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Lo, Michael!

by Grace Livingston Hill · English · Gutenberg #9816 · 611,478 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Lo, Michael!

Author: Grace Livingston Hill


        
Release date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9816]
                Most recently updated: September 29, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9816

Credits: Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Josephine Paolucci,
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LO, MICHAEL! ***




[Illustration]




Lo, Michael!

by Grace Livingston Hill


Contents

 Chapter I
 Chapter II
 Chapter III
 Chapter IV
 Chapter V
 Chapter VI
 Chapter VII
 Chapter VIII
 Chapter IX
 Chapter X
 Chapter XI
 Chapter XII
 Chapter XIII
 Chapter XIV
 Chapter XV
 Chapter XVI
 Chapter XVII
 Chapter XVIII
 Chapter XIX
 Chapter XX
 Chapter XXI
 Chapter XXII
 Chapter XXIII
 Chapter XXIV
 Chapter XXV
 Chapter XXVI
 Chapter XXVII
 Chapter XXVIII
 Chapter XXIX




“But, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me.”

—DANIEL, 10:13.




Chapter I


“Hi, there! Mikky! Look out!”

It was an alert voice that called from a huddled group of urchins in
the forefront of the crowd, but the child flashed past without heeding,
straight up the stone steps where stood a beautiful baby smiling on the
crowd. With his bundle of papers held high, and the late morning
sunlight catching his tangle of golden hair, Mikky flung himself toward
the little one. The sharp crack of a revolver from the opposite
curbstone was simultaneous with their fall. Then all was confusion.

It was a great stone house on Madison Avenue where the crowd had
gathered. An automobile stood before the door, having but just come
quietly up, and the baby girl three years old, in white velvet, and
ermines, with her dark curls framed by an ermine-trimmed hood, and a
bunch of silk rosebuds poised coquettishly over the brow vying with the
soft roses of her cheeks came out the door with her nurse for her
afternoon ride. Just an instant the nurse stepped back to the hall for
the wrap she had dropped, leaving the baby alone, her dark eyes shining
like stars under the straight dark brows, as she looked gleefully out
in the world. It was just at that instant, as if by magic, that the
crowd assembled.

Perhaps it would be better to say that it was just at that minute that
the crowd focused itself upon the particular house where the baby
daughter of the president of a great defaulting bank lived. More or
less all the morning, men had been gathering, passing the house,
looking up with troubled or threatening faces toward the richly laced
windows, shaking menacing heads, muttering imprecations, but there had
been no disturbance, and no concerted crowd until the instant the baby
appeared.

The police had been more or less vigilant all the morning but had seen
nothing to disturb them. The inevitable small boy had also been in
evidence, with his natural instinct for excitement. Mikky with his
papers often found himself in that quarter of a bright morning, and the
starry eyes and dark curls of the little child were a vision for which
he often searched the great windows as he passed this particular house:
but the man with the evil face on the other side of the street, resting
a shaking hand against the lamp post, and sighting the baby with a
vindictive eye, had never been seen there before. It was Mikky who
noticed him first: Mikky, who circling around him innocently had heard
his imprecations against the rich, who caught the low-breathed oath as
the baby appeared, and saw the ugly look on the man’s face. With
instant alarm he had gone to the other side of the street, his eye upon
the offender, and had been the first to see the covert motion, the
flash of the hidden weapon and to fear the worst.

But a second behind him his street companions saw his danger and cried
out, too late. Mikky had flung himself in front of the beautiful baby,
covering her with his great bundle of papers, and his own ragged,
neglected little body; and receiving the bullet intended for her, went
down with her as she fell.

Instantly all was confusion.

A child’s cry—a woman’s scream—the whistle of the police—the angry roar
of the crowd who were like a pack of wild animals that had tasted
blood. Stones flew, flung by men whose wrongs had smothered in their
breasts and bred a fury of hate and murder. Women were trampled upon.
Two of the great plate glass windows crashed as the flying missiles
entered the magnificent home, regardless of costly lace and velvet
hangings.

The chauffeur attempted to run his car around the corner but was held
up at once, and discreetly took himself out of the way, leaving the car
in the hands of the mob who swarmed into it and over it, ruthlessly
disfiguring it in their wrath. There was the loud report of exploding
tires, the ripping of costly leather cushions, the groaning of fine
machinery put to torture as the fury of the mob took vengeance on the
car to show what they would like to do to its owner.

Gone into bankruptcy! He! With a great electric car like that, and
servants to serve him! With his baby attired in the trappings of a
queen and his house swathed in lace that had taken the eyesight from
many a poor lace-maker! He! Gone into bankruptcy, and slipping away
scot free, while the men he had robbed stood helpless on his sidewalk,
hungry and shabby and hopeless because the pittances they had put away
in his bank, the result of slavery and sacrifice, were gone,—hopelessly
gone! and they were too old, or too tired, or too filled with hate, to
earn it again.

The crowd surged and seethed madly, now snarling like beasts, now
rumbling portentously like a storm, now babbling like an infant; a
great emotional frenzy, throbbing with passion, goaded beyond fear,
desperate with need; leaderless, and therefore the more dangerous.

The very sight of that luxurious baby with her dancing eyes and happy
smiles “rolling in luxury,” called to mind their own little puny
darling, grimy with neglect, lean with want, and hollow-eyed with
knowledge aforetime. Why should one baby be pampered and another
starved? Why did the bank-president’s daughter have any better right to
those wonderful furs and that exultant smile than their own babies? A
glimpse into the depths of the rooms beyond the sheltering plate glass
and drapery showed greater contrast even than they had dreamed between
this home and the bare tenements they had left that morning, where the
children were crying for bread and the wife shivering with cold.
Because they loved their own their anger burned the fiercer; and for
love of their pitiful scrawny babies that flower-like child in the
doorway was hated with all the vehemence of their untamed natures.
Their every breath cried out for vengeance, and with the brute instinct
they sought to hurt the man through his child, because they had been
hurt by the wrong done to their children.

The policeman’s whistle had done its work, however. The startled
inmates of the house had drawn the beautiful baby and her small
preserver within the heavy carven doors, and borne them back to safety
before the unorganized mob had time to force their way in. Amid the
outcry and the disorder no one had noticed that Mikky had disappeared
until his small band of companions set up an outcry, but even then no
one heard.

The mounted police had arrived, and orders were being given. The man
who had fired the shot was arrested, handcuffed and marched away. The
people were ordered right and left, and the officer’s horses rode
ruthlessly through the masses. Law and order had arrived and there was
nothing for the downtrodden but to flee.

In a very short time the square was cleared and guarded by a large
force. Only the newspaper men came and went without challenge. The
threatening groups of men who still hovered about withdrew further and
further. The wrecked automobile was patched up and taken away to the
garage. The street became quiet, and by and by some workmen came
hurriedly, importantly, and put in temporary protections where the
window glass had been broken.

Yet through it all a little knot of ragged newsboys stood their ground
in front of the house. Until quiet was restored they had evaded each
renewed command of officer or passer-by, and stayed there; whispering
now and again in excited groups and pointing up to the house. Finally a
tall policeman approached them:

“Clear out of this, kids!” he said not unkindly. “Here’s no place for
you. Clear out. Do you hear me? You can’t stay here no longer:”

Then one of them wheeled upon him. He was the tallest of them all, with
fierce little freckled face and flashing black eyes in which all the
evil passions of four generations back looked out upon a world that had
always been harsh. He was commonly known as fighting Buck.

“Mikky’s in dare. He’s hurted. We kids can’t leave Mick alone. He might
be dead.”

Just at that moment a physician’s runabout drew up to the door, and the
policeman fell back to let him pass into the house. Hard upon him
followed the bank president in a closed carriage attended by several
men in uniform who escorted him to the door and touched their hats
politely as he vanished within. Around the corners scowling faces
haunted the shadows, and murmured imprecations were scarcely withheld
in spite of the mounted officers. A shot was fired down the street, and
several policemen hurried away. But through it all the boys stood their
ground.

“Mikky’s in dare. He’s hurted. I seen him fall. Maybe he’s deaded. We
kids want to take him away. Mikky didn’t do nothin’, Mikky jes’ tried
to save der little kid. Mikky’s a good’un. You get the folks to put
Mikky out here. We kids’ll take him away.”

The policeman finally attended to the fierce pleading of the
ragamuffins. Two or three newspaper men joined the knot around them and
the story was presently written up with all the racy touches that the
writers of the hour know how to use. Before night Buck, with his fierce
black brows drawn in helpless defiance was adorning the evening papers
in various attitudes as the different snapshots portrayed him, and the
little group of newsboys and boot-blacks and good-for-nothings that
stood around him figured for once in the eyes of the whole city.

The small band held their place until forcibly removed. Some of them
were barefoot, and stood shivering on the cold stones, their little
sickly, grimy faces blue with anxiety and chill.

The doctor came out of the house just as the last one, Buck, was being
marched off with loud-voiced protest. He eyed the boy, and quickly
understood the situation.

“Look here!” he called to the officer. “Let me speak to the youngster.
He’s a friend, I suppose, of the boy that was shot?”

The officer nodded.

“Well, boy, what’s all this fuss about?” He looked kindly, keenly into
the defiant black eyes of Buck.

“Mikky’s hurted—mebbe deaded. I wants to take him away from dare,” he
burst forth sullenly. “We kids can’t go off’n’ leave Mikky in dare wid
de rich guys. Mikky didn’t do no harm. He’s jes tryin’ to save de kid.”

“Mikky. Is that the boy that took the shot in place of the little
girl?”

The boy nodded and looked anxiously into the kindly face of the doctor.

“Yep. Hev you ben in dare? Did youse see Mikky? He’s got yaller hair.
Is Mikky deaded?”

“No, he isn’t dead,” said the physician kindly, “but he’s pretty badly
hurt. The ball went through his shoulder and arm, and came mighty near
some vital places. I’ve just been fixing him up comfortably, and he’ll
be all right after a bit, but he’s got to lie very still right where he
is and be taken care of.”

“We kids’ll take care o’ Mikky!” said Buck proudly. “He tooked care of
Jinney when she was sick, an’ we’ll take care o’ Mikky, all right, all
right. You jes’ brang him out an’ we’ll fetch a wheelbarry an’ cart him
off’n yer han’s. Mikky wouldn’t want to be in dare wid de rich guys.”

“My dear fellow,” said the doctor, quite touched by the earnestness in
Buck’s eyes, “that’s very good of you, I’m sure, and Mikky ought to
appreciate his friends, but he’s being taken care of perfectly right
where he is and he couldn’t be moved. It might kill him to move him,
and if he stays where he is he will get well. I’ll tell you what I’ll
do,” he added as he saw the lowering distress in the dumb eyes before
him, “I’ll give you a bulletin every day. You be here tonight at five
o’clock when I come out of the house and I’ll tell you just how he is.
Then you needn’t worry about him. He’s in a beautiful room lying on a
great big white bed and he has everything nice around him, and when I
came away he was sleeping. I can take him a message for you when I go
in tonight, if you like.”

Half doubtfully the boy looked at him.

“Will you tell Mikky to drop us down word ef he wants annythin’? Will
you ast him ef he don’t want us to git him out?”

“Sure!” said the doctor in kindly amusement. “You trust me and I’ll
make good. Be here at five o’clock sharp and again tomorrow at quarter
to eleven.”

“He’s only a slum kid!” grumbled the officer. “’Tain’t worth while to
take so much trouble. ’Sides, the folks won’t want um botherin’
’round.”

“Oh, he’s all right!” said the doctor. “He’s a friend worth having. You
might need one yourself some day, you know. What’s your name, boy? Who
shall I tell Mikky sent the message?”

“Buck,” said the child gravely, “Fightin’ Buck, they calls me.”

“Very appropriate name, I should think,” said the doctor smiling.
“Well, run along Buck and be here at five o’clock.”

Reluctantly the boy moved off. The officer again took up his stand in
front of the house and quiet was restored to the street.

Meantime, in the great house consternation reigned for a time.

The nurse maid had reached the door in time to hear the shot and see
the children fall. She barely escaped the bullet herself. She was an
old servant of the family and therefore more frightened for her charge
than for herself. She had the presence of mind to drag both children
inside the house and shut and lock the door immediately, before the
seething mob could break in.

The mistress of the house fell in a dead faint as they carried her
little laughing daughter up the stairs and a man and a maid followed
with the boy who was unconscious. The servants rushed hither and
thither; the housekeeper had the coolness to telephone the bank
president what had happened, and to send for the family physician. No
one knew yet just who was hurt or how much. Mikky had been brought
inside because he blocked the doorway, and there was need for instantly
shutting the door. If it had been easier to shove him out the nurse
maid would probably have done that. But once inside common humanity
bade them look after the unconscious boy’s needs, and besides, no one
knew as yet just exactly what part Mikky had played in the small
tragedy of the morning.

“Where shall we take him?” said the man to the maid as they reached the
second floor with their unconscious burden.

“Not here, Thomas. Here’s no place for him. He’s as dirty as a pig. I
can’t think what come over Morton to pull him inside, anyway. His own
could have tended to him. Besides, such is better dead!”

They hurried on past the luxurious rooms belonging to the lady of the
mansion; up the next flight of stairs, and Norah paused by the
bath-room door where the full light of the hall windows fell upon the
grimy little figure of the child they carried.

Norah the maid uttered an exclamation.

“He’s not fit fer any place in this house. Look at his cloes. They’ll
have to be cut off’n him, and he needs to go in the bath-tub before he
can be laid anywheres. Let’s put him in the bath-room, and do you go
an’ call Morton. She got him in here and she’ll have to bathe him. And
bring me a pair of scissors. I’ll mebbe have to cut the cloes off’n
him, they’re so filthy. Ach! The little beast!”

Thomas, glad to be rid of his burden, dropped the boy on the bath-room
floor and made off to call Morton.

Norah, with little knowledge and less care, took no thought for the
life of her patient. She was intent on making him fit to put between
her clean sheets. She found the tattered garments none too tenacious in
their hold to the little, half-naked body. One or two buttons and a
string were their only attachments. Norah pulled them off with gingerly
fingers, and holding them at arm’s length took them to the bath-room
window whence she pitched them down into the paved court below, that
led to the kitchen regions. Thomas could burn them, or put them on the
ash pile by and by. She was certain they would never go on again, and
wondered how they had been made to hold together this last time.

Morton had not come yet, but Norah discovering a pool of blood under
the little bare shoulder, lifted him quickly into the great white
bath-tub and turned on the warm water. There was no use wasting time,
and getting blood on white tiles that she would have to scrub. She was
not unkind but she hated dirt, and partly supporting the child with one
arm she applied herself to scrubbing him as vigorously as possible with
the other hand. The shock of the water, not being very warm at first,
brought returning consciousness to the boy for a moment, in one long
shuddering sigh. The eyelashes trembled for an instant on the white
cheeks, and his eyes opened; gazed dazedly, then wildly, on the strange
surroundings, the water, and the vigorous Irish woman who had him in
her power. He threw his arms up with a struggling motion, gasped as if
with sudden pain and lost consciousness again, relaxing once more into
the strong red arm that held him. It was just at this critical moment
that Morton entered the bath-room.

Morton was a trim, apple-cheeked Scotch woman of about thirty years,
with neat yellow-brown hair coiled on the top of her head, a cheerful
tilt to her freckled nose, and eyes so blue that in company with her
rosy cheeks one thought at once of a flag. Heather and integrity
exhaled from her very being, flamed from her cheeks, spoke from her
loyal, stubborn chin, and looked from her trustworthy eyes. She had
been with the bank president’s baby ever since the little star-eyed
creature came into the world.

“Och! look ye at the poor wee’un!” she exclaimed. “Ye’re hurtin’ him,
Norah! Ye shouldn’t have bathed him the noo! Ye should’ve waited the
docther’s comin’. Ye’ll mebbe kin kill him.”

“Ach! Get out with yer soft talk!” said Norah, scrubbing the more
vigorously. “Did yez suppose I’ll be afther havin’ all this filth in
the nice clean sheets? Get ye to work an’ he’p me. Do ye hold ’im while
I schrub!”

She shifted the boy into the gentler arm’s of the nurse, and went to
splashing all the harder. Then suddenly, before the nurse could
protest, she had dashed a lot of foamy suds on the golden head and was
scrubbing that with all her might.

“Och, Norah!” cried the nurse in alarm. “You shouldn’t a done that!
Ye’ll surely kill the bairn. Look at his poor wee shoulder a bleedin’,
and his little face so white an’ still. Have ye no mercy at all, Norah?
Rinse off that suds at once, an’ dry him softly. What’ll the docther be
sayin’ to ye fer all this I can’t think. There, my poor bairnie,” she
crooned to the child, softly drawing him closer as though he were
conscious,—

“There, there my bairnie, it’ll soon be over. It’ll be all right in
just a minute, poor wee b’y! Poor wee b’y! There! There—”

But Norah did her perfect work, and made the little lean body
glistening white as polished marble, while the heavy hair hung limp
like pale golden silk.

The two women carried him to a bed in a large room at the back of the
house, not far from the nursery, and laid him on a blanket, with his
shoulder stanched with soft linen rags. Morton was softly drying his
hair and crooning to the child—although he was still
unconscious—begging Norah to put the blanket over him lest he catch
cold; and Norah was still vigorously drying his feet unmindful of
Morton’s pleading, when the doctor entered with a trained nurse. The
boy lay white and still upon the blanket as the two women, startled,
drew back from their task. The body, clean now, and beautifully shaped,
might have been marble except for the delicate blue veins in wrists and
temples. In spite of signs of privation and lack of nutrition there was
about the boy a showing of strength in well developed muscles, and it
went to the heart to see him lying helpless so, with his drenched gold
hair and his closed eyes. The white limbs did not quiver, the lifeless
fingers drooped limply, the white chest did not stir with any sign of
breath, and yet the tender lips that curved in a cupid’s bow, were not
altogether gone white.

