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Both Mr. and Mrs. Boyce had paid the debt of nature, and rested side by side in the village church-yard, their graves identified by two marble slabs, procured for them by their friends, and Alice was now a sweet girl of twelve, the adopted daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Rodman.

The paupers of the place were as numerous as ever, and fared about as well as when we last knew them. They had been from under Captain Bunce's care more than four years. Two years Mr. Abraham Bacon had them. Mr. Bacon seldom furnished them with fresh ham; although he flourished a surname that indicated an ample supply of that delicious sort of provision. "Abraham" was his affix, or appendage to "Bacon," that came up at his christening a good while ago. He was so called not from any positive indications that he was an especial favorite of heaven, or would be a prince in the land, but because it had a good sound to it, was the antecedent initial letter to B-- Bacon, and might have a pious bearing on him from its historical prominence.

But Abraham Bacon in his maturity was less an object of love and attraction than Abraham Bacon in his infancy and early youth.

In size the man was short, though broad shouldered, thick and heavy all over, a man good for an hundred and eighty pounds. His face was of a deep red color, such at all times, as some men carry when violently angry; features large, with swollen furrows in his cheeks and around his huge mouth and blunt, old-fashioned sort of nose. Two moles marked his left cheek, and a scar his right. Altogether Mr. Bacon was a specimen-man of toughness and energy, fond of cider, not averse to roast beef. He possessed very little education, and in refinement had made almost no progress in a life of fifty years I He was a shrewd, close-calculating man of business.

In a sharp rivalry with one or two competitors for these loaves and fishes of the town, when Captain Bunce lost them, Abraham, by a little diplomatic shrewdness, got the bid, and the paupers went into his quarters for the space of two years.

These "quarters" constituted one of his claims to the care of the poor. Abraham put in the following description of his premises -- "A large two-story house, forty by twenty-eight feet, with ten rooms, besides ample garret room and cellar. A long wing, slightly disconnected with the main building, twenty by fifty feet, water-tight, and capable of good ventilation, used formerly for pork packing, boiling food for cattle, and so forth, but now in good order for comfortably housing the paupers. Will accommodate above and below twenty-five persons very happily."

Mr. Bacon got the contract to keep them one year for six hundred dollars; and as soon as it was convenient, they were removed there -- some walking, others taken in a cart and the long wagon. They carried all their effects in the first exodus -- these consisting of very little other than what they had on, or what each tied up in an old handkerchief, or rolled together in a paper. The women went in black and white straw bonnets, of faded, and much worn, and very dingy appearance -- wide, flaring styles, of past, forgotten years. They were dressed in short-waisted kersey frocks, or tattered cheap calico, loosely hooked together, and unevenly at that, gaping in front and behind, loose and flapping at the neck. Ragged quilts hung down below the skirt, and a very great figure of shabbiness they made altogether. The men, in slouching, torn, indented hats of every possible old fashion -- in coats torn and seedy and yawning, too large and too small, vests and pants too short and too long, faded, worn, and soiled, with open necks, and dirty shirts accompanied them, some with and others without shoes. This outre company made land at pious Abraham's one morning, the first week in October, before ten o'clock, and were ushered into and introduced to their new quarters.

The long wing to the main house, "slightly disconnected," was in reality apart from it only about three feet; and a door opened from it on the end to the kitchen of the other building. It was divided into two main apartments. In the one there were from three to five straw beds for the females -- two of them on bedsteads, the others on the floor. The other room contained two bedsteads, with straw beds, for the men, and a stairway leading to a low, dark chamber under the roof, where an indefinite number of persons might lie on the floor. This was the eating-room -- also the kitchen and sitting-room of the establishment. These were the accommodations proper for the paupers.

Much better than none at all, it must be confessed, they were. Aunt Dodge would not have frozen to death if she could have got to her quarters. But if we consider that these poor and feeble folks were, some of them, persons reared in the lap of comfort, and accustomed to the sacredness of home -- the females, especially, entertaining notions of delicacy, and personal protection from rudeness and vulgarity; if we remember their helplessness and need of indulgences, we shall be led to believe that this old pork-house of Abraham Bacon, with only one slender partition, one large fire-place, no carpets, no curtains except newspapers pinned up as temporary shades, without soft beds or chairs, low and crowded, the good and bad together -- that this place, I say, must be a poor place for happiness; a poor place for daily joy, for nightly pains, for sickness, weakness, decrepitude and death.