then I felt a tender compassion
for the strange, unlovely child.

"Where do you live?" I asked.

"Round in Blake's Court," he replied.

"Who with?"

"Old Mrs. Flint; but she doesn't want me."

"Why not?"

"Oh, because I'm nothing to her, she says, and she doesn't want the
trouble of me." He tried to say this in a brave, don't-care sort of
way, but his voice faltered and he dropped his eyes to the floor. How
pitiful he looked!

"Poor child!" I could not help saying aloud.

Light flashed over his pale face. It was something new to him, this
interest and compassion.

"One of God's little lambs." I heard the voice in my heart saying this
again. Nobody to love him--nobody to care for him. Poor little boy!
The hand of my own child, my son who is so very dear to me, had led
him in through our door and claimed for him the love and care so long
a stranger to his heart. Could I send him out and shut the door upon
him, when I knew that he had no mother and no home? If I heeded not
the cry of this little one precious in God's sight, might I not be
thought unworthy to be the guardian of another lamb of his fold whom I
loved as my own life?

"I've got heaps of clothes, mother--a great many more than I want. And
my bed is wide. There's room enough in the house, and we've plenty to
eat," said Harvey, pleading for the child. I could not withstand all
these appeals. Rising, I told the little stranger to follow me. When
we came back to the sitting-room half an hour afterward, Jim Peters
would hardly have been known by his old acquaintances, if any of them
had been there. A bath and clean clothes had made a wonderful change
in him.

I watched the poor little boy, as he and Harvey played during the
afternoon, with no little concern of mind. What was I to do with him?
Clean and neatly dressed, there was a look of refinement about the
child which had nearly all been hidden by rags and dirt. He played
gently, and his voice had in it a sweetness of tone, as it fell every
now and then upon my ears, that was really winning. Send him back to
Mrs. Flint's in Blake's Court? The change I had wrought upon him made
this impossible. No, he could not be sent back to Mrs. Flint's, who
didn't want the trouble of him. What then?

[Illustration: THE MOTHERLESS BOY.]

Do the kind hearts of my little readers repeat the question, "What
then?" Do they want very much to know what has become of little Jim
Peters?

It is just a year since my bo