“What a beautiful child!” exclaimed the nurse involuntarily as she came
near the bed. “He looks like a young god!”

“He’s far more likely to be a young devil,” said the doctor grimly,
leaning over him with practised eyes, and laying a listening ear to the
quiet breast. Then, he started back.

“He’s cold as ice! What have you been doing to him? It wasn’t a case of
drowning, was it? You haven’t been giving him a bath at such a time as
this, have you? Did you want to kill the kid outright?”

“Oauch, the poor wee b’y!” sobbed Morton under her breath, her blue
eyes drenched with tears that made them like blue lakes. “He’s like to
my own wee b’y that I lost when he was a baby,” she explained in
apology to the trained nurse who was not, however, regarding her in the
least.

Norah had vanished frightened to consult with Thomas. It was Morton who
brought the things the doctor called for, and showed the nurse where to
put her belongings; and after everything was done and the boy made
comfortable and brought back to consciousness, it was she who stood at
the foot of the bed and smiled upon him first in this new world to
which he opened his eyes.

His eyes were blue, heavenly blue and dark, but they were great with a
brave fear as he glanced about on the strange faces. He looked like a
wild bird, caught in a kindly hand,—a bird whose instincts held him
still because he saw no way of flight, but whose heart was beating
frightfully against his captor’s fingers. He looked from side to side
of the room, and made a motion to rise from the pillow. It was a wild,
furtive motion, as of one who has often been obliged to fly for safety,
yet still has unlimited courage. There was also in his glance the
gentle harmlessness and appeal of the winged thing that has been
caught.

“Well, youngster, you had a pretty close shave,” said the doctor
jovially, “but you’ll pull through all right! You feel comfortable
now?”

The nurse was professionally quiet.

“Poor wee b’y!” murmured Morton, her eyes drenched again.

The boy looked from one to another doubtfully. Suddenly remembrance
dawned upon him and comprehension entered his glance. He looked about
the room and toward the door. There was question in his eyes that
turned on the doctor but his lips formed no words. He looked at Morton,
and knew her for the nurse of his baby. Suddenly he smiled, and that
smile seemed to light up the whole room, and filled the heart of Morton
with joy unspeakable. It seemed to her it was the smile of her own lost
baby come back to shine upon her. The tears welled, up and the blue
lakes ran over. The boy’s face was most lovely when he smiled.

“Where is—de little kid?” It was Morton whose face he searched
anxiously as he framed the eager question, and the woman’s intuition
taught her how to answer.

“She’s safe in her own wee crib takin’ her morning nap. She’s just new
over,” answered the woman reassuringly.

Still the eyes were not satisfied.

“Did she”—he began slowly—“get—hurted?”

“No, my bairnie, she’s all safe and sound as ever. It was your own self
that saved her life.”

The boy’s face lit up and he turned from one to another contentedly.
His smile said: “Then I’m glad.” But not a word spoke his shy lips.

“You’re a hero, kid!” said the doctor huskily. But the boy knew little
about heroes and did not comprehend.

The nurse by this time had donned her uniform and rattled up starchily
to take her place at the bedside, and Morton and the doctor went away,
the doctor to step once more into the lady’s room below to see if she
was feeling quite herself again after her faint.

The nurse leaned over the boy with a glass and spoon. He looked at it
curiously, unknowingly. It was a situation entirely outside his
experience.

“Why don’t you take your medicine?” asked the nurse.

The boy looked at the spoon again as it approached his lips and opened
them to speak.

“Is—”

In went the medicine and the boy nearly choked, but he understood and
smiled.

“A hospital?” he finished.

The nurse laughed.

“No, it’s only a house. They brought you in, you know, when you were
hurt out on the steps. You saved the little girl’s life. Didn’t you
know it?” she said kindly, her heart won by his smile.

A beautiful look rewarded her.

“Is de little kid—in this house?” he asked slowly, wonderingly. It was
as if he had asked if he were in heaven, there was so much awe in his
tone.

“Oh, yes, she’s here,” answered the nurse lightly. “Perhaps they’ll
bring her in to see you sometime. Her father’s very grateful. He thinks
it showed wonderful courage in you to risk your life for her sake.”

But Mikky comprehended nothing about gratitude. He only took in the
fact that the beautiful baby was in the house and might come there to
see him. He settled to sleep quite happily with an occasional glad
wistful glance toward the door, as the long lashes sank on the white
cheeks, for the first sleep the boy had ever taken in a clean, white,
soft bed. The prim nurse, softened for once from her precise attention
to duties, stood and looked upon the lovely face of the sleeping child,
wondered what his life had been, and how the future would be for him.
She half pitied him that the ball had not gone nearer to the vital spot
and taken him to heaven ere he missed the way, so angel-like his face
appeared in the soft light of the sick room, with the shining gold hair
fluffed back upon the pillow now, like a halo.




Chapter II


Little Starr Endicott, sleeping in her costly lace-draped crib on her
downy embroidered pillow, knew nothing of the sin and hate and murder
that rolled in a great wave on the streets outside, and had almost
touched her own little life and blotted it out. She knew not that three
notable families whose names were interwoven in her own, and whose
blood flowed in her tiny veins represented the great hated class of the
Rich, and that those upon whom they had climbed to this height looked
upon them as an evil to be destroyed; nor did she know that she, being
the last of the race, and in her name representing them all, was hated
most of all.

Starr Delevan Endicott! It was graven upon her tiny pins and locket,
upon the circlet of gold that jewelled her finger, upon her brushes and
combs; it was broidered upon her dainty garments, and coverlets and
cushions, and crooned to her by the adoring Scotch nurse who came of a
line that knew and loved an aristocracy. The pride of the house of
Starr, the wealth of the house of Delevan, the glory of the house of
Endicott, were they not all hers, this one beautiful baby who lay in
her arms to tend and to love. So mused Morton as she hummed:

“O hush thee my babie, thy sire was a knight,
Thy mother a ladie, both gentle and bright—”


And what cared Morton that the mother in this case was neither gentle
nor bright, but only beautiful and selfish? It did but make the child
the dearer that she had her love to herself.

And so the little Starr lay sleeping in her crib, and the boy, her
preserver, from nobody knew where, and of nobody knew what name or
fame, lay sleeping also. And presently Delevan Endicott himself came to
look at them both.

He came from the swirl of the sinful turbulent world outside, and from
his fretting, petted wife’s bedside. She had been fretting at him for
allowing a bank in which he happened to be president to do anything
which should cause such a disturbance outside her home, when he knew
she was so nervous. Not one word about the little step that had stood
for an instant between her baby and eternity. Her husband reminded her
gently how near their baby had come to death, and how she should
rejoice that she was safe, but her reply had been a rush of tears, and
“Oh, yes, you always think of the baby, never of me, your wife!”

With a sigh the man had turned from his fruitless effort to calm her
troubled mind and gone to his little daughter. He had hoped that his
wife would go with him, but he saw the hopelessness of that idea.

The little girl lay with one plump white arm thrown over her head, the
curling baby fingers just touching the rosy cheek, flushed with sleep.
She looked like a rosebud herself, so beautiful among the rose and
lacey draperies of her couch. Her dark curls, so fine and soft and
wonderful, with their hidden purple shadows, and the long dark curling
lashes, to match the finely pencilled brows, brought out each delicate
feature of the lovely little face. The father, as he looked down upon
her, wondered how it could have been in the heart of any creature, no
matter how wicked, to put out this vivid little life. His little Starr,
his one treasure!

The man that had tried to do it, could he have intended it really, or
was it only a random shot? The testimony of those who saw judged it
intention. The father’s quickened heart-beats told him it was, and he
felt that the thrust had gone deep. How they had meant to hurt him! How
they must have hated him to have wished to hurt him so! How they would
have hurt his life irretrievably if the shot had done its work. If that
other little atom of human life had not intervened!

Where was the boy who had saved his child? He must go and see him at
once. The gratitude of a lifetime should be his.

Morton divined his thought, as he stepped from the sacred crib softly
after bending low to sweep his lips over the rosy velvet of little
Starr’s cheek. With silent tread she followed her master to the door:

“The poor wee b’y’s in the far room yon,” she said in a soft whisper,
and her tone implied that his duty lay next in that direction. The
banker had often noticed this gentle suggestion in the nurse’s voice,
it minded him of something in his childhood and he invariably obeyed
it. He might have resented it if it had been less humble, less
trustfully certain that of course that was the thing that he meant to
do next. He followed her direction now without a word.

The boy had just fallen asleep when he entered, and lay as sweetly
beautiful as the little vivid beauty he had left in the other room. The
man of the world paused and instinctively exclaimed in wonder. He had
been told that it was a little gamin who had saved his daughter from
the assassin’s bullet, but the features of this child were as
delicately chiseled, his form as finely modeled, his hair as soft and
fine as any scion of a noble house might boast. He, like the nurse, had
the feeling that a young god lay before him. It was so that Mikky
always had impressed a stranger even when his face was dirty and his
feet were bare.

The man stood with bowed head and looked upon the boy to whom he felt
he owed a debt which he could never repay.

He recognized the child as a representative of that great unwashed
throng of humanity who were his natural enemies, because by their
oppression and by stepping upon their rights when it suited his
convenience, he had risen to where he now stood, and was able to
maintain his position. He had no special feeling for them, any of them,
more than if they had been a pack of wolves whose fangs he must keep
clear of, and whose hides he must get as soon as convenient; but this
boy was different! This spirit-child with the form of Apollo, the
beauty of Adonis, and the courage of a hero! Could he have come from
the hotbeds of sin and corruption? It could not be! Sure there must be
some mistake. He must be of good birth. Enquiry must be made. Had
anyone asked the child’s name and where he lived?

Then, as if in answer to his thought, the dark blue eyes suddenly
opened. He found them looking at him, and started as he realized it, as
if a picture on which he gazed had suddenly turned out to be alive. And
yet, for the instant, he could not summon words, but stood meeting that
steady searching gaze of the child, penetrating, questioning, as if the
eyes would see and understand the very foundation principles on which
the man’s life rested. The man felt it, and had the sensation of
hastily looking at his own motives in the light of this child’s look.
Would his life bear that burning appealing glance?

Then, unexpectedly the child’s face lit up with his wonderful smile. He
had decided to trust the man.

Never before in all his proud and varied experience had Delevan
Endicott encountered a challenge like that. It beat through him like a
mighty army and took his heart by storm, it flashed into his eyes and
dazzled him. It was the challenge of childhood to the fatherhood of the
man. With a strange new impulse the man accepted it, and struggling to
find words, could only answer with a smile.

A good deal passed between them before any words were spoken at all, a
good deal that the boy never forgot, and that the man liked to turn
back to in his moments of self-reproach, for somehow that boy’s eyes
called forth the best that was in him, and made him ashamed of other
things.

“Boy, who is your father?” at last asked the man huskily. He almost
dreaded to find another father owning a noble boy like this—and such a
father as he would be if it were true that he was only a street gamin.

The boy still smiled, but a wistfulness came into his eyes. He slowly
shook his head.

“Dead, is he?” asked the man more as if thinking aloud. But the boy
shook his head again.

“No, no father,” he answered simply.

“Oh,” said the man, and a lump gathered in his throat. “Your mother?”

“No mother, never!” came the solemn answer. It seemed that he scarcely
felt that either of these were deep lacks in his assets. Very likely
fathers and mothers were not on the average desirable kindred in the
neighborhood from which he came. The man reflected and tried again.

“Who are your folks? They’ll be worried about you. We ought to send
them word you’re doing well?”

The boy looked amazed, then a laugh rippled out.

“No folks,” he gurgled, “on’y jest de kids.”

“Your brothers and sisters?” asked Endicott puzzled.

“None o’ dem,” said Mikky. “Buck an’ me’re pards. We fights fer de
other kids.”

“Don’t you know it’s wrong to fight?”

Mikky stared.

Endicott tried to think of something to add to his little moral homily,
but somehow could not.

“It’s very wrong to fight,” he reiterated lamely.

The boy’s cherub mouth settled into firm lines.

“It’s wronger not to, when de little kids is gettin’ hurt, an’ de big
fellers what ought ter work is stole away they bread, an’ they’s
hungry.”

It was an entirely new proposition. It was the challenge of the poor
against the rich, of the weak against the strong, and from the lips of
a mere babe. The man wondered and answered not.

“I’d fight fer your little kid!” declared the young logician. He seemed
to know by instinct that this was the father of his baby.

Ah, now he had touched the responsive chord. The father’s face lit up.
He understood. Yes, it was right to fight for his baby girl, his little
Starr, his one treasure, and this boy had done it, given his life
freely. Was that like fighting for those other unloved, uncared-for,
hungry darlings? Were they then dear children, too, of somebody, of
God, if nobody else? The boy’s eyes were telling him plainly in one
long deep look, that all the world of little children at least was kin,
and the grateful heart of the father felt that in mere decency of
gratitude he must acknowledge so much. Poor little hungry babies. What
if his darling were hungry! A sudden longing seized his soul to give
them bread at once to eat. But at least he would shower his gratitude
upon this one stray defender of their rights.

He struggled to find words to let the child know of this feeling but
only the tears gathering quickly in his eyes spoke for him.

“Yes, yes, my boy! You did fight for my little girl. I know, I’ll never
forget it of you as long as I live. You saved her life, and that’s
worth everything to me. Everything, do you understand?”

At last the words rushed forth, but his voice was husky, and those who
knew him would have declared him more moved than they had ever seen
him.

The boy understood. A slender brown hand stole out from the white
coverlet and touched his. Its outline, long and supple and graceful,
spoke of patrician origin. It was hard for the man of wealth and pride
to realize that it was the hand of the child of the common people, the
people who were his enemies.

“Is there anything you would like to have done for you, boy?” he asked
at last because the depth of emotion was more than he could bear.

The boy looked troubled.

“I was thinkin’, ef Buck an’ them could see me, they’d know ’twas all
right. I’d like ’em fine to know how ’tis in here.”

“You want me to bring them up to see you?”

Mikky nodded.

“Where can I find them, do you think?”

“Buck, he won’t go fur, till he knows what’s comed o’ me,” said the boy
with shining confidence in his friend. “He’d know I’d do that fur him.”

Then it seemed there was such a thing as honor and loyalty among the
lower ranks of men—at least among the boys. The man of the world was
learning a great many things. Meekly he descended the two flights of
stairs and went out to his own front doorsteps.

There were no crowds any more. The police were still on duty, but
curious passersby dared not linger long. The workmen had finished the
windows and gone. The man felt little hope of finding the boys, but
somehow he had a strange desire to do so. He wanted to see that face
light up once more. Also, he had a curious desire to see these
youngsters from the street who could provoke such loving anxiety from
the hero upstairs.

Mikky was right, Buck would not go far away until he knew how it was
with his comrade. He had indeed moved off at the officer’s word when
the doctor promised to bring him word later, but in his heart he did
not intend to let a soul pass in or out of that house all day that he
did not see, and so he set his young pickets here and there about the
block, each with his bunch of papers, and arranged a judicious change
occasionally, to avoid trouble with the officers.

Buck was standing across the street on the corner by the church steps,
making a lively show of business now and then and keeping one eye on
the house that had swallowed up his partner. He was not slow to
perceive that he was being summoned by a man upon the steps, and ran
eagerly up with his papers, expecting to receive his coin, and maybe a
glimpse inside the door.

“All about der shootin’ of der bank millionaire’s baby!” he yelled in
his most finished voice of trade, and the father, thinking of what
might have been, felt a pang of horror at the careless words from the
gruff little voice.

“Do you know a boy named Buck?” he questioned as he deliberately paid
for the paper that was held up to him, and searched the unpromising
little face before him. Then marvelled at the sullen, sly change upon
the dirty face.

The black brows drew down forbodingly, the dark eyes reminded Mm of a
caged lion ready to spring if an opportunity offered. The child had
become a man with a criminal’s face. There was something frightful
about the defiant look with which the boy drew himself up.

“What if I does?”

“Only that there’s a boy in here,” motioning toward the door, “would
like very much to see him for a few minutes. If you know where he is, I
wish you’d tell him.”

Then there came a change more marvelous than before. It was as if the
divine in the soul had suddenly been revealed through a rift in the
sinful humanity. The whole defiant face became eager, the black eyes
danced with question, the brows settled into straight pleasant lines,
and the mouth sweetened as with pleasant thoughts.

“Is’t Mikky?” He asked in earnest voice. “Kin we get in? I’ll call de
kids. He’ll want ’em. He allus wants der kids.” He placed his fingers
in his mouth, stretching it into a curious shape, and there issued
forth a shriek that might have come from the mouth of an exulting
fiend, so long and shrill and sharp it was. The man on the steps, his
nerves already wrought to the snapping point, started angrily. Then
suddenly around the corner at a swift trot emerged three ragged
youngsters who came at their leader’s command swiftly and eagerly.

“Mikky wants us!” explained Buck. “Now youse foller me, ’n don’t you
say nothin’ less I tell you.”

They fell in line, behind the bank president, and followed awed within
the portal that unlocked a palace more wonderful than Aladdin’s to
their astonished gaze.

