What passed between them, Phipps did not hear, although he tried very hard to do so.

At the close of a half hour's buzzing conversation, Tom Buffum took the bundle from the wagon, and pitched it into his doorway.

Then, with the basket on his arm, he and Mr.Belcher made their way across the street to the dormitories and cells occupied by the paupers of both sexes and all ages and conditions.

Even the hard-hearted proprietor saw that which wounded his blunted sensibilities; but he looked on with a bland face, and witnessed the greedy consumption of the stale dainties of his own table.
It was by accident that he was led out by a side passage, and there he caught glimpses of the cells to which Miss Butterworth had alluded, and inhaled an atmosphere which sickened him to paleness, and brought to his lips the exclamation: "For God's sake let's get out of this." "Ay! ay!" came tremblingly from behind the bars of a cell, "let's get out of this." Mr.Belcher pushed toward the light, but not so quickly that a pair of eyes, glaring from the straw, failed to recognize him.
"Robert Belcher! Oh, for God's sake! Robert Belcher!" It was a call of wild distress--a whine, a howl, an objurgation, all combined.

It was repeated as long as he could hear it.