things the Kellys were forgotten. Once or twice his
patient, watchful eyes, that seemed to be always trying to understand
something to which he had not found the key, haunted me at my office;
but at last I forgot about them too.

Some months passed. It was winter. A girl, who had been one of our
cares, had been taken to the city hospital to die, and our visitor went
there to see and comfort her. She was hastening down the long aisle
between the two rows of beds, when she felt something tugging feebly at
the sleeve of her coat. Looking round, she saw on the pillow of the bed
she had just passed the face of Jim's mother.

"Why, Mrs. Kelly!" she exclaimed, and went to her. "Where--?" But the
question that rose to her lips was never spoken. One glance was enough
to show that her time was very short, and she was not deceived. The
nurse supplied the facts briefly in a whisper. She had been picked up
in the street, drunk or sick--the diagnosis was not clearly made out at
the time, but her record was against her. She lay a day or two in a
police cell, and by the time it was clear that it was not rum this time,
the mischief was done. Probably it would have been done anyhow. The
woman was worn out. What now lay on the hospital cot was a mere wreck of
her, powerless to move or speak. She could only plead with her large,
sad eyes. As she tried to make them say that which was in her soul, two
big tears rolled slowly down the wan cheeks and fell on the coarse
sheet. The visitor understood. What woman would not?

"Jim?" she said, and the light of joy and understanding came into the
yearning eyes. She nodded ever so feebly, and the hand that rested in
her friend's twitched and trembled in the effort to grasp hers.

"I will find him. It is all right. Now, you be quite happy. I will bring
him here."

The white face settled back on the pillow, and the weary eyes closed
with a little sigh of contentment very strange in that place. When the
visitor passed her cot ten minutes later, she was asleep, with a smile
on her lips.

It proved not so easy a matter to find Jim. We came upon his track in
his old haunts after a while, only to lose it again and again. It was
clear that he was around, but it seemed almost as if he were purposely
dodging us; and in fact that proved to have been the case when at last,
after a hunt of weary days and nights through the neighborhood, he was
brought in. Ragged, pale, and pinched by hunger, we saw him with