Up the stairs they slunk, single file, the bare feet and the illy-shod
alike going silently and sleuth-like over the polished stairs. They
skulked past open doors with frightened defiant glances, the defiance
of the very poor for the very rich, the defiance that is born and bred
in the soul from a face to face existence with hunger and cold and need
of every kind. They were defiant but they took it all in, and for many
a day gave details highly embellished of the palace where Mikky lay. It
seemed to them that heaven itself could show no grander sights.

In a stricken row against the wall, with sudden consciousness of their
own delinquencies of attire, ragged caps in hands, grimy hands behind
them, they stood and gazed upon their fallen hero-comrade.

Clean, they had never perhaps seen his face before. The white robe that
was upon him seemed a robe of unearthly whiteness. It dazzled their
gaze. The shining of his newly-washed hair was a glory crown upon his
head. They saw him gathered into another world than any they knew. It
could have seemed no worse to them if the far heaven above the narrow
city streets had opened its grim clouds and received their comrade from
their sight. They were appalled. How could he ever be theirs again? How
could it all have happened in the few short hours since Mikky flashed
past them and fell a martyr to his kindly heart and saved the wicked
rich man his child? The brows of Buck drew together in his densest
frown. He felt that Mikky, their Mikky was having some terrible change
come upon him.

Then Mikky turned and smiled upon them all, and in his dear familiar
voice shouted, “Say, kids, ain’t this grand? Say, I jes’ wish you was
all in it! Ef you, Buck, an’ the kids was here in this yer grand bed
I’d be havin’ the time o’ me life!”

That turned the tide. Buck swallowed hard and smiled his darker smile,
and the rest grinned sheepishly. Grandeur and riches had not spoiled
their prince. He was theirs still and he had wanted them. He had sent
for them. They gained courage to look around on the spotlessly clean
room, on the nurse in her crackling dignity; on the dish of oranges
which she promptly handed to them and of which each in awe partook a
golden sphere; on the handful of bright flowers that Morton had brought
but a few minutes before and placed on a little stand by the bed; on
the pictures that hung upon the walls, the like of which they had never
seen, before, and then back to the white white bed that held their
companion. They could not get used to the whiteness and the cleanness
of his clean, clean face and hands, and bright gold hair. It burned
like a flame against the pillow, and Mikky’s blue eyes seemed darker
and deeper than ever before. To Buck they had given their obedient
following, and looked to him for protection, but after all he was one
like themselves, only a little more fearless. To Mikky they all gave a
kind of far-seeing adoration. He was fearless and brave like Buck, but
he was something more. In their superstitious fear and ignorance he
seemed to them almost supernatural.

They skulked, silently down the stairs like frightened rabbits when the
interview was over, each clutching his precious orange, and not until
the great doors had closed upon them, did they utter a word. They had
said very little. Mikky had done all the talking.

When they had filed down the street behind their leader, and rounded
the corner out of sight of the house, Buck gathered them into a little
knot and said solemnly: “Kids. I bet cher Mik don’t be comin’ out o’
this no more. Didn’t you take notice how he looked jes’ like the angel
top o’ the monnemunt down to the cemtary?”

The little group took on a solemnity that was deep and real.

“Annyhow, he wanted us!” spoke up a curly-headed boy with old eyes and
a thin face. He was one whom Mikky had been won’t to defend. He bore a
hump upon his ragged back.

“Aw! he’s all right fer us, is Mik,” said Buck, “but he’s different nor
us. Old Aunt Sal she said one day he were named fer a ’n’angel, an’
like as not he’ll go back where he b’longs some day, but he won’t never
fergit us. He ain’t like rich folks what don’t care. He’s our pard
allus. Come on, fellers.”

Down the back alley went the solemn little procession, single file,
till they reached the rear of the Endicott house, where they stood
silent as before a shrine, till at a signal from their leader, each
grimy right hand was raised, and gravely each ragged cap was taken off
and held high in the air toward the upper window, where they knew their
hero-comrade lay. Then they turned and marched silently away.

They were all in place before the door whenever the doctor came
thereafter, and always went around by the way of the alley afterward
for their ceremonial good night, sometimes standing solemnly beneath
the cold stars while the shrill wind blew through their thin garments,
but always as long as the doctor brought them word, or as long as the
light burned in the upper window, they felt their comrade had not gone
yet.




Chapter III


Heaven opened for Mikky on the day when Morton, with the doctor’s
permission, brought Baby Starr to see him.

The baby, in her nurse’s arms, gazed down upon her rescuer with the
unprejudiced eyes of childhood. Mikky’s smile flashed upon her and
forthwith she answered with a joyous laugh of glee. The beautiful boy
pleased her ladyship. She reached out her roseleaf hands to greet him.

The nurse held her down to the bed:

“Kiss the wee b’y, that’s a good baby. Kiss the wee b’y. He took care
of baby and saved her life when the bad man tried to hurt her. Kiss the
wee b’y and say ‘I thank you,’” commanded Morton.

The saving of her life meant nothing to little Starr, but she
obediently murmured ‘I’ee tank oo!’ as the nurse had drilled her to do
before she brought her, and then laid her moist pink lips on cheeks,
forehead, eyes and mouth in turn, and Mikky, in ecstasy, lay trembling
with the pleasure of it. No one had ever kissed him before. Kissing was
not in vogue in the street where he existed.

Thereafter, every day until he was convalescent, Starr came to visit
him.

By degrees he grew accustomed to her gay presence enough to talk with
her freely as child with child. Her words were few and her tongue as
yet quite unacquainted with the language of this world; but perhaps
that was all the better, for their conversations were more of the
spirit than of the tongue, Mikky’s language, of circumstance, being
quite unlike that of Madison Avenue.

Starr brought her wonderful electric toys and dolls, and Mikky looked
at them with wonder, yet always with a kind of rare indifference,
because the child herself was to him the wonder of all wonders, an
angel spirit stooped to earth. And every day, when the nurse carried
her small charge away after her frolic with the boy, she would always
lift her up to the bed and say:

“Now kiss the wee b’y, Baby Starr, and thank him again fer savin’ yer
life.”

And Starr would lay her soft sweet mouth on his as tenderly and gravely
as if she understood the full import of her obligation. At such times
Mikky would watch her bright face as it came close to his, and when her
lips touched his he would close his eyes as if to shut out all things
else from this sacred ceremony. After Starr and Morton were gone the
nurse was wont to look furtively toward the bed and note the still,
lovely face of the boy whose eyes were closed as if to hold the vision
and memory the longer. At such times her heart would draw her strangely
from her wonted formality and she would touch the boy with a tenderness
that was not natural to her.

There were other times when Mr. Endicott would come and talk briefly
with the boy, just to see his eyes light and his face glow with that
wonderful smile, and to think what it would be if the boy were his own.
Always Mikky enjoyed these little talks, and when his visitor was gone
he would think with satisfaction that this was just the right kind of a
father for his little lovely Starr. He was glad the Baby Starr had a
father. He had often wondered what it would be like to have a father,
and now he thought he saw what the height of desire in a father might
be. Not that he felt a great need for himself in the way of fathers. He
had taken care of himself since he could remember and felt quite grown
up and fathers usually drank; but a baby like that needed a father, and
he liked Starr’s father.

But the dearest thing now in life for him was little Starr’s kisses.

To the father, drawn first by gratitude to the boy who had saved his
child’s life, and afterwards by the boy’s own irresistible smile, these
frequent visits had become a pleasure. There had been a little boy
before Starr came to their home, but he had only lived a few weeks. The
memory of that golden, fuzzy head, the little appealing fingers, the
great blue eyes of his son still lingered bitterly in the father’s
heart. When he first looked upon this waif the fancy seized him that,
perhaps his own boy would have been like this had he lived, and a
strange and unexpected tenderness entered his heart for Mikky. He kept
going to the little invalid’s room night after night, pleasing himself
with the thought that the boy was his own.

So strong a hold did this fancy take upon the man’s heart that he
actually began to consider the feasibility of adopting the child and
bringing him up as his own—this, after he had by the aid of detectives,
thoroughly searched out all that was known of him and found that no one
owned Mikky nor seemed to care what became of him except Buck and his
small following. And all the time the child, well fed, well cared for,
happier than he had ever dreamed of being in all his little hard life,
rapidly convalesced.

Endicott came home one afternoon to find Mikky down in the reception
room dressed in black velvet and rare old lace, with his glorious sheaf
of golden hair which had grown during his illness tortured into
ringlets, and an adoring group of ladies gathered about him, as he
stood with troubled, almost haughty mien, and gravely regarded their
maudlin sentimentalities.

Mrs. Endicott had paid no attention to the boy heretofore, and her
sudden interest in him came from a chance view of him as he sat up in a
big chair for the first time, playing a game with little Starr. His big
eyes and beautiful hair attracted her at once, and she lost no time in
dressing him up like a doll and making him a show at one of her
receptions.

When her husband remonstrated with her, declaring that such treatment
would ruin the spirit of any real boy, and spoil him for life, she
shrugged her shoulders indifferently, and answered:

“Well, what if it does? He’s nothing but a foundling. He ought to be
glad we are willing to dress him up prettily and play with him for a
while.”

“And what would you do with him after you were done using him for a
toy? Cast him aside?”

“Well, why not?” with another shrug of her handsome shoulders. “Or,
perhaps we might teach him to be a butler or footman if you want to be
benevolent. He would be charming in a dark blue uniform!”

The woman raised her delicate eyebrows, humming a light tune, and her
husband turned from her in despair. Was it nothing at all to her that
this child had saved the life of her baby?

That settled the question of adoption. His wife would never be the one
to bring up the boy into anything like manhood. It was different with a
girl—she must of necessity be frivolous, he supposed.

The next morning an old college friend came into his office, a plain
man with a pleasant face, who had not gone from college days to a bank
presidency. He was only a plain teacher in a little struggling college
in Florida, and he came soliciting aid for the college.

Endicott turned from puzzling over the question of Mikky, to greet his
old friend whom he had not seen for twenty years. He was glad to see
him. He had always liked him. He looked him over critically, however,
with his successful-business-man-of-New-York point of view. He noticed
the plain cheap business suit, worn shiny in places, the shoes well
polished but beginning to break at the side, the plentiful sprinkling
of gray hairs, and then his eyes travelled to the kind, worn face of
his friend. In spite of himself he could not but feel that the man was
happier than himself.

He asked many questions, and found a keen pleasure in hearing all about
the little family of the other, and their happy united efforts to laugh
off poverty and have a good time anyway. Then the visitor told of the
college, its struggles, its great needs and small funds, how its orange
crop, which was a large part of its regular income, had failed that
year on account of the frost, and they were in actual need of funds to
carry on the work of the immediate school year. Endicott found his
heart touched, though he was not as a rule a large giver to anything.

“I’d be glad to help you Harkness,” he said at last, “but I’ve got a
private benevolence on my hands just now that is going to take a good
deal of money, I’m afraid. You see we’ve narrowly escaped a tragedy at
our house—” and he launched into the story of the shooting, and his own
indebtedness to Mikky.

“I see,” said the Professor, “you feel that you owe it to that lad to
put him in the way of a better life, seeing that he freely gave his
life for your child’s.”

“Exactly!” said Endicott, “and I’d like to adopt him and bring him up
as my own, but it doesn’t seem feasible. I don’t think my wife would
feel just as I do about it, and I’m not sure I’d be doing the best
after all for the boy. To be taken from one extreme to another might
ruin him.”

“Well, Endicott, why don’t you combine your debt to the child with
benevolence and send him down to us for a few years to educate.”

Endicott sat up interestedly.

“Could I do that; Would they take so young a child? He can’t be over
seven.”

“Yes, we would take him, I think. He’d be well cared for; and his
tuition in the prep department would help the institution along. Every
little helps, you know.”

Endicott suddenly saw before him the solution of his difficulties. He
entered eagerly into the matter, talking over rates, plans and so on.
An hour later it was all settled. Mikky was to take a full course with
his expenses all prepaid, and a goodly sum placed in the bank for his
clothing and spending money. He was to have the best room the school
afforded, at the highest price, and was to take music and art and
everything else that was offered, for Endicott meant to do the handsome
thing by the institution. The failure of the bank of which he was
president had in no wise affected his own private fortune.

“If the boy doesn’t seem to develop an interest in some of these
branches, put some deserving one in his place, and put him at something
else,” he said. “I want him to have his try at everything, develop the
best that is in him. So we’ll pay for everything you’ve got there, and
that will help out some other poor boy perhaps, for, of course one boy
can’t do everything. I’ll arrange it with my lawyer that the payments
shall be made regularly for the next twelve years, so that if anything
happens to me, or if this boy runs away or doesn’t turn out worthy, you
will keep on getting the money just the same, and some one else can
come in on it.”

Professor Harkness went away from the office with a smile on his face
and in his pocket three letters of introduction to wealthy benevolent
business men of New York. Mikky was to go South with him the middle of
the next week.

Endicott went home that afternoon with relief of mind, but he found in
his heart a most surprising reluctance to part with the beautiful boy.

When the banker told Mikky that he was going to send him to “college,”
and explained to him that an education would enable him to become a
good man and perhaps a great one, the boy’s face was very grave. Mikky
had never felt the need of an education, and the thought of going away
from New York gave him a sensation as if the earth were tottering under
his feet. He shook his head doubtfully.

“Kin I take Buck an’ de kids?” he asked after a thoughtful pause, and
with a lifting of the cloud in his eyes.

“No,” said Endicott. “It costs a good deal to go away to school, and
there wouldn’t be anyone to send them.”

Mikky’s eyes grew wide with something like indignation, and he shook
his head.

“Nen I couldn’t go,” he said decidedly. “I couldn’t take nothin’ great
like that and not give de kids any. We’ll stick together. I’ll stay wid
de kids. They needs me.”

“But Mikky—” the man looked into the large determined eyes and settled
down for combat—“you don’t understand, boy. It would be impossible for
them to go. I couldn’t send them all, but I _can_ send you, and I’m
going to, because you risked your life to save little Starr.”

“That wasn’t nothin’ t’all!” declared Mikky with fine scorn.

“It was everything to me,” said the man, “and I want to do this for
you. And boy, it’s your duty to take this. It’s everybody’s duty to
take the opportunities for advancement that come to them.”

Mikky looked at him thoughtfully. He did not understand the large
words, and duty meant to him a fine sense of loyalty to those who had
been loyal to him.

“I got to stay wid de kids,” he said. “Dey needs me.”

With an exasperated feeling that it was useless to argue against this
calmly stated fact, Endicott began again gently:

“But Mikky, you can help them a lot more by going to college than by
staying at home.”

The boy’s eyes looked unconvinced but he waited for reasons.

“If you get to be an educated man you will be able to earn money and
help them. You can lift them up to better things; build good houses for
them to live in; give them work to do that will pay good wages, and
help them to be good men.”

“Are you educated?”

Thinking he was making progress Endicott nodded eagerly.

“Is that wot you does fer folks?” The bright eyes searched his face
eagerly, keenly, doubtfully.

The color flooded the bank-president’s cheeks and forehead
uncomfortably.

“Well,—I might—” he answered. “Yes, I might do a great deal for people,
I suppose. I don’t know as I do much, but I could if I had been
interested in them.”

He paused. He realized that the argument was weakened. Mikky studied
his face.

“But dey needs me now, de kids does,” he said gravely, “Jimmie, he
don’t have no supper most nights less’n I share; and Bobs is so little
he can’t fight dem alley kids; n’ sometimes I gets a flower off’n the
florist’s back door fer little sick Jane. Her’s got a crutch, and can’t
walk much anyhow; and cold nights me an’ Buck we sleeps close. We got a
box hid away where we sleeps close an’ keeps warm.”

The moisture gathered in the eyes of the banker as he listened to the
innocent story. It touched his heart as nothing ever had before. He
resolved that after this his education and wealth should at least help
these little slum friends of Mikky to an occasional meal, or a flower,
or a warm bed.

“Suppose you get Buck to take your place with the kids while you go to
school and get an education and learn how to help them better.”

Mikky’s golden head negatived this slowly.

“Buck, he’s got all he kin do to git grub fer hisse’f an’ his sister
Jane. His father is bad, and kicks Jane, and don’t get her nothin’ to
eat. Buck he has to see after Janie.”

“How would it be for you to pay Buck something so that he could take
your place? I will give you some money that you may do as you like
with, and you can pay Buck as much as you think he needs every week.
You can send it to him in a letter.”

“Would it be as much as a quarter?” Mikky held his breath in wonder and
suspense.

“Two quarters if you like.”

“Oh! could I do that?” The boy’s face fairly shone, and he came and
threw his arms about Endicott’s neck and laid his face against his. The
man clasped him close and would fain have kept him there, for his well
ordered heart was deeply stirred.

Thus it was arranged.

Buck was invited to an interview, but when the silver half dollar was
laid in his grimy palm, and he was made to understand that others were
to follow, and that he was to step up into Mikky’s place in the
community of the children while that luminary went to “college” to be
educated, his face wore a heavy frown. He held out the silver sphere as
if it burned him. What! Take money in exchange for Mikky’s bright
presence? Never!

It took a great deal of explanation to convince Buck that anything
could be better “fer de kids” than Mikky, their own Mikky, now and
forever. He was quick, however, to see where the good lay for Mikky,
and after a few plain statements from Mr. Endicott there was no further
demur on the part of the boy. Buck was willing to give up Mikky for
Mikky’s good but not for his own. But it was a terrible sacrifice. The
hard little face knotted itself into a fierce expression when he came
to say good-bye. The long scrawny throat worked convulsively, the hands
gripped each other savagely. It was like handing Mikky over to another
world than theirs, and though he confidently promised to return to them
so soon as the college should have completed the mysterious process of
education, and to live with them as of yore, sleeping in Buck’s box
alongside, and taking care of the others when the big alley kids grew
troublesome, somehow an instinct taught them that he would never return
again. They had had him, and they would never forget him, but he would
grow into a being far above them. They looked vindictively at the great
rich man who had perpetrated this evil device of a college life for
their comrade. It was the old story of the helpless poor against the
powerful rich. Even heart-beats counted not against such power. Mikky
must go.

