op that sort o' thing. She's better off with him nor she
would be with Tom Buffum--any amount better off. Doesn't Tom Buffum
treat your pa well?"

"Oh, no, sir; he doesn't give him enough to eat, and he doesn't let him
have things in his room, because he says he'll hurt himself, or break
them all to pieces, and he doesn't give him good clothes, nor anything
to cover himself up with when it's cold."

"Well, boy," said Jim, his great frame shaking with indignation, "do ye
want to know what I think of Tom Buffum?"

"Yes, sir."

"It won't do fur me to tell ye, 'cause I'm rough, but if there's
anything awful bad--oh, bad as anything can be, in Skeezacks--I should
say that Tom Buffum was an old Skeezacks."

Jim Fenton was feeling his way.

"I should say he was an infernal old Skeezacks. That isn't very bad, is
it?"

"I don't know sir," replied the boy.

"Well, a d----d rascal; how's that?"

"My father never used such words," replied the boy.

"That's right, and I take it back. I oughtn't to have said it, but
unless a feller has got some sort o' religion he has a mighty hard time
namin' people in this world. What's that?"

Jim started with the sound in his ear of what seemed to be a cry of
distress.

"That's one of the crazy people. They do it all the time.'"

Then Jim thought of the speeches he had heard in the town-meeting, and
recalled the distress of Miss Butterworth, and the significance of all
the scenes he had so recently witnessed.

"Look 'ere, boy; can ye keep right 'ere," tapping him on his breast,
"whatsomever I tell ye? Can you keep yer tongue still?--hope you'll die
if ye don't?"

There was something in these questions through which the intuitions of
the lad saw help, both for his father and himself. Hope strung his
little muscles in an instant, his attitude became alert, and he replied:

"I'll never say anything if they kill me."

"Well, I'll tell ye what I'm goin' to do. I'm goin' to stay to the
poor-house to-night, if they'll keep me, an' I guess they will; and I'm
goin' to see yer pa too, and somehow you and he must be got out of this
place."

The boy threw his arms around Jim's neck, and kissed him passionately,
again and again, without the power, apparently, to give any other
expression to his emotions.

"Oh, God! don't, boy! That's a sort o' thing I can't stand. I ain't used
to it."

Jim paused, as if to realize how sweet it was to hold the trusting
child in his arms, and to be t