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On the whole, it was the happiest hour of the twenty-four for them, for the eating of the day was over, a rather self-denying operation, the labor was over, sleep was at hand. Yet the society was not entirely homogeneous, except in the one item of poverty, and as the elements of discord are not always absent in the best of families, how could they be thought always absent here, in a group of characters never before in their best days quite affiliating together? It is true, however, that common misfortune often makes common friends, and here were friendships grown and growing into some form and comliness, where the normal condition was one of repugnance. For instance, aunt Prescott was become every body's friend, and in her every other person learned to have some friendship for his fellows. Aunt Dorothy Prinsmade possessed some kindness of heart, and tried to serve her companions. All felt a community of sentiment, and regarded themselves at liberty to prey on the interests of the rest of the world. Their condition gave them little hope of ever rising above want, and to satisfy this, they bound themselves together to accomplish what they could. Yet not in form. They took no common oath, nor made any common plunder. It was in the feeling of the heart that they foraged on society, and bound themselves together, not in formal covenant.

It was seven o'clock. All the chores were done, the people all in -- but Roxy. She had slipped out, a wildish saucy faced girl, under-witted they called her, and sometimes uncontrollable -- she went and came as she liked. Neither for her, nor for any other one of their number was there ever felt any very great uneasiness of mind when absent, how long soever that absence might be continued. She has not a relative in the world that she can name, nor has she a solitary farthing in money.

Most of the company gathered near the fire, turning this way and that, to feel its genial heat, Jims industriously supplying fuel. They maintained quite a conversation among themselves, the general drift of which was in complaint of their present lot, or mourning over their departed happiness.

"How the cold comes in under the doors, and through that broken window," said Boyce, who had thrown himself on the old bed, and tried to cover up his shivering limbs.

"Jims," said he, "take my old hat and crowd it into that broken window, will ye? It's plaguy chilly here."

Jims did so, and at the same time heaped more fuel on the fire.

"It is a cold night, Mr. Boyce," said widow Prescott, "and a lot of poor souls like us feel it. For my part, I should have relished a cup of hot tea to-night; and I think it would have done you good."

"Hot tea, Mrs. Prescott!" said the other; "when the paupers of Crampton get what they like and need to eat and drink, somebody beside Captain Isaac Bunce will have the care of them."

"That's a fact!" screamed a voice in the rear of a group near the fire, which all knew to be that of Mag Davis. "That's a fact!" she exclaimed, coming forward a little, and sitting down on one of the old chairs near the foot of the bed -- "Captain Bunce's tea bill," said she, "won't swamp him, I'll swear."

Mag was an uncommonly hard and desperate character. Not that there never appeared another like her. This we do not mean, but that she was one of her own class, and that a very depraved one. Similar personages are now and then seen in all our public institutions. They have a character formed in the streets, formed in the schools of licentiousness and unrestrained self-indulgence. Mag Davis was once a handsome girl. All her youthful history we do not pretend to know. Write it we would not if known to us. Sufficient be it, that there is one record kept of every mortal life, and of her life of course. We know her as Mag Davis. She would pass for a female; her long dangling hair spoke this of her, and in her face were yet some feminine traceries -- enough to warm your heart to her, at least in compassion, if there were wanting nothing to deaden its emotions. But ugliness, recklessness, and ferocity mingled their expression in her face, and lurked in her eyes. She wore tattered and draggled skirts, and nothing in her person was more pleasing than in the character of her mind. She was an ugly old crone, yet she knew a great deal, and could converse with great fluency. And now she sat rather back in the group, at the foot of the bedstead, crowded partly into a corner, half hidden by the slouching form of John Tucker, drunken and debauched as he was, and Polly, his miserable, red-faced wife, who had both lately found winter quarters at the poor-house. Here, in the faintly lighted portion of the room, she sat and snapped her fingers in the air, higgling and hitching and swaying this way and that, jerking her head violently and spasmodically from one side to another, and often leading off, in a rapid, screaming voice, the conversation of the miserable and haggard wretches around her. Her conversational power, as we have said, was great. She could frame good sentences, and express them with an emphasis of earnestness that made one regard them, and with intonations of voice peculiar to well-bred ladies. But yet she was a polluted wretch. Her life had been one of criminal self-indulgence -- her associations vile and wretched. A female, without the grace of one -- with no outlines remaining of virtue, loveliness, attraction -- you saw her but with loathing. With squinting eyes she leered on you, and opened her toothless jaws to utter words.