They went to the great station on the morning when Mikky was to depart
and stood shivering and forlorn until the train was called. They
listened sullenly while Professor Harkness told them that if they
wished to be fit to associate with their friend when he came out of
college they must begin at once to improve all their opportunities.
First of all they must go to school, and study hard, and then their
friend in college would be proud to call them friends. They did not
think it worth while to tell the kindly but ignorant professor that
they had no time for school, and no clothes to wear if they had the
time or the inclination to go. Schools were everywhere, free, of
course, but it did not touch them. They lived in dark places and casual
crannies, like weeds or vermin. No one cared whether they went to
school. No one suggested it. They would have as soon thought of
entering a great mansion and insisting on their right to live there as
to present themselves at school. Why, they had to hustle for a mere
existence. They were the water rats, the bad boys, the embryo criminals
for the next generation. The problem, with any who thought of them was
how to get rid of them. But of course this man from another world did
not understand. They merely looked at him dully and wished he would
walk away and leave Mikky to them while he stayed. His presence made it
seem as if their companion were already gone from them.

It was hard, too, to see Mikky dressed like the fine boys on Fifth
Avenue, handsome trousers and coat, and a great thick overcoat, a hat
on his shining crown of hair that had always been guiltless of cap,
thick stockings and shining shoes on his feet that had always been bare
and soiled with the grime of the streets—gloves on his hands. This was
a new Mikky. “The kids” did not know him. In spite of their best
efforts they could not be natural. Great lumps arose in their throats,
lumps that never dared arise for hunger or cold or curses at home.

They stood helpless before their own consciousness, and Mikky, divining
the trouble with that exquisite keenness of a spirit sent from heaven
to make earth brighter, conceived the bright idea of giving each of his
comrades some article of his apparel as a remembrance. Mr. Endicott
came upon the scene just in time to keep Mikky from taking off his
overcoat and enveloping Buck in its elegant folds. He was eagerly
telling them that Bobs should have his undercoat, Jimmie his hat; they
must take his gloves to Jane, and there was nothing left for Sam but
his stockings and shoes, but he gave them all willingly. He seemed to
see no reason why he could not travel hatless and coatless, bare of
foot and hand, for had he not gone that way through all the years of
his existence? It was a small thing to do, for his friends whom he was
leaving for a long time.

The bright face clouded when he was told he could not give these things
away, that it would not be fair to the kind professor to ask him to
carry with him a boy not properly dressed. But he smiled again
trustfully when Endicott promised to take the whole group to a clothing
house and fit them out.

They bade Mikky good-bye, pressing their grimy noses against the bars
of the station gate to watch their friend disappear from their bare
little lives.

Endicott himself felt like crying as he came back from seeing the boy
aboard the train. Somehow it went hard for him to feel, he should not
meet the bright smile that night when he went home.

But it was not the way of “the kids” to cry when tragedy fell among
them. They did not cry now—when he came back to them they regarded the
banker with lowering brows as the originator of their bereavement. They
had no faith in the promised clothing.

“Aw, what’s he givin’ us!” Buck had breathed under his breath. But to
do Buck credit he had not wanted to take Mikky’s coat from him. When
their comrade went from them into another walk in life he must go
proudly apparelled.

Endicott led the huddled group away from the station, to a clothing
house, and amused himself by fitting them out. The garments were not of
as fine material, nor elegant a cut as those he had pleased himself by
purchasing for Mikky’s outfit, but they were warm and strong and
wonderful to their eyes, and one by one the grimy urchins went into a
little dressing room, presently emerging with awe upon their faces to
stand before a tall mirror surveying themselves.

Endicott presently bade the little company farewell and with a
conscience at ease with himself and all mankind left them.

They issued from the clothing house with scared expressions and walked
solemnly a few blocks. Then Buck called them to a halt before a large
plate glass show-window.

“Take a good look at yersel’s, kids,” he ordered, “an’ we’ll go up to
the Park an’ shine around, an’ see how ther swells feels, then we’ll go
down to Sheeny’s an’ sell ’em.”

“Sell ’em! Can’t we keep ’em?” pitifully demanded Bobs who had never
felt warm in winter in all his small life before.

“You wouldn’t hev ’em long,” sneered Buck. “That father o’ yourn would
hey ’em pawned ’afore night; You better enjoy ’em a while, an’ then git
the money. It’s safer!”

The children with wisdom born of their unhappy circumstances recognized
this truth. They surveyed themselves gravely in their fleeting grandeur
and then turned to walk up to the aristocratic part of town, a curious
little procession. They finished by rounding the Madison Avenue block,
marched up the alley, and gave the salute with new hats toward the
window where their Prince and Leader used to be. He was no longer
there, but his memory was about them, and the ceremony did their
bursting little hearts good. Their love for Mikky was the noblest thing
that had so far entered their lives.

Jimmie suggested that they must let Jane see them before they disposed
forever of their elegant garments, so Bobs, minus coat, hat, stockings
and shoes was sent to bid her to a secluded retreat at the far end of
the alley. Bobs hurried back ahead of her little tapping crutch to don
his fine attire once more before she arrived.

Little Jane, sallow of face, unkempt of hair, tattered of clothing and
shivering in the cold twilight stood and watched the procession of
pride as it passed and repassed before her delighted eyes. The
festivity might have been prolonged but that the maudlin voice of Bobs’
father reeling into the alley struck terror to their hearts, and with
small ceremony they scuttled away to the pawnshop, leaving little Jane
to hobble back alone to her cellar and wonder how it would feel to wear
a warm coat like one of those.

“Gee!” said Jimmie as they paused with one consent before the shop
door, and looked reluctantly down at their brief glory, “Gee! I wisht
we could keep jest one coat fer little Jane!”

“Couldn’t we hide it some’ere’s?” asked Sam, and they all looked at
Buck.

Buck, deeply touched for his sister’s sake, nodded.

“Keep Jim’s,” he said huskily, “it’ll do her best.”

Then the little procession filed proudly in and gave up their garments
to the human parasite who lived on the souls of other men, and came
away bearing the one coat they had saved for Janie, each treasuring a
pitiful bit of money which seemed a fortune in their eyes.

Little Jane received her gift with true spirit when it was presented,
skilfully hid it from her inhuman father, and declared that each boy
should have a turn at wearing the coat every Sunday at some safe hour,
whereat deep satisfaction, reigned among them. Their grandeur was not
all departed after all.

Meantime, Mikky, in his luxurious berth in a sleeper, smiled drowsily
to think of the fine new clothes that his friends must be wearing, and
then fell asleep to dream of little Starr’s kisses on his closed
eyelids.




Chapter IV


Into a new world came Mikky, a world of blue skies, song birds, and
high, tall pines with waving moss and dreamy atmosphere; a world of
plenty to eat and wear, and light and joy and ease.

Yet it was a most bewildering world to the boy, and for the first week
he stood off and looked at it questioningly, suspiciously. True, there
were no dark cellars or freezing streets, no drunken fathers or
frightened children, or blows, or hunger or privation; but this
education he had come to seek that he might go back to his own world
and better it, was not a garment one put on and exercised in so many
times a day; it was not a cup from which one drank, nor an atmosphere
that one absorbed. It was a strange, imperceptible thing got at in some
mysterious way by a series of vague struggles followed by sudden and
almost alarming perceptions. For a time it seemed to the boy, keen
though his mind, and quick, that knowledge was a thing only granted to
the few, and his was a mind that would never grasp it. How, for
instance, did one know how to make just the right figures under a line
when one added a long perplexity of numbers? Mikky the newsboy could
tell like a flash how much change he needed to return to the fat
gentleman who occasionally gave him a five-dollar bill to change on
Broadway; but Mikky the scholar, though he knew figures, and was able
to study out with labor easy words in his papers, had never heard of
adding up figures in the way they did here, long rows of them on the
blackboard. It became necessary that this boy should have some private
instruction before he would be able to enter classes. Professor
Harkness himself undertook the task, and gradually revealed to the
child’s neglected understanding some of the simple rudiments that would
make his further progress possible. The sum that was paid for his
tuition made it quite necessary that the boy advance reasonably, for
his benefactor had made it understood that he might some day visit the
institution and see how he was getting on. So great pains were taken to
enlighten Mikky’s darkness.

There was another thing that the boy could not understand, and that was
the discipline that ruled everywhere. He had always been a law unto
himself, his only care being to keep out of the way of those who would
interfere with this. Now he must rise with a bell, stay in his room
until another bell, eat at a bell, go to the hard bench in the
schoolroom with another bell, and even play ball when the recreation
bell rang. It was hard on an independent spirit to get used to all
this, and while he had no mind to be disorderly, he often broke forth
into direct disobedience of the law from sheer misunderstanding of the
whole régime.

The boys’ dormitory was presided over by a woman who, while thorough in
all housekeeping arrangements, had certainly mistaken her calling as a
substitute mother for boys. She kept their clothes in order, saw to it
that their rooms were aired, their stockings darned and their lights
out at exactly half-past nine, but the grimness of her countenance
forbade any familiarity, and she never thought of gaining the
confidence of her rough, but affectionate charges. There was no
tenderness in her, and Mikky never felt like smiling in her presence.
He came and went with a sort of high, unconscious superiority that
almost irritated the woman, because she was not great enough to see the
unusual spirit of the child; and as a consequence she did not win his
heart.

But he did not miss the lack of motherliness in her, for he had never
known a mother and was not expecting it.

The professors he grew to like, some more, some less, always admiring
most those who seemed to him to deal in a fair and righteous manner
with their classes—fairness being judged by the code in use among “the
kids” in New York. But that was before he grew to know the president.
After that his code changed.

His first interview with that dignitary was on an afternoon when he had
been overheard by the matron to use vile language among the boys at the
noon hour. She hauled him up with her most severe manner, and gave him
to understand that he must answer to the president for his conduct.

As Mikky had no conception of his offence he went serenely to his fate
walking affably beside her, only wishing she would not look so sour. As
they crossed the campus to the president’s house a blue jay flew
overhead, and a mocking bird trilled in a live oak near-by. The boy’s
face lighted with joy and he laughed out gleefully, but the matron only
looked the more severe, for she thought him a hardened little sinner
who was defying her authority and laughing her to scorn. After that it
was two years before she could really believe anything good of Mikky.

The president was a noble-faced, white-haired scholar, with a firm
tender mouth, a brow of wisdom, and eyes of understanding. He was not
the kind who win by great athletic prowess, he was an old-fashioned
gentleman, well along in years, but young in heart. He looked at the
child of the slums and saw the angel in the clay.

He dismissed the matron with a pleasant assurance and took Mikky to an
inner office where he let the boy sit quietly waiting a few minutes
till he had finished writing a letter. If the pen halted and the kind
eyes furtively studied the beautiful face of the child, Mikky never
knew it.

The president asked the boy to tell him what he had said, and Mikky,
with sweet assurance repeated innocently the terrible phrases he had
used, phrases which had been familiar to him since babyhood, conveying
statements of facts that were horrible, but nevertheless daily
happenings in the corner of the world where he had brought himself up.

With rare tact the president questioned the boy, until he made sure
there was no inherent rottenness in him: and then gently and kindly,
but firmly laid down the law and explained why it was right and
necessary that there should be a law. He spoke of the purity of God.
Mikky knew nothing of God and listened with quiet interest. The
president talked of education and culture and made matters very plain
indeed. Then when the interview was concluded and the man asked the boy
for a pledge of good faith and clean language from that time forth,
Mikky’s smile of approval blazed forth and he laid his hand in that of
the president readily enough, and went forth from the room with a great
secret admiration of the man with whom he had just talked. The whole
conversation had appealed to him deeply.

Mikky sought his room and laboriously spelled out with lately acquired
clumsiness a letter to Buck:

“Dear Buck we mussent yuz endecent langwidg enay moor ner swar. God
donte lyk it an’ it ain’t educated. I want you an’ me to be educate. I
ain’t gone to, donte yoo ner let de kids.—
Mikky.”


In due time, according to previous arrangement about the monthly
allowance, this letter reached Buck, and he tracked the doctor for two
whole days before he located him and lay in wait till he came out to
his carriage, when he made bold to hand over the letter to be read.

The doctor, deeply touched, translated as best he could. Buck’s
education had been pitifully neglected. He watched the mystic paper in
awe as the doctor read.

“Wot’s indecent langwidge?” he asked with his heavy frown.

The doctor took the opportunity to deliver a brief sermon on purity,
and Buck, without so much as an audible thank you, but with a
thoughtful air that pleased the doctor, took back his letter, stuffed
it into his ragged pocket and went on his way. The man watched him
wistfully, wondering whether Mikky’s appeal could reach the hardened
little sinner; and, sighing at the wickedness of the world, went on his
way grimly trying to make a few things better.

That night “the kids” were gathered in front of little Janie’s window,
for she was too weak to go out with them, and Buck delivered a lesson
in ethical culture. Whatever Mikky, their Prince, ordered, that must be
done, and Buck was doing his level best, although for the life of him
he couldn’t see the sense in it. But thereafter none of “the kids” were
allowed to use certain words and phrases, and swearing gradually became
eliminated from their conversation. It would have been a curious study
for a linguist to observe just what words and phrases were cut out, and
what were allowed to flourish unrebuked; but nevertheless it was a
reform, and Buck was doing his best.

With his schoolmates Mikky had a curiously high position even from the
first. His clothes were good and he had always a little money to spend.
That had been one of Endicott’s wishes that the boy should be like
other boys. It meant something among a group of boys, most of whom were
the sons of rich fathers, sent down to Florida on account of weak lungs
or throats. Moreover, he was brave beyond anything they had ever seen
before, could fight like a demon in defense of a smaller boy, and did
not shrink from pitching into a fellow twice his size. He could tell
all about the great base-ball and foot-ball games of New York City,
knew the pitchers by name and yet did not boast uncomfortably. He could
swim like a duck and dive fearlessly. He could outrun them all, by his
lightness of foot, and was an expert in gliding away from any hand that
sought to hold him back. They admired him from the first.

His peculiar street slang did not trouble them in the least, nor his
lack of class standing, though that presently began to be a thing of
the past, for Mikky, so soon as he understood the way, marched
steadily, rapidly, up the hill of knowledge, taking in everything that
was handed out to him and assimilating it. It began to look as if there
would not be any left over courses in the curriculum that might be
given to some other deserving youth. Mikky would need them all. The
president and the professors began presently to be deeply interested in
this boy without a past; and everywhere, with every one, Mikky’s smile
won his way; except with the matron, who had not forgiven him that her
recommendation of his instant dismissal from the college had not been
accepted.

The boys had not asked many questions about him, nor been told much.
They knew his father and mother were dead. They thought he had a rich
guardian, perhaps a fortune some day coming, they did not care. Mikky
never spoke about any of these things and there was a strange reticence
about him that made them dislike to ask him questions; even, when they
came to know him well. He was entered under the name of Endicott,
because, on questioning him Professor Harkness found he could lay no
greater claim to any other surname, and called him that until he could
write to Mr. Endicott for advice. He neglected to write at once and
then, the name having become fastened upon the boy, he thought it best
to let the matter alone as there was little likelihood of Mr.
Endicott’s coming down to the college, and it could do no harm. He
never stopped to think out possible future complications and the boy
became known as Michael Endicott.

But his companions, as boys will, thought the matter over, and
rechristened him “Angel”; and Angel, or Angel Endy he became, down to
the end of his college course.

One great delight of his new life was the out-of-door freedom he
enjoyed. A beautiful lake spread its silver sheet at the foot of the
campus slope and here the boy revelled in swimming and rowing. The
whole country round was filled with wonder to his city-bred eyes. He
attached himself to the teacher of natural sciences, and took long
silent tramps for miles about. They penetrated dense hammocks,
gathering specimens of rare orchids and exquisite flowers; they stood
motionless and breathless for hours watching and listening to some
strange wild bird; they became the familiar of slimy coiling serpents
in dark bogs, and of green lizards and great black velvet spiders; they
brought home ravishing butterflies and moths of pale green and gold and
crimson. Mikky’s room became a museum of curious and wonderful things,
and himself an authority on a wide and varied range of topics.

The new life with plenty of wholesome plain food, plenty of fresh air,
long nights of good sleep, and happy exercise were developing the young
body into strength and beauty, even as the study and contact, with life
were developing the mind. Mikky grew up tall and straight and strong.
In all the school, even among the older boys, there was none suppler,
none so perfectly developed. His face and form were beautiful as
Adonis, and yet it was no pink and white feminine beauty. There was
strength, simplicity and character in his face. With the acceptance of
his new code of morals according to the president, had grown gradually
a certain look of high moral purpose. No boy in his presence dared use
language not up to the standard. No boy with his knowledge dared do a
mean or wrong thing. And yet, in spite of this, not a boy in the school
but admired him and was more or less led by him. If he had been one
whit less brave, one shade more conscious of self and self’s interests,
one tiny bit conceited, this would not have been. But from being a
dangerous experiment in their midst Mikky became known as a great
influence for good. The teachers saw it and marvelled. The matron saw
it and finally, though grudgingly, accepted it. The president saw it
and rejoiced. The students saw it not, but acknowledged it in their
lives.

