e the facts."

Miss Lydia was silent; her poor old eyes blinked; then she said:
"They--deserted you, Johnny. But you mustn't mind."

The young man's face reddened sharply. "They weren't married, I suppose,
when I was born?" he said, in a husky voice.

"They--got married before you were born."

He frowned, but he was obviously relieved; then he looked puzzled. "Yet
they deserted me? Were they too poor to take care of me?"

"Well, no," Miss Lydia confessed.

"Not poor, yet they dumped me onto your doorstep?" he repeated,
bewildered, but with a slow anger growing in his face. "Well, I guess
I'm well rid of 'em if they were that kind of people! Cowards. I'd
rather have murderers 'round, than cowards!"

"Oh, my dear, you mustn't be unjust. They gave me money for your
support."

"Money!" he said. "They paid you to take me off their hands?" He paused;
"Aunt Lydia," he said--and as he spoke his upper lip lifted and she saw
his teeth--"Aunt Lydia, I'll never ask you about them again. I have no
interest in them. They are nothing to me, just as I was nothing to them.
But tell me one thing, is Smith my name?"

"Yes," said Miss Lydia (it's his _middle_ name, she assured herself
truthfully).

But Johnny laughed: "I guess you just called me Smith. Well, that's all
right, though I'd rather you'd made it Sampson. But Smith will do. I
said so to Mrs. Robertson. I said that my name was the same as her
father's, and I thought he was the finest old man I'd ever known, and,
though I was no relation, I hoped my Smith name would be as dignified as
his."

"What did she say?" said Miss Lydia.

"Oh, she got weepy," said Johnny, good-naturedly; "she's always either
crying or kissing. But she's kind. Look at those!" he said, displaying
some sleeve links that his mother's soft, adoring fingers had fastened
into his cuffs. "Well, I don't take a berth with a new name tacked on to
it, at Robertson & Carey's. He'll have to get some other fellow to swap
names for him!"

He went off to his room, his face still dark with the deep, elemental
anger which that word "deserted" had stirred in him, but whistling as if
to declare his entire indifference to the deserters. Old Miss Lydia,
alone, trembled very much. "Take their name! _What will they do next?_"
she said to herself.

The Robertsons were asking each other the same question, "What can we do
now to get him?" The lure of a business opportunity had not moved the
boy at all, and what he h