ved itself to be a pure and
steadfast soul. A kind providence placed it in the child's power to
escape from you, and the same providence led him to the door of a man
whose tenderness, whose honor, and whose nobility of character, no
matter how humble his station in life, marks him as one eminently
worthy to care for the body and to minister to the spirit of a boy
like this.

"We feel that to take this lad now from his charge and to place him
in yours, would be to do an act so utterly repugnant to justice, to
humanity, and to law, that, if done, it ought to drag us from this
bench in disgrace. We have marked your petition dismissed; we have
ordered you to pay the cost of this proceeding, and we have remanded
the boy Ralph to the custody of William Buckley."

Simon Craft said not a word. He rose from his chair, steadied himself
for a moment on his cane, then shuffled up the aisle, out at the door
and down the hall into the street. Disappointment, anger, bitter
hatred, raged in his heart and distorted his face. The weight of
years, of disease, of a criminal life, sat heavily upon him as he
dragged himself miserably along the crowded thoroughfare, looking
neither to the right nor the left, thinking only of the evil burden of
his own misfortunes. Now and then some one who recognized him stopped,
turned, looked at him scornfully for a moment, and passed on. Then he
was lost to view. He was never seen in the city of Wilkesbarre again.
He left no friends behind him there. He was first ridiculed, then
despised, and then--forgotten.

* * * * *

It was two weeks after this before Ralph was able to return to his
work. So much excitement, so much mental distress and bodily fatigue
in so short a time, had occasioned a severe shock to his system, and
he rallied from it but slowly.

One Monday morning, however, he went back to his accustomed work at
the breaker.

He had thought that perhaps he might be ridiculed by the screen-room
boys as one who had tried to soar above his fellows and had fallen
ignominiously back to the earth. He expected to be greeted with
jeering words and with cutting remarks, not so much in the way of
malice as of fun. He resolved to take it calmly, however, and to give
way to no show of feeling, hoping that thus the boys would soon forget
to tease him.

But when he came among them that morning, looking so thin, and
pale, and old, there was not a boy in all the waiting cro