s, and a head that
suggests great possibilities of good or evil, as the case may be. We
would like to get him into one of the Children's Homes, and look after
him. I meant to go around there this very evening and see what I could
do. What do you say to going with me now?"

"Easy enough thing to accomplish, I should think. I presume his father
will be glad to get rid of him; but it's storming tremendously, is it
not?"

"Pretty hard. It does four-fifths of the time in Albany, you know.
Wouldn't you venture?"

"Why, it strikes me not, unless it were a case of life and death, or
something of that sort. I should like to assist in rescuing the waif,
but won't it do to-morrow?"

"I presume so. We'll go to-morrow after class, then. Well, take the
rocking chair and an apple, and make yourself comfortable. I say,
McElroy, when I get into my profession I'll preach temperance, shall not
you?"

* * * * *

Rain and wind and storm were over by the next afternoon; the sun shone
out brilliantly, trying to glorify even the upper end of Rensselaer
Street through which the two young men were sauntering, in search of the
waif on whom John Birge meant to keep an eye.

"I'm strangely interested in the boy," Birge was saying. "That prayer
was something so strange, so fearfully solemn, and the circumstances
connected with my stumbling upon them at all were so sad. I was sorry
after I left that I had not tried to impress upon the little fellow's
mind the solemn meaning of his mother's last words. I half went back to
have a little talk with him, but then I thought there would be
sufficient opportunity for that in the future. Here, this is the cellar.
Be careful how you tread, these steps are abominable. Hallo! Why, what
on earth!"

They descended the stairs; they knocked at the door, but they received
no answer; they tried the door, it was locked; they looked in at the
rickety window, the miserable stove, the rags, even the straw, were
gone--no trace of human residence was to be seen.

It does not take long to move away from Rensselaer Street. Tode and his
father were gone; and neither then nor afterward for many a day, though
John Birge and his companion made earnest search, were they to be found.
The "sufficient opportunity" was gone, too, and young Birge kept no eye
on the boy; but there was an All-seeing eye looking down on poor Tode
all the while.

CHAPTER III.

WOLFIE.

Mr. Hastings s