eral months Mrs. Lincoln and Matt paid weekly visits to the
asylum to see the father and husband, and they were beginning to
rejoice over the thought that Mr. Lincoln would soon be himself once
more, when one day Mrs. Lincoln fell down in the middle of Broadway,
and a heavily-loaded truck passed directly over her chest.

When the poor woman was picked up it was found she was unconscious. An
ambulance was at once summoned, and she was conveyed to one of the
city hospitals. Here Matt visited her, and listened to her last words
of love and advice. She died before sunrise the next day, and three
days later was buried.

If his mother's unexpected death was a shock to poor Matt, it was
even more of a one to Mr. Lincoln. Again was the father and husband's
mind unbalanced; this time far worse than ever before. He escaped from
the asylum, made a dramatic appearance at the home during the burial
services, and then disappeared, no one knew where.

Matt's only remaining relative at this time was his Uncle Dan, a
brother to Mr. Lincoln. He took charge of Matt, and took the boy to
his home in Bridgeport, Connecticut. At the same time a diligent
search for Mr. Lincoln was begun.

The search for Matt's father was unsuccessful, although continued for
several weeks. It was learned that he had boarded a train in Jersey
City bound for Philadelphia, but there all trace of his whereabouts
was lost.

Matt lived with his Uncle Dan for four years. He went to school in
Bridgeport part of the time, and when not learning, could be found at
Mr. Lincoln's ship chandlery, a large place, situated down near the
docks.

It would seem that the tragic occurrences through which he had passed
would have made Matt melancholy and low-spirited, but such was not the
case. Mrs. Lincoln had naturally been of a light heart, and the boy
partook of much of his mother's disposition. He loved a free-and-easy
life, loved to roam from place to place. With a captain who was a
friend of Uncle Dan, he had made a trip to Bangor and Augusta, and he
had likewise put in two weeks at a lumber camp in Maine, and a month
during the summer at a hotel among the White Mountains, doing odd jobs
for the proprietor.

"A rolling stone and nothing less," Uncle Dan had called him, over and
over again, and the title seemed to fit Matt exactly.

At length, when Matt was fourteen years old, Uncle Dan Lincoln, who
was then an elderly man, was taken with pneumonia, and died two weeks