Mikky’s flame of gold hair had grown more golden and flaming with the
years, so that when their ball team went to a near-by town to play,
Mikky was sighted by the crowd and pointed out conspicuously at once.

“Who is that boy with the hair?” some one would ask one of the team.

“That? Oh, that’s the Angel! Wait till you see him play,” would be the
reply. And he became known among outsiders as the Angel with the golden
hair. At a game a listener would hear:

“Oh, see! see! There’ll be something doing now. The Angel’s at the
bat!”

Yet in spite of all this the boy lived a lonely life. Giving of himself
continually to those about him, receiving in return their love and
devotion, he yet felt in a great sense set apart from them all. Every
now and again some boy’s father or mother, or both, would come down for
a trip through the South; or a sister or a little brother. Then that
boy would be excused from classes and go off with his parents for
perhaps a whole week; or they would come to visit him every day, and
Michael would look on and see the love light beaming in their eyes.
That would never be for him. No one had ever loved him in that way.

Sometimes he would close his eyes and try to get back in memory to the
time when he was shot; and the wonder of the soft bed, the sweet room,
and little Starr’s kisses. But the years were multiplying now and room
and nurse and all were growing very dim. Only little Starr’s kisses
remained, a delicate fragrance of baby love, the only kisses that the
boy had ever known. One day, when a classmate had been telling of the
coming of his father and what it would mean to him, Michael went into
his room and locking his door sat down and wrote a stiff school boy
letter to his benefactor, thanking him for all that he had done for
him. It told briefly, shyly of a faint realization of that from which
he had been saved; it showed a proper respect, and desire to make good,
and it touched the heart of the busy man who had almost forgotten about
the boy, but it gave no hint of the heart hunger which had prompted its
writing.

The next winter, when Michael was seventeen, Delevan Endicott and his
daughter Starr took a flying trip through the South, and stopped for a
night and a day at the college.

The president told Michael of his expected coming. Professor Harkness
had gone north on some school business.

The boy received the news quietly enough, with one of his brilliant
smiles, but went to his room with a tumult of wonder, joy, and almost
fear in his heart. Would Mr. Endicott be like what he remembered, kind
and interested and helpful? Would he be pleased with the progress his
protégé had made, or would he be disappointed? Would there be any
chance to ask after little Starr? She was a baby still in the thoughts
of the boy, yet of course she must have grown. And so many things might
have happened—she might not be living now. No one would think or care
to tell him.

Baby Starr! His beautiful baby! He exulted in the thought that he had
flung his little useless life, once, between her lovely presence and
death! He would do it again gladly now if that would repay all that her
father had done for him. Michael the youth was beginning to understand
all that that meant.

Those other friends of his, Buck, Jimmie, Bobs, and the rest, were
still enshrined in his faithful heart, though their memory had grown
dimmer with the full passing years. Faithfully every month the boy had
sent Buck two dollars from his pocket money, his heart swelling with
pleasure that he was helping those he loved, but only twice had any
word come back from that far city where he had left them. In answer to
the letter which the doctor had translated to them, there had come a
brief laborious epistle, terse and to the point, written with a stub of
pencil on the corner of a piece of wrapping paper, and addressed by a
kindly clerk at the post office where Buck bought the stamped envelope.
It was the same clerk who usually paid to the urchin his monthly money
order, so he knew the address. For the inditing of the letter Buck went
to night school two whole weeks before he could master enough letters
and words to finish it to his satisfaction, It read:

“Deer Mik WE WunT


“Buck.”


The significant words filled the boy’s heart with pride over his friend
whenever he thought of it, even after some time had passed. He had
faith in Buck. Somehow in his mind it seemed that Buck was growing and
keeping pace with him, and he never dreamed that if Buck should see him
now he would not recognize him.

When Mikky had been in Florida several years another letter had come
from Buck addressed in the same way, and little better written than the
other. Night school had proved too strenuous for Buck; besides, he felt
he knew enough for all practical purposes and it was not likely he
would need to write many letters. This, however, was an occasion that
called for one.

“Dear Mikky Jany is DEAD sHe sayd tell yo hur LUV beeryd hur in owr
kote we giv hur ther wuz a angle wit pink wins on top uv the wite hurs
an a wite hors we got a lot uv flowers by yur money so yo needn sen no
mor money kuz we ken got long now til yo cum BUCK.”


After that, though Michael had written as usual every month for some
time no reply had come, and the money orders had been returned to him
as not called for. Buck in his simplicity evidently took it for granted
that Mikky would not send the money and so came no more to the office,
at least that was the solution Michael put upon it, and deep down in
his heart he registered a vow to go and hunt up Buck the minute he was
through at college, and free to go back to New York and help his
friends. Meantime, though the years had dimmed those memories of his
old life, and the days went rapidly forward in study, he kept always in
view his great intention of one day going back to better his native
community.

But the coming of Mr. Endicott was a great event to the boy. He could
scarcely sleep the night before the expected arrival.

It was just before the evening meal that the through train from New
York reached the station. Michael had been given the privilege of going
down to meet his benefactor.

Tall and straight and handsome he stood upon the platform as the train
rushed into the town, his cheeks glowing from excitement, his eyes
bright with anticipation, his cap in his hand, and the last rays of the
setting sun glowing in his golden hair, giving a touch like a halo
round his head. When Endicott saw him he exclaimed mentally over his
strength and manly beauty, and more than one weary tourist leaned from
the open car window and gazed, for there was ever something strange and
strong and compelling about Michael that reminded one of the beauty of
an angel.




Chapter V


Michael met Mr. Endicott unembarrassed. His early life in New York had
given him a self-poise that nothing seemed to disturb; but when the
father turned to introduce his young daughter, the boy caught his
breath and gazed at her with deepening color, and intense delight.

She was here then, his Starr! She had come to see him, and she looked
just as he would have her look. He had not realized before that she
would be grown up, but of course she would, and the change in her was
not so great as to shock his memory. The clear white of her skin with
its fresh coloring was the same. New York life had not made it sallow.
The roses were in her cheeks as much as when she was a little child.
Her eyes were the same, dark and merry and looked at him straightly,
unabashed, with the ease of a girl trained by a society mother. The
dark curls were there, only longer, hanging to the slender waist and
crowned with a fine wide Panama hat. She gave him a little gloved hand
and said: “I’m afraid I don’t remember you very well, but daddy has
been telling me about you and I’m very glad to see you.”

She was only a little over twelve, but she spoke with ease and
simplicity, and for the first time in his life Michael felt conscious
of himself. She was so perfect, so lovely, so finished in every
expression and movement. She looked at him intelligently, politely
curious, and no longer with the baby eyes that wondered at nothing. He
himself could not help wondering what she must think of him, and for a
few minutes he grew shy before her.

Mr. Endicott was surprised and pleased at the appearance of the boy.
The passing of the years had easily erased the tender feelings that
Mikky the little street urchin had stirred in his heart. This visit to
the school and college was not so much on account of the boy, to whom
he had come to feel he had discharged his full duty, but because of the
repeated invitations on the part of Professor Harkness and the
president. It went not against him to see the institution to which he
had from time to time contributed, in addition to his liberal allowance
for the education of the boy. It was perfectly convenient for him to
stop, being on the regular route he had laid out for his southern trip.
His wife he had left at Palm Beach with her fashionable friends; and
with Starr as his companion, the father was going through the orange
belt on a tour of investigation with a view to investments. It suited
him perfectly to stop off and receive the thanks of the college,
therefore he stopped. Not that he was a heartless man, but there were
so many things in his world to make him forget, and a little pleasant
adulation is grateful to the most of us.

But when Michael in all his striking beauty stood before him with the
deference of a more than son, his heart suddenly gave a great leap back
to the day when he had first looked down upon the little white face on
the pillow; when the blue eyes had opened and Mikky had smiled. Michael
smiled now, and Endicott became aware at once of the subtle fascination
of that smile. And now the thought presented itself. “What if this were
my son! how proud I should be of him!”

Michael was indeed good to look upon even to the eyes of the city
critic. Endicott had taken care to leave orders with his tailor for a
full outfit to be sent to the boy, Spring and Fall, of suitable plain
clothing for a school boy, little realizing how unnecessary it would
have been to have dressed him so well. The tailor, nothing loth, had
taken the measurements which were sent to him from year to year in
answer to the letter of the firm, and had kept Michael looking as well
as any rich man’s son need desire to look. Not that the boy knew nor
realized. The clothes came to him, like his board and tuition, and he
took them well pleased and wrote his best letter of thanks each year as
Professor Harkness suggested; but he had no idea that a part at least
of his power of leadership with all the boys of the school was due to
his plain though stylishly cut garments. This fact would not have
counted for anything with boys who had been living in Florida for
years, for any plain decent clothes were thought fit, no matter how
they were cut; but the patronage of the school was at least one-half
made up of rich men’s sons who were sent South for a few years to a
milder climate for their health. These as a rule, when they came, had
exaggerated ideas of the importance of clothes and prevailing modes.

And so it was that Michael did not look like a dowdy country boy to his
benefactor, but on the contrary presented a remarkable contrast with
many of the boys with whom Endicott was acquainted at home. There was
something about Michael even when he was a small lad that commanded
marked attention from all who saw him. This attention Endicott and his
daughter gave now as they walked beside him in the glow of the sunset,
and listened as he pointed out the various spots of interest in the
little college town.

The institution boasted of no carriage, and the single horse-car that
travelled to the station belonged to the hotel and its guests. However,
the walk was not long, and gave the travellers an opportunity to
breathe the clear air and feel the stillness of the evening which was
only emphasized by each separate sound now and again.

Starr, as she walked on the inside of the board sidewalk, and looked
down at the small pink and white and crimson pea blossoms growing
broad-cast, and then up at the tallness of the great pines, felt a kind
of awe stealing upon her. The one day she had spent at Palm Beach had
been so filled with hotels and people and automobiles that she had had
no opportunity to realize the tropical nature of the land. But here in
this quiet spot, where the tiny station, the post office, the grocery,
and a few scattered dwellings with the lights of the great tourists’
hotel gleaming in the distance, seemed all there was of human
habitation; and where the sky was wide even to bewilderment; she seemed
suddenly to realize the difference from New York.

Michael had recovered his poise as soon as she no longer faced him,
though he was profoundly conscious of her presence there on the other
side of her father. But he talked easily and well. Yes, there was the
hotel. It held five hundred guests and was pretty well filled at this
season of the year. There were some distinguished people stopping
there. The railroad president’s private car was on the track for a few
hours last week. That car over on the siding belonged to a great steel
magnate. The other one had brought the wife of a great inventor. Off
there at the right toward the sunset were the school and college
buildings. No, they could not be seen, until one passed the orange
grove. Too bad there was no conveyance, but the one little car turned
off toward the hotel at this corner, and the one beast of burden
belonging to the college, the college Mule—Minus, by name, because
there were so many things that he was not—was lame today and therefore
could not be called into requisition to bring the guests from the
station.

Mr. Endicott felt that he was drawing nearer to nature in this quiet
walk than he had been since he was a boy and visited his grandfather’s
farm. It rested and pleased him immensely, and he was charmed with the
boy, his protégé. His frank, simple conversation was free from all
affectation on the one hand, or from any hint of his low origin on the
other hand. He felt already that he had done a good thing in sending
this boy down here to be educated. It was worth the little money he had
put into it.

Starr watched Michael shyly from the shelter of her father’s side and
listened to him. He was not like the boys she met in New York. To begin
with he was remarkably fine looking, and added to that there was a
mingled strength and kindliness in his face, and above all about his
smile, that made her feel instinctively that he was nobler than most of
them. She could not think of a boy of her acquaintance who had a firm
chin like that. This boy had something about him that made the girl
know instantly that he had a greater purpose in life than his own
pleasure. Not that she thought this all out analytically. Starr had
never learned to think. She only felt it as she looked at him, and
liked him at once. Moreover there was a sort of glamour over the boy in
her eyes, for her father had just been telling her the story of how he
had saved her life when she was barely two years old. She felt a
prideful proprietorship in him that made her shy in his presence.

At the college president’s gate, just on the edge of the campus, the
president came out with apologies. He had been detained on a bit of
business at the county seat five miles away, and had driven home with a
friend whose horse was very slow. He was sorry not to have done their
honored guests the courtesy of being at the station on their arrival.
Endicott walked with the president after the greetings, and Michael
dropped behind with Starr eagerly pointing out to her the buildings.

“That’s the chapel, and beyond are the study and recitation rooms. The
next is the dining hall and servant’s quarters, and over on that side
of the campus is our dormitory. My window looks down on the lake. Every
morning I go before breakfast for a swim.”

“Oh, aren’t you afraid of alligators?” exclaimed Starr shivering
prettily.

Michael looked down at her fragile loveliness with a softened
appreciation, as one looks at the tender precious things of life that
need protection.

“No,” he answered without laughing, as some of the other boys would
have done at her girlish fears, “they never bother us here, and
besides, I’m sort of acquainted with them. I’m not afraid of them.
Nothing will hurt you if you understand it well enough to look out for
its rights.”

“Oh!” said Starr eyeing him in wonder. As if an alligator had rights!
What a strange, interesting boy. The idea of understanding an
alligator. She was about to ask how understanding the creature would
keep one from being eaten up when Michael pointed to the crimsoning
West:

“See!” he said eagerly as if he were pointing to a loved scene, “the
sun is almost down. Don’t you love to watch it? In a minute more it
will be gone and then it will be dark. Hear that evening bird?
‘Tit-wiloo! Tit-wiloo!’ He sings sometimes late at night.”

Starr followed his eager words, and saw the sun slipping, slipping like
a great ruby disc behind the fringe of palm and pine and oak that
bordered the little lake below the campus; saw the wild bird dart from
the thicket into the clear amber of the sky above, utter its sweet
weird call, and drop again into the fine brown shadows of the living
picture; watched, fascinated as the sun slipped lower, lower, to the
half now, and now less than half.

Breathless they both stood and let the two men go on ahead, while they
watched the wonder of the day turn into night. The brilliant liquid
crimson poured itself away to other lands, till only a rim of wonderful
glowing garnet remained; then, like a living thing dying into another
life, it too dropped away, and all was night.

“Why! How dark it is!” exclaimed Starr as she turned to her companion
again and found she could scarcely see his face. “Why! How queer! Where
is the twilight? Is anything the matter? I never saw it get dark all at
once like this!” She peered around into the strange velvet darkness
with troubled eyes.

Michael was all attention at once.

“No, that’s all right,” he assured her. “That’s the way we do here.
Almost everybody from the north speaks about it at first. They can’t
understand it. Its the difference in the position of the sun, nearer
the equator, you know. I’ll show you all about it on the chart in the
astronomical room if you care to see. We haven’t any twilight here. I
should think twilight would be queer. You wouldn’t just know when night
began and day ended. I don’t remember about it when I lived in New
York. Look up there! That’s the evening star! It’s come out for you
tonight—to welcome another—Starr!”

Oh, Michael, of unknown origin! Whence came that skill of delicate
compliment, that grace of courtesy, that you, plucked from the slime of
the gutter, set apart from all sweetening influences of loving contact
with, womankind, should be able so gallantly and respectfully to guide
the young girl through the darkness, touching her little elbow
distantly, tactfully, reverently, exactly as the college president
helps his wife across the road on Sabbath to the church? Is it only
instinct, come down from some patrician ancestor of gallant ways and
kind, or have you watched and caught the knack from the noble scholar
who is your ideal of all that is manly?

They walked silently through the warm darkness until they came within
the circle of light from the open door, and matron and teachers came
out to welcome the young stranger and bring her into the house.

Michael lingered for a moment by the door, watching her as she went
with the matron, her sweet face wreathed in smiles, the matron’s thin
arm around her and a new and gentle look upon her severe countenance;
watched until they mounted the stairs out of sight; then he went out of
doors.

Taking off his cap he stood reverently looking up at the star,
communing with it perhaps about the human Starr that had come back to
him out of the shadows of the past.

And she was a star. No one who saw her but acknowledged it. He
marvelled as he recalled the change wrought in the face of the matron
and because of her gentleness to the little girl forgave her all that
she had not been to his motherless boyhood.

Starr came down to dinner in a few minutes radiant in a little rosy
frock of soft Eastern silk, girdled with a fringed scarf of the same
and a knot of coral velvet in her hair. From the string of pearls about
her white neck to the dainty point of her slipper she was exquisite and
Michael watched her with open admiration; whereat the long lashes
drooped shyly over the girl’s rosy cheeks and she was mightily pleased.

She sat at her father’s side to the right of the president, with
Michael across the table. Well he bore the scrutiny of Endicott’s keen
eyes which through all the conversation kept searching the intelligent
face of the boy.

The evening passed like a dream, and Michael lay awake again that night
thinking of all the pleasure in anticipation for the next day. At last,
at last he had some people who in a way he might call his own. They had
cared to come and see him after all the years! His heart swelled with
joy and gratitude.

The guests attended chapel exercises with the students the next
morning, and Michael saw with pride the eyes of his companions turn
toward the beautiful young girl, and look at him almost with envy. The
color mounted into his strong young face, but he sat quietly in his
place and no one would have guessed to look at him, the tumult that was
running riot in his veins. He felt it was the very happiest day of his
life.

After chapel the guests were shown about the college buildings and
campus. The president and Endicott walked ahead, Michael behind with
Starr, answering her interested questions.

They had been through all the classrooms, the gymnasium, the dining
hall, servants’ quarters and dormitories. They had visited the athletic
ground, the tennis courts, and gone down by the little lake, where
Michael had taken them out for a short row. Returning they were met by
one of the professors who suggested their going to hear some of the
classes recite, and as Mr. Endicott seemed interested they turned their
steps toward the recitation hall.

