fred, quickly. "Does Mr. Cressy live here?"

The child stared for a few seconds at the stranger, and then she
answered, bashfully, "Yes, sir. But he has got to go away."

"But he hasn't gone yet?" continued Fred; and then noticing that the
child, in her short calico skirt, was shivering from the cold, and that
her feet were getting wet with the snow, he added, "Come inside a minute
and tell me where I can find Mr Cressy."

The two stepped into the dark narrow hallway that ran through the house
to the stairway in the rear, where a narrow window with a broken pane
let in just enough light to prove there was day outside. The little girl
leaned against the wall, and looked up at the reporter as if she
suspected him of having no good intentions toward the man for whom he
was inquiring. Very few strangers ever came into that house to do good,
she knew. Most of them came for money--rent money--and sometimes they