At length when the nameless one had completed his fifth year,
the pest which never quitted the nest of cellars of which he
was a citizen, raged in the quarter with such intensity, that
the extinction of its swarming population was menaced. The
haunt of this child was peculiarly visited. All the children
gradually sickened except himself; and one night when he
returned home he found the old woman herself dead, and
surrounded only by corpses. The child before this had slept
on the same bed of straw with a corpse, but then there were
also breathing beings for his companions. A night passed only
with corpses seemed to him in itself a kind of death. He
stole out of the cellar, quitted the quarter of pestilence,
and after much wandering laid down near the door of a factory.
Fortune had guided him. Soon after break of day, he was woke
by the sound of the factory bell, and found assembled a crowd
of men, women, and children. The door opened, they entered,
the child accompanied them. The roll was called; his
unauthorized appearance noticed; he was questioned; his
acuteness excited attention. A child was wanted in the
Wadding Hole, a place for the manufacture of waste and damaged
cotton, the refuse of the mills, which is here worked up into
counterpanes and coverlids.
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