a strange old man, who had come down in the world, and now lived quite
alone, with not a soul to help him in the house or outside it. He was
"not to say _mazelin_ yet, but getting helpless, and uncommon
mean."

A nephew came one fine day and fetched away the old pauper, to his great
delight. It was by their hands that Jack despatched a letter, which the
nephew stamped and posted for him, and which was duly delivered on the
following morning to Mr. Darwin of the Dovecot.

The old man had no correspondents, and he looked long at the letter
before he opened it. It did credit to the teaching of the workhouse
schoolmistress:

"HONORED SIR,

"They call me Jack March. I'm a workhouse lad, but, sir, I'm a
good one, and the Board means to 'prentice me next time. Sir,
if you face the Board and take me out you shall never regret it.
Though I says it as shouldn't I'm a handy lad. I'll clean a floor
with any one, and am willing to work early and late, and at your
time of life you're not what you was, and them birds must take a
deal of seeing to. I can see them from the garden when I'm set
to weed, and I never saw nought like them. Oh, sir, I do beg and
pray you let me mind your pigeons. You'll be none the worse of a
lad about the place, and I shall be happy all the days of my life.
Sir, I'm not unthankful, but please GOD, I should like to have
a home, and to be with them house doves.

"From your humble servent--hoping to be--

"JACK MARCH."

"Mr. Darwin, Sir. I love them Tumblers as if they was my own."

Daddy Darwin thought hard and thought long over that letter. He changed
his mind fifty times a day. But Friday was the Board day, and when
Friday came he "faced the Board." And the little workhouse lad went home
to Daddy Darwin's Dovecot.

SCENE V.

The bargain was oddly made, but it worked well. Whatever Jack's
parentage may have been (and he was named after the stormy month in
which he had been born), the blood that ran in his veins could not have
been beggar's blood. There was no hopeless, shiftless, invincible
idleness about him. He found work for himself when it was not given him
to do, and he attached himself passionately and proudly to all the
belongings of his new home.

"Yon lad of yours seem handy enough, Daddy;--for a vagrant, as one may
say." Daddy Darwin was smoking over his garden wall, and Mrs. Shaw, from
the neighboring farm, had paused