“I think,” said Starr as they walked slowly across the campus together,
“that you must be a very brave boy. To think of you saving my life that
way when you were just a little fellow!”

She looked up, her pretty face full of childish feeling.

Michael looked down silently and smiled. He was wondering if any eyes
were ever as beautiful as those before him. He had never had even a
little girl look at him like that. The president’s daughter was fat and
a romp. She never took time to look at the boys. The few other girls he
knew, daughters of the professors, were quiet and studious. They paid
little attention to the boys.

“I want to thank you for what you did,” went on Starr, “only I can’t
think of any words great enough to tell you how I feel about it. I wish
there was something I could do to show you how I thank you?”

She lifted her sweet eyes again to his. They were entering the large
Hall of the college now.

“This way,” said Michael guiding her toward the chapel door which had
just swung to behind the two men.

“Isn’t there something you would like that I could do for you?”
persisted Starr earnestly, following him into the empty chapel where
Mr. Endicott and the president stood looking at a tablet on the wall by
the further door.

“Your father has done everything for me,” said Michael sunnily, with a
characteristic sweep of his hand that seemed to include himself, his
garments and his mental outfit. He turned upon her his blazing smile
that spoke more eloquently than words could have done.

“Yes, but that is papa,” said Starr half impatiently, softly stamping
her daintily shod foot. “He did that because of what you did for _him_
in saving my life. I should like to do something to thank you for what
you did for _me_. I’m worth something to myself you know. Isn’t there
something I could do for you.”

She stood still, looking up into his face anxiously, her vivid childish
beauty seeming to catch all the brightness of the place and focus it
upon him. The two men had passed out of the further door and on to the
recitation rooms. The girl and boy were alone for the moment.

“You have done something for me, you did a great deal,” he said, his
voice almost husky with boyish tenderness. “I think it was the greatest
thing that anybody ever did for me.”

“I did something for you! When? What?” questioned Starr curiously.

“Yes,” he said, “you did a great thing for me. Maybe you don’t remember
it, but I do. It was when I was getting well from the shot there at
your house, and your nurse used to bring you up to play with me every
day; and always before you went away, you used to kiss me. I’ve never
forgotten that.”

He said it quite simply as if it were a common thing for a boy to say
to a girl. His voice was low as though the depths of his soul were
stirred.

A flood of pretty color came into Starr’s cheeks.

“Oh!” she said quite embarrassed at the turn of the conversation, “but
that was when I was a baby. I couldn’t do that now. Girls don’t kiss
boys you know. It wouldn’t be considered proper.”

“I know,” said Michael, his own color heightening now, “I didn’t mean
that. I wanted you to know how much you had done for me already. You
don’t know what it is never to have been kissed by your mother, or any
living soul. Nobody ever kissed me in all my life that I know of but
you.”

He looked down at the little girl with such a grave, sweet expression,
his eyes so expressive of the long lonely years without woman’s love,
that child though she was Starr seemed to understand, and her whole
young soul went forth in pity. Tears sprang to her eyes.

“Oh!” she said, “That is dreadful! Oh!—I don’t care if it isn’t
proper—”

And before he knew what she was about to do the little girl tilted to
her tiptoes, put up her dainty hands, caught him about the neck and
pressed a warm eager kiss on his lips. Then she sprang away frightened,
sped across the room, and through the opposite door.

Michael stood still in a bewilderment of joy for the instant. The
compelling of her little hands, the pressure of her fresh lips still
lingered with him. A flood tide of glory swept over his whole being.
There were tears in his eyes, but he did not know it. He stood with
bowed head as though in a holy place. Nothing so sacred, so beautiful,
had ever come into his life. Her baby kisses had been half unconscious.
This kiss was given of her own free will, because she wanted to do
something for him. He did not attempt to understand the wonderful joy
that surged through his heart and pulsed in every fibre of his being.
His lonely, unloved life was enough to account for it, and he was only
a boy with a brief knowledge of life; but he knew enough to enshrine
that kiss in his heart of hearts as a holy thing, not even to be
thought about carelessly.

When he roused himself to follow her she had disappeared. Her father
and the president were listening to a recitation, but she was nowhere
to be seen. She had gone to her own room. Michael went down by himself
in a thicket by the lake.

She met him shyly at dinner, with averted gaze and a glow on her
cheeks, as if half afraid of what she had done, but he reassured her
with his eyes. His glance seemed to promise he would never take
advantage of what she had done. His face wore an exalted look, as if he
had been lifted above earth, and Starr, looking at him wonderingly, was
glad she had followed her impulse.

They took a horseback ride to the college grove that afternoon, Mr.
Endicott, one of the professors, Starr and Michael. The president had
borrowed the horses from some friends.

Michael sat like a king upon his horse. He had ridden the college mule
bareback every summer, and riding seemed to be as natural to him as any
other sport. Starr had been to a New York riding school, and was
accustomed to taking her morning exercise with her father in the Park,
or accompanied by a footman; but she sat her Florida pony as happily as
though he had been a shiny, well-groomed steed of priceless value.
Somehow it seemed to her an unusually delightful experience to ride
with this nice boy through the beautiful shaded road of arching
live-oaks richly draped with old gray moss. Michael stopped by the
roadside, where the shade was dense, dismounted and plunged into the
thicket, returning in a moment with two or three beautiful orchids and
some long vines of the wonderful yellow jessamine whose exquisite
perfume filled all the air about. He wreathed the jessamine about the
pony’s neck, and Starr twined it about her hat and wore the orchids in
her belt.

Starr had never seen an orange grove before and took great delight in
the trees heavily loaded with fruit, green and yellow and set about by
blossoms. She tucked a spray of blossoms in her dark hair under the
edge of her hat, and Michael looked at her and smiled in admiration.
Mr. Endicott, glancing toward his daughter, caught the look, and was
reminded of the time when he had found the two children in his own
drawing room being made a show for his wife’s guests, and sighed half
in pleasure, half in foreboding. What a beautiful pair they were to be
sure, and what had the future in store for his little girl?

On the way back they skirted another lake and Michael dismounted again
to bring an armful of great white magnolia blossoms, and dainty bay
buds to the wondering Starr; and then they rode slowly on through the
wooded, road, the boy telling tales of adventures here and there;
pointing out a blue jay or calling attention to the mocking bird’s
song.

“I wish you could be here next week,” said the boy wistfully. “It will
be full moon then. There is no time to ride through this place like a
moonlight evening. It seems like fairyland then. The moonbeams make
fairy ladders of the jessamine vines.”

“It must be beautiful,” said Starr dreamily. Then they rode for a few
minutes in silence. They were coming to the end of the overarched
avenue. Ahead of them the sunlight shone clearly like the opening of a
great tunnel framed in living green. Suddenly Starr looked up gravely:

“I’m going to kiss you good-bye tonight when, we go away,” she said
softly; and touching her pony lightly with the whip rode out into the
bright road; the boy, his heart leaping with joy, not far behind her.

Before supper Mr. Endicott had a talk with Michael that went further
toward making the fatherless boy feel that he had someone belonging to
him than anything that had happened yet.

“I think you have done enough for me, sir,” said Michael respectfully
opening the conversation as Endicott came out to the porch where the
boy was waiting for him. “I think I ought to begin to earn my own
living. I’m old enough now—” and he held his head up proudly. “It’s
been very good of you all these years—I never can repay you. I hope you
will let me pay the money back that you have spent on me, some day
when, I can earn enough—”

Michael had been thinking this speech out ever since the president had
told him of Endicott’s expected visit, but somehow it did not sound as
well to him when he said it as he had thought it would. It seemed the
only right thing to do when he planned it, but in spite of him as he
looked into Mr. Endicott’s kind, keen eyes, his own fell in troubled
silence. Had his words sounded ungrateful? Had he seen a hurt look in
the man’s eyes?

“Son,” said Endicott after a pause, and the word stirred the boy’s
heart strangely, “son, I owe you a debt you never can repay. You gave
me back my little girl, flinging your own life into the chance as
freely as if you had another on hand for use any minute. I take it that
I have at least a father’s right in you at any rate, and I mean to
exercise it until you are twenty-one. You must finish a college course
first. When will that be? Three years? They tell me you are doing well.
The doctor wants to keep you here to teach after you have graduated,
but I had thought perhaps you would like to come up to New York and
have your chance. I’ll give you a year or two in business, whatever
seems to be your bent when you are through, and then we’ll see. Which
would you rather do? Or, perhaps you’d prefer to let your decision rest
until the time comes.”

“I think I’m bound to go back to New York, sir,” said Michael lifting
his head with that peculiar motion all his own, so like a challenge.
“You know, sir, you said I was to be educated so that I might help my
friends. I have learned of course that you meant it in a broader sense
than just those few boys, for one can help people anywhere; but still I
feel as if it wouldn’t be right for me not to go back. I’m sure they’ll
expect me.”

Endicott shrugged his shoulders half admiringly.

“Loyal to your old friends still? Well, that’s commendable, but still I
fancy you’ll scarcely find them congenial now. I wouldn’t let them hang
too closely about you. They might become a nuisance. You have your way
to make in the world, you know.”

Michael looked at his benefactor with troubled brows. Somehow the tone
of the man disturbed him.

“I promised,” he said simply. Because there had bean so little in his
affections that promise had been cherished through the years, and meant
much to Michael. It stood for Principle and Loyalty in general.

“Oh, well, keep your promise, of course,” said the man of the world
easily. “I fancy you will find the discharge of it a mere form.”

A fellow student came across the campus.

“Endicott,” he called, “have you seen Hallowell go toward the village
within a few minutes?”

“He just want, out the gate,” responded Michael pleasantly.

Mr. Endicott looked up surprised.

“Is that the name by which you are known?”

“Endicott? Yes, sir, Michael Endicott. Was it not by your wish? I
supposed they had asked you. I had no other name that I knew.”

“Ah! I didn’t know,” pondered Endicott.

There was silence for a moment.

“Would you,—shall I—do you dislike my having it?” asked the boy
delicately sensitive at once.

But the man looked up with something like tenderness in his smile.

“Keep it, son. I like it. I wish I had a boy like you. It is an old
name and a proud one. Be worthy of it.”

“I will try, sir,” said Michael, as if he were registering a vow.

There was an early supper for the guests and then Michael walked
through another sunset to the station with Starr. He carried a small
box carefully prepared in which reposed a tiny green and blue lizard
for a parting gift. She had watched the lizards scuttling away under
the board sidewalks at their approach, or coming suddenly to utter
stillness, changing their brilliant colors to gray like the fence
boards that they might not be observed. She was wonderfully interested
in them, and was charmed with her gift. The particular lizard in
question was one that Michael had trained to eat crumbs from his hand,
and was quite tame.

The two said little as they walked along together. Each was feeling
what a happy time they had spent in one another’s company.

“I shall write and tell you how the lizard is,” said Starr laughing,
“and you will tell me all about the funny and interesting things you
are doing, won’t you?”

“If—I may,” said Michael wistfully.

At the station a New York acquaintance of the Endicotts’ invited them
to ride in his private car which was on the side track waiting for the
train to pick them up. Michael helped Starr up the steps, and carried
the lizard into the car as well as the great sheaf of flowers she
insisted on taking with her.

There were some ladies inside who welcomed Starr effusively; and
Michael, suddenly abashed, laid down the flowers, lifted his cap and
withdrew. A sudden blank had come upon him. Starr was absorbed by
people from another world than his. He would have no opportunity to say
good-bye—and she had promised—But then of course he ought not to expect
her to do that. She had been very kind to him—

He was going down the steps now. An instant more and he would be on the
cinders of the track.

A sudden rush, a soft cry, caused him to pause on the second step of
the vestibuled car. It was Starr, standing just above him, and her eyes
were shining like her namesake the evening star.

“You were going without good-bye,” she reproved, and her cheeks were
rosy red, but she stood her ground courageously. Placing a soft hand
gently on either cheek as he stood below her, his face almost on a
level with hers, she tilted his head toward her and touched his lips
with her own red ones, delicately as if a rose had swept them.

Simultaneously came the sound of the distant train.

“Good-bye, you nice, splendid boy!” breathed Starr, and waving her hand
darted inside the car.

Mr. Endicott, out on the platform, still talking to the president,
heard the oncoming train and looked around for Michael. He saw him
coming from the car with his exalted look upon his face, his cap off,
and the golden beams of the sun again sending their halo like a nimbus
over his hair.

Catching his hand heartily, he said:

“Son, I’m pleased with you. Keep it up, and come to me when you are
ready. I’ll give you a start.”

Michael gripped his hand and blundered out some words of thanks. Then
the train was upon them, and Endicott had to go.

The two younger ladies in the car, meantime, were plying Starr with
questions. “Who is that perfectly magnificent young man. Starr
Endicott? Why didn’t you introduce him to us? I declare I never saw
such a beautiful face on any human being before.”

A moment more and the private car was fastened to the train, and Starr
leaning from the window waved her tiny handkerchief until the train had
thundered away among the pines, and there was nothing left but the echo
of its sound. The sun was going down but it mattered not. There was
sunshine in the boy’s heart. She was gone, his little Starr, but she
had left the memory of her soft kiss and her bright eyes; and some day,
some day, when he was done with college, he would see her again.
Meantime he was content.




Chapter VI


The joy of loving kindness in his life, and a sense that somebody
cared, seemed to have the effect of stimulating Michael’s mind to
greater energies. He studied with all his powers. Whatever he did he
did with his might, even his play.

The last year of his stay in Florida, a Department of Scientific
Farming was opened on a small scale. Michael presented himself as a
student.

“What do you want of farming, Endicott?” asked the president, happening
to pass through the room on the first day of the teacher’s meeting with
his students. “You can’t use farming in New York.”

There was perhaps in the kindly old president’s mind a hope that the
boy would linger with them, for he had become attached to him in a
silent, undemonstrative sort of way.

“I might need it sometime,” answered Michael, “and anyway I’d like to
understand it. You said the other day that no knowledge was ever
wasted. I’d like to know enough at least to tell somebody else.”

The president smiled, wondered, and passed on. Michael continued in the
class, supplementing the study by a careful reading of all the
Agricultural magazines, and Government literature on the subject that
came in his way. Agriculture had had a strange fascination for him ever
since a noted speaker from the North had come that way and in an
address to the students told them that the new field for growth today
lay in getting back to nature and cultivating the earth. It was
characteristic of Michael that he desired to know if that statement was
true, and if so, why. Therefore he studied.

The three years flew by as if by magic. Michael won honors not a few,
and the day came when he had completed his course, and as valedictorian
of his class, went up to the old chapel for his last commencement in
the college.

He sat on the platform looking down on the kindly, uncritical audience
that had assembled for the exercises, and saw not a single face that
had come for his sake alone. Many were there who were interested in him
because they had known him through the years, and because he bore the
reputation of being the honor man of his class and the finest athlete
in school. But that was not like having some one of his very own who
cared whether he did well or not. He found himself wishing that even
Buck might have been there; Buck, the nearest to a brother he had ever
had. Would Buck have cared that he had won highest rank? Yes, he felt
that Buck would have been proud of him.

Michael had sent out three invitations to commencement, one to Mr.
Endicott, one to Starr, and one addressed to Buck, with the inner
envelope bearing the words “For Buck and ‘the kids,’” but no response
had come to any of them. He had received back the one addressed to Buck
with “Not Called For” in big pink letters stamped across the corner. It
had reached him that morning, just before he came on the platform. He
wished it had not come till night; it gave him a lonely, almost
forsaken feeling. He was “educated” now, at least enough to know what
he did not know; and there was no one to care.

When Michael sat down after his oration amid a storm of hearty
applause, prolonged by his comrades into something like an ovation,
some one handed him a letter and a package. There had been a mistake
made at the post office in sorting the mail and these had not been put
into the college box. One of the professors going down later found them
and brought them up.

The letter was from Mr. Endicott containing a businesslike line of
congratulations, a hope that the recipient would come to New York if he
still felt of that mind, and a check for a hundred dollars.

Michael looked at the check awesomely, re-read the letter carefully and
put both in his pocket. The package was tiny and addressed in Starr’s
handwriting. Michael saved that till he should go to his room. He did
not want to open it before any curious eyes.

Starr’s letters had been few and far between, girlish little epistles;
and the last year they had ceased altogether. Starr was busy with life;
finishing-school and dancing-school and music-lessons and good times.
Michael was a dim and pleasant vision to her.

The package contained a scarf-pin of exquisite workmanship. Starr had
pleased herself by picking out the very prettiest thing she could find.
She had her father’s permission to spend as much as she liked on it. It
was in the form of an orchid, with a tiny diamond like a drop of dew on
one petal.

Michael looked on it with wonder, the first suggestion of personal
adornment that had ever come to him. He saw the reminder of their day
together in the form of the orchid; studied the beautiful name, “Starr
Delevan Endicott,” engraved upon the card; then put them carefully back
into their box and locked it into his bureau drawer. He would wear it
the first time he went to see Starr. He was very happy that day.

The week after college closed Michael drove the college mule to the
county seat, ten miles away, and bought a small trunk. It was not much
of a trunk but it was the best the town afforded. In this he packed all
his worldly possessions, bade good-bye to the president, and such of
the professors as had not already gone North for their vacations, took
a long tramp to all his old haunts, and boarded the midnight train for
New York.

The boy had a feeling of independence which kept him from letting his
benefactor know of his intended arrival. He did not wish to make him
any unnecessary trouble, and though he had now been away from New York
for fourteen years, he felt a perfect assurance that he could find his
way about. There are some things that one may learn even at seven, that
will never be forgotten.

