A LINNET FOR SIXPENCE. 
5 
linnet captive in our hands in this Christian city, and, 
thinking of it still, was about to turn away when the big 
man pulled out a fresh bird, and pressing its little legs to 
make it flutter, held it high over his head and bawled out 
that it was the last of the lot. I waited to see it sold. 
Who would give sixpence for it? No one seemed inclined, 
and so he pressed the little legs to waken It up once more ; 
and it fluttered and gasped, and fluttered again, and yet 
again—a feathered “ Little Pilgrim ” striving with all its 
little might to wrest itself free, to fly from such a frightful 
destiny in this lurid city of the under-world into which 
a strange chance had cast it. 
Finally, to save it from further torture, I handed up a 
sixpence, and the little struggler was thrust into a paper 
bag and given into my possession. It will die to-night, I 
said, but in a cool quiet place it will perhaps pass from life 
less miserably than if I had left it. So I took it home, and 
in a large fireless room at the top of the house where I 
keep my book lumber, I took it from the bag, and out it 
fluttered and then hopped on to a pile of books and settled 
down to roost there. To my surprise it was not dead in 
the morning ; it was lively and vigorous, terrified at my 
approach, and anxious to make its escape. I wish I had 
then followed my first intention of throwing open the 
window and letting it fly out, but it was a bitterly cold 
morning with a grey clammy mist over London, and what, 
in such a place in such conditions, would the poor little 
