ng his title to his child as he had had in looking for her,
but in the end he made it good. The frock she had worn when she was
lost proved the missing link. The mate of it was still carefully laid
away in the tenement. So Yette returned to fill the empty chair at the
Sabbath board, and the pedler's faith was justified.
My other chip from the maelstrom was a lad half grown. He dropped into
my office as if out of the clouds, one long and busy day, when, tired
and out of sorts, I sat wishing my papers and the world in general in
Halifax. I had not heard the knock, and when I looked up, there stood
my boy, a stout, square-shouldered lad, with heavy cowhide boots and
dull, honest eyes--eyes that looked into mine as if with a question
they were about to put, and then gave it up, gazing straight ahead,
stolid, impassive. It struck me that I had seen that face before, and
I found out immediately where. The officer of the Children's Aid
Society who had brought him explained that Frands--that was his
name--had been in the society's care five months and over. They had
found him drifting in the streets, and, knowing whither that drift
set, had taken him in charge and sent him to one of their
lodging-houses, where he had been since, doing chores and plodding
about in his dull way. That was where I had met him. Now they had
decided that he should go to Florida, if he would, but first they
would like to find out something about him. They had never been able
to, beyond the fact that he was from Denmark. He had put his finger on
the map in the reading-room, one day, and shown them where he came
from: that was the extent of their information on that point. So they
had sent him to me to talk to him in his own tongue and see what I
could make of him.
I addressed him in the politest Danish I was master of, and for an
instant I saw the listening, questioning look return; but it vanished
almost at once, and he answered in monosyllables, if at all. Much of
what I said passed him entirely by. He did not seem to understand. By
slow stages I got out of him that his father was a farm-laborer; that
he had come over to look for his cousin, who worked in Passaic, New
Jersey, and had found him,--Heaven knows how!--but had lost him again.
Then he had drifted to New York, where the society's officers had come
upon him. He nodded when told that he was to be sent far away to the
country, much as if I had spoken of some one he had never heard of. We
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