When Michael landed in New York he looked about him with vague
bewilderment for a moment. Then he started out with assurance to find a
new spot for himself in the world.

Suitcase he had not, nor any baggage but his trunk to hinder him. He
had discovered that the trunk could remain in the station for a day
without charge. The handsome raincoat and umbrella which had been a
part of the outfit the tailor had sent him that spring were all his
encumbrances, so he picked his way unhampered across Liberty Street,
eyeing his former enemies, the policemen, and every little urchin or
newsboy with interest. Of course Buck and the rest would have grown up
and changed some; they wouldn’t likely be selling papers now—but—these
were boys such as he had been. He bought a paper off a little ragged
fellow with a pinched face, and a strange sensation came over him. When
he left this city he was the newsboy, and now he had money enough to
buy a paper—and the education to read it! What a difference! Not that
he wanted the paper at present, though it might prove interesting
later, but he wanted the experience of buying it. It marked the era of
change in his life and made the contrast tremendous. Immediately his
real purpose in having an education, the uplift of his fellow-beings,
which had been most vague during the years, took form and leapt into
vivid interest, as he watched the little skinny legs of the newsboy
nimbly scrambling across the muddy street under the feet of horses, and
between automobiles, in imminent danger of his life.

Michael had thought it all out, just what he would do, and he proceeded
to carry out his purpose. He had no idea what a fine picture of
well-groomed youth and manly beauty he presented as he marched down the
street. He walked like a king, and New York abashed him no more now
that he had come back than it did before he went away. There are some
spirits born that way. He walked like a “gentleman, unafraid.”

He had decided not to go to Mr. Endicott until he had found lodgings
somewhere. An innate delicacy had brought him to this decision. He
would not put one voluntary burden upon his kind benefactor. Born and
bred in the slums, whence came this fineness of feeling? Who shall say?

Michael threaded his way through the maze of traffic, instinct and
vague stirrings of memory guiding him to a quiet shabby street where he
found a dingy little room for a small price. The dangers that might
have beset a strange young man in the great city were materially
lessened for him on account of his wide reading. He had read up New
York always wherever he found an article or book or story that touched
upon it; and without realizing it he was well versed in details. He had
even pondered for hours over a map of New York that he found in the
back of an old magazine, comparing it with his faint memories, until he
knew the location of things with relation to one another pretty well. A
stranger less versed might have gotten into most undesirable quarters.

The boy looked around his new home with a strange sinking of heart,
after he had been out to get something to eat, and arranged for his
trunk to be sent to his room. It was very tiny and not over clean. The
wall paper was a dingy flowered affair quite ancient in design, and
having to all appearances far outlived a useful life. The one window
looked out to brick walls, chimneys and roofs. The noise of the city
clattered in; the smells and the heat made it almost stifling to the
boy who had lived for thirteen years in the sunshine of the South, and
the freedom of the open.

The narrow bed looked uninviting, the bureau-washstand was of the
cheapest, and the reflection Michael saw in its warped mirror would
have made any boy with a particle of vanity actually suffer. Michael,
however, was not vain. He thought little about himself, but this room
was depressing. The floor was covered with a nondescript carpet faded
and soiled beyond redemption, and when his trunk was placed between the
bureau and the bed there would be scarcely room for the one wooden
chair. It was not a hopeful outlook. The boy took off his coat and sat
down on the bed to whistle.

Life, grim, appalling, spectral-like, uprose before his mental vision,
and he spent a bad quarter of an hour trying to adjust himself to his
surroundings; his previous sunny philosophy having a tough tussle with
the sudden realities of things as they were. Then his trunk arrived.

It was like Michael to unpack it at once and put all his best
philosophical resolves into practice.

As he opened the trunk a whiff of the South, exhaled. He caught his
breath with a sudden keen, homesickness. He realized that his school
days were over, and all the sweetness and joy of that companionful life
passed. He had often felt alone in those days. He wondered at it now.
He had never in all his experience known such aloneness as now in this
great strange city.

The last thing he had put into his trunk had been a branch of mammoth
pine needles. The breath of the tree brought back all that meant home
to him. He caught it up and buried his face in the plumy tassels.

The tray of the trunk was filled with flags, pennants, photographs, and
college paraphernalia. Eagerly he pulled them all out and spread them
over the bumpy little bed. Then he grabbed for his hat and rushed out.
In a few minutes he returned with a paper of tacks, another of pins,
and a small tack hammer. In an hour’s time he had changed the
atmosphere of the whole place. Not an available inch of bare wall
remained with, its ugly, dirty wallpaper. College colors, pennants and
flags were grouped about pictures, and over the unwashed window was
draped Florida moss. Here and there, apparently fluttering on the moss
or about the room, were fastened beautiful specimens of semi-tropical
moths and butterflies in the gaudiest of colors. A small stuffed
alligator reposed above the window, gazing apathetically down, upon the
scene. A larger alligator skin was tacked on one wall. One or two queer
bird’s nests fastened to small branches hung quite naturally here and
there.

Michael threw down the hammer and sat down to survey his work, drawing
a breath of relief. He felt more at home now with the photographs of
his fellow students smiling down upon him. Opposite was the base-ball
team, frowning and sturdy; to the right the Glee Club with himself as
their leader; to the left a group of his classmates, with his special
chum in the midst. As he gazed at that kindly face in the middle he
could almost hear the friendly voice calling to him: “Come on, Angel!
You’re sure to win out!”

Michael felt decidedly better, and fell to hanging up his clothes and
arranging his effects on clean papers in the rheumatic bureau drawers.
These were cramped quarters but would do for the present until he was
sure of earning some money, for he would not spend his little savings
more than he could help now and he would not longer be dependent upon
the benefaction of Mr. Endicott.

When his box of books arrived he would ask permission to put some
shelves over the window. Then he would feel quite cosy and at home.

So he cheered himself as he went about getting into his best garments,
for he intended to arrive at Madison Avenue about the time that his
benefactor reached home for the evening.

Michael knew little of New York ways, and less of the habits of
society; the few novels that had happened in his way being his only
instructors on the subject. He was going entirely on his dim memories
of the habits of the Endicott home during his brief stay there. As it
happened Mr. Endicott was at home when Michael arrived and the family
were dining alone.

The boy was seated in the reception room gazing about him with the ease
of his habitual unconsciousness of self, when Endicott came down
bringing Starr with him. A second time the man of the world was deeply
impressed with the fine presence of this boy from obscurity. He did not
look out of place even in a New York drawing room. It was incredible;
though of course a large part of it was due to his city-made clothing.
Still, that would not by any means account for case of manner, graceful
courtesy, and an instinct for saying the right thing at the right time.

Endicott invited the lad to dine with them and Starr eagerly seconded
the invitation. Michael accepted as eagerly, and a few moments later
found himself seated at the elegantly appointed table by the side of a
beautiful and haughty woman who stared at him coldly, almost
insultingly, and made not one remark to him throughout the whole meal.
The boy looked at her half wonderingly. It almost seemed as if she
intended to resent his presence, yet of course that could not be. His
idea of this whole family was the highest. No one belonging to Starr
could of course be aught but lovely of spirit.

Starr herself seemed to feel the disapproval of her mother, and shrink
into herself, saying very little, but smiling shyly at Michael now and
then when her mother was not noticing her.

Starr was sixteen now, slender and lovely as she had given promise of
being. Michael watched her satisfied. At last he turned to the mother
sitting in her cold grandeur, and with the utmost earnestness and
deference in his voice said, his glance still half toward Starr:

“She is like you, and yet not!”

He said it gravely, as if it were a discovery of the utmost importance
to them both, and he felt sure it was the key to her heart, this
admission of his admiration of the beautiful girl.

Mrs. Endicott froze him with her glance.

From the roots of his hair down to the tips of his toes and back again
he felt it, that insulting resentment of his audacity in expressing any
opinion about her daughter; or in fact in having any opinion. For an
instant his self-possession deserted him, and his face flushed with
mingled emotions. Then he saw a look of distress on Starr’s face as she
struggled to make reply for her silent mother:

“Yes, mamma and I are often said to resemble one another strongly,” and
there was a tremble in Starr’s voice that roused all the manliness in
the boy. He flung off the oppression that was settling down upon him
and listened attentively to what Endicott was saying, responding
gracefully, intelligently, and trying to make himself think that it was
his inexperience with ladies that had caused him to say something
inappropriate. Henceforth during the evening he made no more personal
remarks.

Endicott took the boy to his den after dinner, and later Starr slipped
in and they talked a little about their beautiful day in Florida
together. Starr asked him if he still rode and would like to ride with
her in the Park the next morning when she took her exercise, and it was
arranged in the presence of her father and with his full consent that
Michael should accompany her in place of the groom who usually attended
her rides.

Mrs. Endicott came in as they were making this arrangement, and
immediately called Starr sharply out of the room.

After their withdrawal Endicott questioned the boy carefully about his
college course and his habits of living. He was pleased to hear that
Michael had been independent enough to secure lodgings before coming to
his house. It showed a spirit that was worth helping, though he told
him that he should have come straight to him.

As Endicott was going off on a business trip for a week he told Michael
to enjoy himself looking around the city during his absence, and on his
return present himself at the office at an appointed hour when he would
put him in the way of something that would start him in life.

Michael thanked him and went back to his hot little room on the fourth
floor, happy in spite of heat and dinginess and a certain homesick
feeling. Was he not to ride with Starr in the morning? He could hardly
sleep for thinking of it, and of all he had to say to her.




Chapter VII


When Michael presented himself at the appointed hour the next morning
he was shown into a small reception room by a maid, and there he waited
for a full half hour. At the end of that time he heard a discreet
rustle of garments in the distance, and a moment later, became aware of
a cold stare from the doorway. Mrs. Endicott in an elaborate morning
frock was surveying him fixedly through a jewelled lorgnette, her chin
tilted contemptuously, and an expression of supreme scorn upon her
handsome features. Woman of the world that she was, she must have noted
the grace of his every movement as he rose with his habitual courtesy
to greet her. Yet for some reason this only seemed to increase her
dislike.

There was no welcoming hand held out in response to his good morning,
and no answering smile displaced the severity of the woman’s expression
as she stood confronting the boy, slowly paralyzing him with her
glance. Not a word did she utter. She could convey her deepest meaning
without words when she chose.

But Michael was a lad of great self-control, and keen logical mind. He
saw no reason for the woman’s attitude of rebuke, and concluded he must
be mistaken in it. Rallying his smile once more he asked:

“Is Miss Starr ready to ride, or have I come too early?”

Again the silence became impressive as the cold eyes looked him
through, before the thin lips opened.

“My daughter is not ready to ride—with YOU, this morning or at any
other time!”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” said Michael now deeply astonished, and
utterly unable to fathom the woman’s strange manner. “Have I
misunderstood? I thought she asked me to ride with her this morning.
May I see her, please?”

“No, you may not see Miss Endicott!” said the cold voice. “And I have
come down to tell you that I consider your coming here at all a great
impertinence. Certainly my husband has fully discharged any obligations
for the slight service he is pleased to assume that you rendered a good
many years ago. I have always had my doubts as to whether you did not
do more harm than good at that time. Of course you were only a child
and it was impossible that you should have done any very heroic thing
at that age. In all probability if you had kept out of things the
trouble never would have happened, and your meddling simply gave you a
wound and a soft bed for a while. In my opinion you have had far more
done for you than you ever deserved, and I want you to understand that
so far as my daughter is concerned the obligation is discharged.”

Michael had stood immovable while the cruel woman uttered her harangue,
his eyes growing wide with wonder and dark with a kind of manly shame
for her as she went on. When she paused for a moment she saw his face
was white and still like a statue, but there was something in the depth
of his eyes that held her in check.

With the utmost calm, and deference, although his voice rang with
honest indignation, Michael spoke:

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Endicott,” he said, his tone clear and
attention-demanding, “I have never felt that there was the slightest
obligation resting upon any of this family for the trifling matter that
occurred when, as you say, I was a child. I feel that the obligation is
entirely the other way, of course, but I cannot understand what you
mean. How is my coming here at Mr. Endicott’s invitation an
impertinence?”

The woman looked at him contemptuously as though it were scarcely worth
the trouble to answer him, yet there was something about him that
demanded an answer.

“I suppose you are ignorant then,” she answered cuttingly, “as you seem
to be honest. I will explain. You are not fit company for my daughter.
It is strange that you do not see that for yourself! A child of the
slums, with nothing but shame and disgrace for an inheritance, and
brought up a pauper! How could you expect to associate on a level with
a gentleman’s daughter? If you have any respect for her whatever you
should understand that it is not for such as you to presume to call
upon her and take her out riding. It is commendable in you of course to
have improved what opportunities have been given you, but it is the
height of ingratitude in a dependent to presume upon kindness and take
on the airs of an equal, and you might as well understand first as last
that you cannot do it. I simply will not have you here. Do you
understand?”

Michael stood as if rooted to the floor, horror and dismay growing in
his eyes; and stupor trickling through his veins. For a minute he stood
after she had ceased speaking, as though the full meaning of her words
had been slow to reach his consciousness. Yet outwardly his face was
calm, and only his eyes had seemed to change and widen and suffer as
she spoke. Finally his voice came to him:

“Madam, I did not know,” he said in a stricken voice. “As you say, I am
ignorant.” Then lifting his head with that fine motion of challenge to
the world that was characteristic of him whenever he had to face a hard
situation, his voice rang clear and undaunted:

“Madam, I beg your pardon. I shall not offend this way again. It was
because I did not understand. I would not hurt your daughter in any
way, for she has been the only beautiful thing that ever came into my
life. But I will never trouble her again.”

The bow with which he left her and marched past her into the hall and
out of the great door where once his boy life had been freely laid down
for her child, could have been no more gracefully or dramatically
effected if he had been some great actor. It was natural, it was full
of dignity and reproach, and it left the lady feeling smaller and
meaner than she had ever felt in all of her rose-colored, velvet-lined
existence. Somehow all the contempt she had purposely prepared for the
crushing of the lad, he had suddenly flung from him as a hated garment
and walked from her presence, leaving it wrapped about herself.

“Well, really!” she gasped at last when she realized that he was gone
and her eloquence not half finished, “Well, really! What right had he
to go away like that without my permission. Impertinent to the end! One
would suppose he was a grand Duke. Such airs! I always told Delevan it
was a mistake to educate the masses. They simply don’t know their place
and will not keep it.”

Nevertheless, the selfish woman was much shaken. Michael had made her
feel somehow as if she had insulted a saint or a supernal being. She
could not forget how the light had sifted through his wonderful hair
and glinted through the depths of his great eyes, as he spoke those
last words, and she resented the ease with which he had left her
presence. It had been too much like the going of a victor, and not like
one crushed back into his natural place. She was cross all day in
consequence.

Starr meanwhile was lingering upstairs waiting for Michael. She had
been purposely kept busy in a distant room at the back of the house by
her mother, and was not told of his coming. As an hour went by beyond
the appointed time she grew restless and disappointed; and then annoyed
and almost angry that he should have so easily forgotten her; but she
did not tell her mother, and the old Scotch nurse who would have been
her confidante had been sent on an errand to another part of the city.

Thus, as the days went by, and Michael came no more to the house, the
girl grew to think he did not want to come, and her slight
disappointment and mortification were succeeded by a haughty
resentment, for her mother’s teaching had not been without some result
in her character.

Michael had gone into the door of the Endicott mansion a boy with a
light heart and a happy vision of the future. He came out from there an
hour later, a man, with a heavy burden on his heart, and a blank vision
of the future. So much had the woman wrought.

As he walked from the house his bright head drooped, and his spirit was
troubled within him. He went as one in a terrible dream. His face had
the look of an angel newly turned out of paradise and for no fault of
his own; an angel who bowed to the Supreme mandate, but whose life was
crushed within him. People looked at him strangely, and wondered as
they passed him. It was as if Sorrow were embodied suddenly, and
looking through eyes intended for Love. For the first time Michael,
beloved of all his companions for his royal unselfishness, was thinking
of himself.

Yet even so there was no selfishness in his thought. It was only as if
that which had always given him life and the breath of gladness had
suddenly been withdrawn from him, and left him panting, gasping in a
wide and unexpected emptiness.

Somehow he found his way to his room and locked the door.

Then the great spirit gave way and he flung himself upon the bed in
supreme exhaustion. He seemed not to have another atom of strength left
wherewith, to move or think or even breathe consciously. All his
physical powers had oozed away and deserted him, now in this great
crisis when life’s foundations were shaken to their depths and nothing
seemed to be any more. He could not think it over or find a way out of
the horror, he could only lie and suffer it, fact by fact, as it came
and menaced him, slowly, cruelly throughout that length of day.

Gradually it became distinct and separated itself into thoughts so that
he could follow it, as if it were the separate parts of some great
dragon come to twine its coils about him and claw and crush and
strangle the soul of him.

First, there was the fact like a great knife which seemed to have
severed soul from body, the fact that he might not see Starr, or have
aught to do with her any more. So deeply had this interdiction taken
hold upon him that it seemed to him in his agitation he might no longer
even think of her.

Next, following in stern and logical sequence, came the reason for this
severing of soul from all it knew and loved; the fact of his lowly
birth. Coming as it did, out of the blue of a trustful life that had
never questioned much about his origin but had sunnily taken life as a
gift, and thought little about self; with the bluntness and directness
of an un-lovingkindness, it had seemed to cut and back in every
direction, all that was left of either soul or body, so that there came
no hope of ever catching things together again.

