_child_?"

"No! She told me I wasn't."

"Who are you, then?"

"I don't know. She told me she had stolen me to beg for her."

"And do you remember nothing about it?"

"No, its too long ago."

Theodore now fetched him more bread, but whilst he was eating it he no
longer sat by him, but walked up and down the room. Every now and then
as he stopped and looked at the thin, sickly looking object he had
brought into the house, he was overtaken by a strong feeling of pity
for his miserable condition.

This child was as desolate as himself, only in another way. Stolen
from his parents to beg for the strange woman, he had lived with her
so long that he had forgotten his real home altogether! Bound by no
ties of kindred and comfort to this world. "He is more desolate than I
am myself!" repeated Theodore, again and again.

After a time he approached the boy again.

"The woman will say you are her child, and make you go back and beg
for her if she gets better, will she not?"

"She doesn't want me now."

"How so?"

"She says, I'm too hungry, and eat all the bread away from her, and
don't get enough for us both."

A curious expression passed across Theodore's face as he turned away
and sat down in his chair once more. It looked like a gleam of
satisfaction. The boy, meanwhile, sat quite still, looking round the
room. He had a grave and somewhat interesting face, but that the dark
eyes looked a little too keen and restless to be quite pleasant.
Still, when he smiled, and he had smiled brightly when he first saw
the bread, his countenance improved; and there was, besides, something
about his open forehead which redeemed the covert expression of his
eye. He was about seven years old, and precocious in quickness of a
particular kind, as is very often the case with vagrant children.

Theodore's reverie was broken at last by the arrival of his good old
housekeeper, who came in, flurried and indignant, to inform him that
the woman she had been in search of was no where to be found. She had
been, "she was sure," up and down all the carriage roads, and made
enquiries at all the lodges, and finally discovered that a beggar
woman had passed out at one of them upwards of an hour before, very
hurriedly, and indeed almost at a running pace.

Theodore glanced at the child, but his countenance never changed. Only
he sat eying the housekeeper as she spoke, apparently indifferent to
the result. The housekeeper now began to ejacula