surmised a good deal regarding Jim's paternal parentage.
They searched for resemblances, birthmarks, peculiarities of feature,
owning that nature always set her brand upon the bastard, and that the
features, as well as the iniquities of the father, are always visited
upon the illegitimate. If this be the case, Jim must have come of some
strange blood. And yet, knowing him and his history, some might have
traced the poor mother in the boy, although of that mother he knew
very little. He had been told--oh, yes, he had been told--that she was
found in a garret one December morning with a vagabond baby nursing at
her dead breast. And old Nancy Piatt, the only one who ever seemed to
dislike talking to the lad about it, had told him that she was "a
pretty corpse, as pretty as the grave ever held," and that the dead
lips wore a smile, those dead lips that never would, and never could,
give up their pitiful secret. Poor lips; death had granted that which
life denied them--a smile. Stubbornness, the town gossips called the
woman's silence. In other circumstances it would have answered to the
higher term of fidelity, or, perhaps, heroism. Jim was very like his
mother, old Nancy said, despite Dame Nature's habit of branding.
Surely Nancy ought to be authority, for when the boy was left, at two
months old, on the town, old Nancy Piatt, a drunken old crone, who
washed the clothes of the rich all the week, and drank her earnings
Saturday evenings, was the only one who offered to "take the cub" whom
the authorities were ready to give away.

A sorry chance had Jim, although he never realized that. At ten he
could drink as much liquor as Nancy herself, and outswear the ablest
lawyer in the town. At twelve he could pick a lock better than a
blacksmith, and was known as one of the most cunning sneak thieves in
the place. At fourteen he beat a little boy of eight unmercifully.
(Did anybody expect old Nancy to tell him that was the crown crime of
cowardice?)

Then someone suspected Nancy of a crime. One of those nameless crimes
concerning which the law is very jealous, not considering the slander
prevented, the "good name preserved," and the disgrace averted. All in
high circles, and all set in the scale against a useless little
baby,--a wicked little illegitimate baby, that is so heartless as to
be born, and thereby bring a world of trouble upon wealthy and
respectable people.

That old Nancy--for handsome considerations--had made away