the end of the Lane before they
collided with Nick, the parson, just entering it. He had finished his
morning's sale of papers and was feeling hungry for his own breakfast
and, as Take-a-Stitch ran against him, demanded rather angrily, "What
you mean, Goober Glory, knockin' a feller down that way?"

"O Nick! Have you seen grandpa?"

"Seen the cap'n? How should I? Ain't this his time o' workin' on his
frames?"

Glory swiftly told her trouble and Nick's face clouded in sympathy.
Finally he suggested, "They was a old blind feller got run over on
Broadway yest'day. Likely 'twas him an' that's why. 'Twas in the paper
all right, 'cause I heard a man say how't somethin' must be done to stop
such accidentses. Didn't hear no name but, 'course, 'twas the cap'n.
Posy Jane always thought he'd get killed, runnin' round loose, like he
did, without nobody but a dog takin' care."

Glory had clutched Nick's shoulder and was now shaking him with what
little strength seemed left to her after hearing his dreadful words. As
soon as she could recover from that queer feeling in her throat, and was
able to speak, she indignantly denied the possibility of this terrible
thing being true.

"'Tis no such thing, Nick Dodd, an' you know it! Wasn't I there, right
alongside, when't happened? Wasn't I a-listenin' to them very chimes
a-ringin' what he listens to every time he gets a chanst? Don't you
s'pose I'd know my own grandpa when I saw him? Huh!"

"_Did_--you see him, Glory Beck? How'd come them amberlance fellers
let a kid like you get nigh enough to see a thing? Hey?"

Glory gasped as the remembrance came that she had not really seen the
injured man but that the slight glimpse of his clothing and his white
hair had been, indeed, very like her grandfather's. Still, this awful
thing could not, should not be true! Better far that dreaded place, Snug
Harbor, where, at least, he would be alive and well cared for.

"Oh, I got nigh. I got nigh enough to get knocked down my own self, an'
be picked up by one them 'finest' p'licemens, what marches on Broadway.
He shook me fit to beat an' set me on the sidewalk an' scolded me hard,
but I didn't care, 'cause I was so glad to keep alive an' not be tooken
off to a hospital, like that old man was. Huh! You needn't go thinkin'
nor sayin' that was Grandpa Simon Beck, 'cause I know better. I shan't
have it that 'twas, so there."

Glory's argument but half-convinced herself and only strengthened Nick's