barricaded the door with her wardrobe cupboard; but the thought of Pelle
in prison made her sympathetic and helpful. They were poor, needy
beings, whom misery and misfortune had driven from their homes. They
could not speak the language and knew nothing about the world; but they
seemed, like birds of passage, to find their way by instinct. In their
blind flight it was at the "Palace" that they happened to alight for
rest.

With this exception the great room lay unused. It went up through two
stories, and could have been made into several small flats; but the
owner of the property--an old peasant from Glostrup--was so miserly that
he could not find it in his heart to spend money on it, notwithstanding
the great advantage it would be to him. _Ellen_ had no objection to
this! She dried her customers' washing there, and escaped all the coal-
dust and dirt of the yard.

Chance, which so often takes the place of Providence in the case of poor
people, had landed her and her children here when things had gone wrong
with them in Chapel Road. Ellen had at last, after hard toil, got her
boot-sewing into good working order and had two pupils to help her, when
a long strike came and spoiled it all for her. She struggled against it
as well as she could, but one day they came and carried her bits of
furniture down into the street. It was the old story: Pelle had heard it
several times before. There she stood with the children, mounting guard
over her belongings until it grew dark. It was pouring with rain, and
they did not know what to do. People stopped as they hurried by, asked a
few questions and passed on; one or two advised her to apply to the
committee for housing the homeless. This, however, both Ellen and Lasse
Frederik were too proud to do. They took the little ones down to the
mangling-woman in the cellar, and themselves remained on guard over