t been good to the brave mother, and so
she had taken her little girl and fled from him. But he always found
her and begged for the child. Only too well the young person
remembered some of those scenes of frantic appeal on the father's
side, of angry refusal by her mother, followed always by another hasty
retreat to some new place of concealment. At last--never-to-be
forgotten day--there was a vivid recollection of the time when the
father asserted brutally that "he would make life a misery to her
until she gave up the child"--that "by fair means or foul he would
gain his end." Soon afterward he did kidnap the young person, but the
mother was too quick for him, and almost immediately her child was in
her own arms again.

This necessary habit of concealment, and also the mother's need to
earn her own living, made life anything but an easy matter for them
both. The mother's terror lest her child be taken from her again made
her fear to allow the little girl to walk out alone, even for a short
distance, and in such positions as the older woman was able to secure,
it was always with the promise that the child should be no nuisance.
And so the young person grew up in a habit of self-effacement, and of
sitting quietly in corners where she could not be seen or heard,
instead of playing with other children of her own age. Then came a
great hope, which even as she lay in bed and thought about it, brought
the tears to her eyes, she had so longed to have it come true.

When she was six years old, she and her mother had been living in a
boarding-house in Cleveland, where there was a good-natured actress
boarding, who took such a fancy to the shy little girl who was always
sitting in a corner reading a book, that one day she approached the
astonished mother with a proposition to adopt her daughter. Seeing
surprise on the mother's face, she frankly told of her position, her
income and her intention to give the girl a fine education. She
thought a convent school would be desirable, from then, say, until the
young person was seventeen.

The mother was really tempted by the offer of a good education, which
she saw no way to give her daughter, and might have accepted it if the
actress had not added:

"When she reaches the age of seventeen, I will place her on the
stage."

That ended the matter. The mother was horror-stricken, and could
hardly make her refusal clear and decided enough. Even when her
employer tried to make her see t