. I thought it was dead without the drunk, an' stood screamin';
an' my father come up an' some of the neighbors. We was all respectable
then, an' one of them says, 'The Lord help you, Mr. Brown! She's begun
ag'in.' He didn't speak, but just lifted her up an' put her on the bed,
and then he sat down and covered up his face with his hands, an' was so
still I thought he was dead too. I crawled up to him whimperin', an' he
lifted me up.

"'Jack,' he says, 'my heart's broke. It's no use: she's bound to go to
the bad, an' maybe you'll take after her.'

"I screamed ag'in, though I didn't know what that meant, but he hushed
me. 'Jack,' he said, 'you're a little fellow, an' your troubles ain't
begun yet. I'd give my life this minute to take you with me.' He held me
up to him tight an' took my breath, so 't I couldn't ask him where; an'
then he cried.

"That was the beginnin' of me, if gettin' a gleam of sense means
beginnin' for folks; for, though I didn't know what it all meant, I did
know he wanted comfort bad as I did, an' we hugged up to one another.
But I know now all the ins and the outs, for I was told by one that knew
them both.

"She was a pretty girl in a mill in Fall River--fast, like some of them,
but with an innocent face an' big blue eyes, like a child's, to the very
last. Many's the time I've seen 'em with no more sense, nor as much, as
a baby's in 'em. He was a young shoemaker, that fell in love with the
pretty face, an' married her out of hand then an' there, an' took her to
New York, where he'd got a good place--foreman in a factory. His folks
lived in Fall River, and hers off somewheres. I haven't never seen any
of 'em, an' good reason not to want to.

"She liked fine clothes, an' thought she was goin' to be a lady an' do
nothin'; an' when the first baby come it was a bother to her, for she
wasn't strong, an' one of the neighbors told her to drink beer. There's
no use spinnin' it out. It began with beer, but it ended with whiskey,
an' the first my father ever knew was the dead baby that she'd killed
rollin' over on it in a drunken sleep.

"That cured her for a year. She was afraid of my father, for at first,
in his fury, he swore he'd give her up to the officers; an' then she
cried so, an' went on day after day, till he couldn't but be sorry for
her ag'in. An' then I come along--many's the time I've cursed the
day--an' till I was four all was well enough. Then it came. She'd been
takin' a little slyly a