l your
newspaper as soon as you return?"

"Yes."

"All right. Then there'll be nothing in the way. Your train's about
ready. Take good care of yourself, and come back rested. Telegraph me
whenever you can. Good-by."

CHAPTER XXXI.

A MOMENT OF ARROGANCE.

Henry wandered through the old familiar streets. How vividly came back
the years, the dreary long ago! Here, on a door-step, he had passed
many a nodding hour, kept in half-consciousness by the clank of the
printing-press, waiting for the dawn and his bundle of newspapers. No
change had come to soften the truth of the picture that a by-gone
wretchedness threw upon his memory. The attractive fades, but how
eternal is the desolate! Yonder he could see the damp wall where he
used to hunt for snails, and farther down the narrow street was the
house in which had lived the old Italian woman. "You think I'm a
stranger," he mused, as he passed a policeman, "but I know all this. I
have been in dens here that you have never seen."

He went to the Foundlings' Home and walked up and down in front of the
long, low building. An old woman, dragging a rocking-chair, came out
on the veranda and sat down. He halted at the gate, stood for a moment
and then rang the bell. A negro opened the gate and politely invited
him to enter. The old woman arose as he came up the steps.

"Keep your seat, madam."

"Did you want to see anybody?" she asked.

"No; and don't let me disturb you."

He gave her a closer look and thought that he remembered her as the
woman who had taken him on her lap and told him that his father was
dead.

"No disturbance at all," she answered. "Is there anything I can do for
you?"

"Yes, I should like to look through this place."

"Very well, but you may find things pretty badly tumbled up. We're
cleaning house. Come this way, please."

He saw the corner in which he used to sleep, and there was the same
iron bedstead, with a fever-fretted child lying upon it. He thought of
the nights when he had cried himself to sleep, and of the mornings
when he lay there weaving his fancies while a spider high above the
window was spinning his web. There was the same old smell, and he
sniffed the sorrow of his childhood.

"How long has this been here?" he asked.

"He was brought here about two weeks ago."

"I mean the bedstead. How long has it been in this corner?"

"Oh, I can't say as to that. I thought you meant the child. I've been
here a long time, and