nd
you've discovered the name which these low people call me. Of course,
you can understand that my real name is not Simeon Stylites--I have a
very different name; and my home isn't here--I have a very different
home. I would take you there, and treat you well, and afterwards perhaps
send you to another home. You should never know want, and no one would
be unkind to you. You would be as a daughter to me, and I am a lonely
man."

"Oh, sir--sir!" said poor Connie, "I--I like you, sir--I'm not
afeered--no, not much afeered--but if you 'ud only let the others
come----"

"That I cannot do, girl. If you choose to belong to me you must give up
the others."

"_Ef_ I choose, sir--may I choose?"

"Yes--on a condition."

The man who called himself Simeon Stylites looked at the girl with a
queer, hungry expression in his eyes.

"I wanted you very badly indeed," he said; "and I was not in the least
prepared to be sentimental. But I had a little sister like you. She died
when she was rather younger than you. I loved her, and she loved me. I
was quite a good man then, and a gentleman----"

"Oh, sir--ye're that now."

"No, girl--I am not. There are things that a gentleman would do which I
would _not_ do, and there are things which no gentleman would do which I
do. I have passed the line; nevertheless, the outward tokens remain; and
I live--well, child, I want for nothing. My profession is very
lucrative--very."

Connie did not understand half the words of this strange, queer man,
with a terribly stern and yet terribly pathetic voice.

"When I saw you this morning," said Stylites, "I knew at once it was no
go. You were like the little Eleanor whom alone in all the world I ever
truly loved. You are too young to be told my story, or I would tell it
to you."

"Oh, sir," said Connie, "I'd real like to comfort yer."

"You can't do that, and I won't spoil the life of any child with such a
look of my little Eleanor. I am going to give you back your liberty--on
a condition."

"Wot's that?" said Connie.

"That you never breathe to mortal what happened to you from the time you
left your friend, the street preacher, last night, until the time when
you found yourself at liberty and outside that same court. Wild horses
mustn't drag it from you; detectives must do their utmost in vain. I am
willing to do a good deal for you, girl, solely and entirely because of
that chance likeness. But I won't have _my_ profession and _my_ chance