n the two rooms, and opened it softly. Two
thundering snores, pitched in such different keys that they must have
proceeded from two separate sets of nasal organs, reassured the boy. He
looked out into the alley. "Not a creature was stirring, not even a
mouse." The Minerva Courtiers couldn't be owls and hawks too, and there
was not even the ghost of a sound to be heard. Satisfied that all was
well, Timothy went back to the bedroom, and lifted the battered
clothes-basket, trucks and all, in his slender arms, carried it up the
alley and down the street a little distance, and deposited it on the
pavement beside a vacant lot. This done, he sped back to the house. "How
beautifully they snore!" he thought, as he stood again on the threshold.
"Shall I leave 'em a letter?... P'raps I better ... and then they won't
follow us and bring us back." So he scribbled a line on a bit of torn
paper bag, and pinned it on the enemies' door.

"A kind Lady is goin to Adopt us it is
a Grate ways off so do not Hunt good by. TIM."

Now all was ready. No; one thing more. Timothy had been met in the
street by a pretty young girl a few weeks before. The love of God was
smiling in her heart, the love of children shining in her eyes; and she
led him, a willing captive, into a mission Sunday-school near by. And so
much in earnest was the sweet little teacher, and so hungry for any sort
of good tidings was the starved little pupil, that Timothy "got
religion" then and there, as simply and naturally as a child takes its
mother's milk. He was probably in a state of crass ignorance regarding
the Thirty-nine Articles; but it was the "engrafted word," of which the
Bible speaks, that had blossomed in Timothy's heart; the living seed had
always been there, waiting for some beneficent fostering influence; for
he was what dear Charles Lamb would have called a natural
"kingdom-of-heavenite." Thinking, therefore, of Miss Dora's injunction
to pray over all the extra-ordinary affairs of life and as many of the
ordinary ones as possible, he hung his tattered straw hat on the
bedpost, and knelt beside Gay's crib with this whispered prayer:--

"_Our Father who art in heaven, please help me to find a mother for Gay,
one that she can call Mamma, and another one for me, if there's enough,
but not unless. Please excuse me for taking away the clothes-basket,
which does not exactly belong to us; but if I do not take it, dear
heavenly Father, how will I get G