That was the way it came over and over again as the boy without a
friend in the whole wide world to whom he could turn in his first great
trouble, lay and took it.

Gradually out of the blackness he began to think a little; think back
to his own beginning. Who was he? What was he? For the first time in
his life, though he knew life more than most of the boys with whom he
had associated, the thought of shame in connection with his own birth
came to him, and burrowed and scorched its way into his soul.

He might have thought of such a possibility before perhaps, had not his
very youngest years been hedged about by a beautiful fancy that sprang
from the brain of an old Irish woman in the slums, whose heart was wide
as her ways were devious, and who said one day when little Mikky had
run her an errand, “Shure, an’ then Mikky, yer an angel sthraight frum
hiven an’ no misthake. Yer no jest humans like the rist av us; ye must
av dhropped doon frum the skoy.” And from that it had gone forth that
Mikky was the child of the sky, and that was why no one knew who were
his parents.

The bit of a fancy had guarded the boy’s weird babyhood, and influenced
more than he knew his own thought of existence, until life grew too
full to think much on it.

Out of the darkness and murk of the slums the soul of Mikky had climbed
high, and his ambitions reached up to the limitless blue above him. It
had never occurred to him once that there might be an embargo put upon
his upward movements. He had taken all others to be as free hearted and
generous as himself. Heir of all things, he had breathed the atmosphere
of culture as though it were his right. Now, he suddenly saw that he
had no business climbing. He had been seized just as he was about to
mount a glorious height from which he was sure other heights were
visible, when a rude hand had brushed him back and dropped him as
though he had been some crawling reptile, down, down, down, at the very
bottom of things. And the worst of all was that he might not climb
back. He might look up, he might know the way up again, but the honor
in him—the only bit of the heights he had carried back to the foot with
him—forbade him to climb to the dizzy heights of glory, for they
belonged to others: those whom fortune favored, and on whose escutcheon
there was no taint of shame.

And why should it be that some souls should be more favored than
others? What had he, for instance, to do with his birth? He would not
have chosen shame, if shame there was. Yet shame or not he was branded
with it for life because his origin was enveloped in mystery. The
natural conclusion was that sin had had its part.

Then through the boy’s mind there tumbled a confusion of questions all
more or less unanswerable, in the midst of which he slept.

He seemed to have wandered out into the open again with the pines he
loved above him, and underneath the springy needles with their slippery
resinous softness; and he lay looking up into the changeless blue that
covered all the heights, asking all the tumultuous questions that
throbbed through his heart, asking them of God.

Silently the noises of the city slunk away and dropped into the
ceaseless calm of the southland he had left. The breeze fanned his
cheek, the pines whispered, and a rippling bird song touched his soul
with peace. A quietness came down upon his troubled spirit, and he was
satisfied to take the burden that had been laid him and to bear it
greatly. The peace was upon him when he awoke, far into the next
morning.

The hot June sun streamed into his stuffy room and fell aslant the bed.
He was sodden and heavy with the heat and the oppression of his
garments. His head ached, and he felt as nearly ill as he had ever felt
in his life. The spectre of the day before confronted him in all its
torturing baldness, but he faced it now and looked it squarely in the
eyes. It was not conquered yet, not by any means. The sharp pain of its
newness was just as great, and the deep conviction was still there that
it was because of wrong that this burden was laid upon him, but there
was an adjustment of his soul to the inevitable that there had not been
at first.

The boy lay still for a few minutes looking out upon a new life in
which everything had to be readjusted to the idea of himself and his
new limitations. Heretofore in his mind there had been no height that
was not his for the climbing. Now, the heights were his, but he would
not climb because the heights themselves might be marred by his
presence. It was wrong, it was unfair, that things should be so; but
they were so, and as long as Sin and Wrong were in the world they would
be so.

He must look upon life as he had looked upon every contest through his
education. There were always things to be borne, hard things, but that
only made the conquest greater. He must face this thing and win.

And what had he lost that had been his before? Not the beautiful girl
who had been the idol of his heart all these years. She was still
there, alive and well, and more beautiful than ever. His devotion might
yet stand between her and harm if need arose. True, he had lost the
hope of companionship with her, but that had been the growth of a day.
He had never had much of it before, nor expected it when he came North.
It would have been a glory and a joy beyond expression, but one could
live without those things and be true. There was some reason for it all
somewhere in the infinite he was sure.

It was not like the ordinary boy to philosophize in this way, but
Michael had never been an ordinary boy. Ever his soul had been open to
the greatness of the universe and sunny toward the most trying
surroundings. He had come out of the hardest struggle his soul had yet
met, but he had come out a man. There were lines about his pleasant
mouth that had not been there the day before, which spoke of strength
and self-control. There were new depths in his eyes as of one who had
looked down, and seen things unspeakable, having to number himself with
the lowly.

A new thought came to him while he lay there trying to take in the
change that had come to him. The thought of his childhood companions,
the little waifs like himself who came from the offscourings of the
earth. They had loved him he knew. He recalled slowly, laboriously,
little incidents from his early history. They were dim and uncertain,
many of them, but little kindnesses stood out. A bad cut on his foot
once and how Buck had bathed it and bound it up in dirty rags, doing
double duty with the newspapers for several days to save his friend
from stepping. There was a bitter cold night way back as far as he
could remember when he had had bad luck, and came among the others
supperless and almost freezing. Buck had shared a crust and found a
warm boiler-room where they crawled out of sight and slept. There were
other incidents, still more blurred in his memory, but enough to recall
how loyal the whole little gang had been to him. He saw once more their
faces when they heard he was going away to college; blanched with
horror at the separation, lighting with pleasure when he promised to
return!

The years, how they had changed and separated! Where were they, these
who really belonged to him; who were his rightful companions? What had
the years done to them? And he had a duty toward them unperformed. How
was it that he had been in the city all these hours and not even
thought of going to look for those loyal souls who had stood by him so
faithfully when they were all mere babies? He must go at once. He had
lost his head over attempting to reach things that were not for him,
and this shock had come to set him straight.

Gravely he rose at last, these thoughts surging through his brain.

The heat, the stifling air of the room, his recent struggling and the
exhausting stupor made him reel dizzily as he got up, but his mettle
was up now and he set his lips and went about making himself neat. He
longed for a dip in the crystal waters of the little lake at college.
The tiny wash-bowl of his room proved a poor substitute with its tepid
water and diminutive towel.

He went out and breakfasted carefully as if it were a duty, and then,
with his map in his pocket, started out to find his old haunts.




Chapter VIII


Thirteen years in New York had brought many changes. Some of the
well-remembered landmarks were gone and new buildings in their places.
A prosperous looking saloon quite palatial in its entrance marked the
corner where he used to sell papers. It used to be a corner grocery
store. Saloons! Always and everywhere there were saloons! Michael
looked at them wonderingly. He had quite forgotten them in his exile,
for the college influence had barred them out from its vicinity.

The boy Mikky had been familiar enough with saloons, looking upon them
as a necessary evil, where drinking fathers spent the money that ought
to have bought their children food. He had been in and out of them
commonly enough selling his papers, warming his feet, and getting a
crust now and then from an uneaten bit on the lunch counter. Sometimes
there had been glasses to drain, but Mikky with his observing eyes had
early decided that he would have none of the stuff that sent men home
to curse their little children.

College influence, while there had been little said on the subject, had
filled the boy with horror for saloons and drunkards. He stood appalled
now as he turned at last into an alley where familiar objects,
doorsteps, turnings, cellars, met his gaze, with grog shops all along
the way and sentinelling every corner.

A strange feeling came over him as memory stirred by long-forgotten
sights awoke. Was this really the place, and was that opening beyond
the third steps the very blind alley where Janie used to live? Things
were so much dirtier, so much, worse in every way than he remembered
them.

He hurried on, not noticing the attention he was attracting from the
wretched little children in the gutters, though he scanned them all
eagerly, hurriedly, with the wild idea that Buck and the rest might be
among them.

Yes, the alley was there, dark and ill-smelling as ever, and in its dim
recesses on a dirty step a woman’s figure hunched; a figure he knew at
once that he had seen before and in that very spot. Who was she? What
had they called her? Sally? Aunt Sal?

He hurried up to where she sat looking curiously, apathetically at him;
her gray hair straggling down on her dirty cotton frock open at the
neck over shrivelled yellow skin; soiled old hands hanging carelessly
over slatternly garments; stockingless feet stuck into a great tattered
pair of men’s shoes. Nothing seemed changed since he saw her last save
that the hair had been black then, and the skin not so wrinkled. Aunt
Sally had been good natured always, even when she was drunk; her
husband, when he came home was always drunk also, but never good
natured. These things came back to the boy as he stood looking down at
the wreck of a woman before him.

The bleary eyes looked up unknowing, half resentful of his intrusion.

“Aunt Sally!” impulsively cried the boyish voice. “Aren’t you Aunt
Sally?”

The woman looked stupidly surprised.

“I be,” she said thickly, “but wot’s that to yous? I beant no hant o’
yourn.”

“Don’t you remember Mikky?” he asked almost anxiously, for now the
feeling had seized him that he must make her remember. He must find out
if he could whether anything was known of his origin. Perhaps she could
help him. Perhaps, after all, he might be able to trace his family, and
find at least no disgrace upon him.

“Mikky!” the woman repeated dully. She shook her head.

“Mikky!” she said again stolidly, “Wot’s Mikky?”

“Don’t you remember Mikky the little boy that sold papers and brought
you water sometimes? Once you gave me a drink of soup from your kettle.
Think!”

A dim perception came into the sodden eyes.

“Thur wus a Mikky long ago,” she mused. “He had hair like a h’angel,
bless the sweet chile; but he got shot an’ never come back. That war
long ago.”

Michael took off his hat and the little light in the dark alley seemed
to catch and tangle in the gleam of his hair.

The old woman started as though she had seen a vision.

“The saints presarve us!” she cried aghast, shrinking back into her
doorway with raised hands, “an’ who be yez? Yeh looks enough like the
b’y to be the father of ’im. He’d hair loike the verra sunshine itself.
Who be yez? Spake quick. Be ye man, b’y, er angel?”

There was something in the woman’s tone that went to the heart of the
lonely boy, even while he recoiled from the repulsive creature before
him.

“I am just Mikky, the boy, grown a little older,” he said gently, “and
I’ve come back to see the place where I used to live, and find the
people I used to know.”

“Y’ve lost yer way thin fer shure!” said the woman slightly recovering
her equilibrium. “The loikes uv yous nivver lived in dis place; fer ef
yous ain’t angel you’s gintulmun; an’ no gintulmun ivver cum from the
loikes o’ this. An’ besoides, the b’y Mikky, I tel’d yez, was shot an’
nivver comed back no more. He’s loikely up wid de angels where he
b’longs.”

“Yes, I was shot,” said Michael, “but I wasn’t killed. A good man sent
me to college, and I’ve just graduated and come back to look up my
friends.”

“Frinds, is it, ye’ll be afther a findin’? Thin ye’d bist look
ilsewhar, fer thur’s no one in this alley fit to be frinds with the
loikes uv you. Ef that’s wot they does with b’ys at co-lidge a pity
’tis more uv um can’t git shot an’ go there. But ef all yous tell is
thrue, moi advice to yez is, juist bate it as hoird as ivver yez kin
out’n yere, an’ don’t yez nivver set oies on this alley agin. Ye’d
better stay to co-lidge all the days uv yer loife than set fut here
agin, fer juist let ’em got holt uv yez an’ they’ll spile the pretty
face uv ye. Look thar!” she pointed tragically toward a wreck of
humanity that reeled into the alley just then. “Would yez loike to be
loike that? My mon come home loike that ivvery day of his loife, rist
his bones, an’ he nivver knowed whin he died.”

Maudlin tears rolled down the poor creature’s cheeks, for they could be
no tears of affection. Her man’s departure from this life could have
been but a relief. Michael recoiled from the sight with a sickening
sadness. Nevertheless he meant to find out if this woman knew aught of
his old friends, or of his origin. He rallied his forces to answer her.

“I don’t have to be like that,” he said, “I’ve come down to look up my
friends I tell you, and I want you to tell me if you know anything
about my parents. Did you ever hear anything about me? Did anybody know
who I was or how I came to be here?”

The old woman looked at him only half comprehending, and tried to
gather her scattered faculties, but she shook her grizzled head
hopelessly.

“I ain’t niver laid oies on yea before, an’ how cud I know whar yez cum
from, ner how yez cam to be here?” she answered.

He perceived that it would require patience to extract information from
this source.

“Try to think,” he said more gently. “Can you remember if anyone ever
belonged to the little boy they called Mikky? Was there ever any mother
or father, or—anybody that belonged to him at all.”

Again, she shook her head.

“Niver as Oi knows on. They said he just comed a wee babby to the
coourt a wanderin’ with the other childer, with scarce a rag to his
back, an’ a smile on him like the arch-angel, and some said as how he
niver had no father ner mother, but dthrapped sthraight frum the place
where de angels live.”

“But did no one take care of him, or ever try to find out about him?”
questioned Michael wistfully.

“Foind out, is it? Whist! An’ who would tak toime to foind out whin
ther’s so miny uv their own. Mikky was allus welcome to a bite an’ a
sup ef any uv us had it by. There wuz old Granny Bane with the
rheumatiks. She gave him a bed an’ a bite now an’ agin, till she died,
an afther that he made out to shift fer hisse’f. He was a moighty
indepindint babby.”

“But had he no other name? Mikky what? What was his whole name?”
pursued Michael with an eagerness that could not give up the sought-for
information.

The old woman only stared stupidly.

“Didn’t he have any other name?” There was almost despair in his tone.

Another shake of the head.

“Juist Mikky!” she said and her eyes grew dull once more.

“Can you tell me if there are any other people living here now that
used to know Mikky? Are there any other men or women who might
remember?”

“How kin Oi tell?” snarled the woman impatiently. “Oi can’t be
bothered.”

Michael stood in troubled silence and the woman turned her head to
watch a neighbor coming down the street with a basket in her hand. It
would seem that her visitor interested her no longer. She called out
some rough, ribaldry to the woman who glanced up fiercely and deigned
no further reply. Then Michael tried again.

“Could you tell me of the boys who used to go with Mikky?”

“No, Oi can’t,” she answered crossly, “Oi can’t be bothered. Oi don’t
know who they was.”

“There was Jimmie and Sam and Bobs and Buck. Surely you remember Buck,
and little Janie. Janie who died after Mikky went away?”

The bleared eyes turned full upon him again.

“Janie? Fine Oi remimber Janie. They had a white hurse to her, foiner’n
any iver cum to the coourt before. The b’ys stayed up two noights
selling to git the money fur it, an’ Buck he stayed stiddy while she
was aloive. Pity she doied.”

“Where is Buck?” demanded Michael with a sudden twinging of his heart
strings that seemed to bring back the old love and loyalty to his
friend. Buck had needed him perhaps all these years and he had not
known.

“That’s whot the _po_lice would like fer yez to answer, I’m thinkin’!”
laughed old Sal. “They wanted him bad fer breakin’ into a house an’
mos’ killin’ the lady an’ gittin’ aff wid de jewl’ry. He beat it dat
noight an’ ain’t none o’ us seen him these two year. He were a slick
one, he were awful smart at breakin’ an’ stealin’. Mebbe Jimmie knows,
but Jimmie, he’s in jail, serving his time fer shootin’ a man in the
hand durin’ a dhrunken fight. Jimmie, he’s no good. Never wuz. He’s
jest like his foither. Bobs, he got both legs cut aff, bein’ runned
over by a big truck, and he doied in the horspittle. Bobs he were
better dead. He’d uv gone loike the rist. Sam, he’s round these parts
mostly nights. Ye’ll hev to come at noight ef yez want to see him.
Mebbe he knows more ’bout Buck’n he’ll tell.”

Sick at heart Michael put question, after question but no more
information was forthcoming and the old woman showed signs of
impatience again. Carefully noting what she said about Sam and getting
a few facts as to the best time and place to find him Michael turned
and walked sadly out of the alley. He did not see the alert eyes of old
Sal following him, nor the keen expression of her face as she stretched
her neck to see which way he turned as he left the alley. As soon as he
was out of sight she shuffled down from her doorstep to the corner and
peered after him through the morning sunshine. Then she went slowly,
thoughtfully back to her doorstep.

“Now whut in the divil could he be a wantin’ wid Buck an’ Sammie?” she
muttered to herself. “All that story ’bout his bein’ Mikky was puttin’
it on my eye, I’ll giv warnin’ to Sammie this night, an’ ef Buck’s in
these pairts he better git out west some’res. The _po_lice uv got onto
’im. But hoiwiver did they know he knowed Mikky? Poor little angel
Mikky! I guv him the shtraight about Bobs an’ Jimmie, fer they wuz
beyant his troublin’ but he’ll niver foind Sammie from the directin’ I
sayed.”

Michael, sorrowing, horror-filled, conscience-stricken, took his way to
a restaurant and ate his dinner, thinking meanwhile what he could do
for the boys. Could he perhaps visit Jimmie in prison and make his life
more comfortable in little ways? Could he plan something for him when
he should come out? Could he help Sam? The old woman had said little
about Sam’s condition. Michael thought he might likely by this time
have built up a nice little business for himself. Perhaps he had a
prosperous news stand in some frequented place. He looked forward
eagerly to meeting him again. Sam had always been a silent child
dependent on the rest, but he was one of the little gang and Michael’s
heart warmed toward his former comrade. It could not be that he would
find him so loathsome and repulsive as the old woman Sal. She made him
heart-sick. Just to think of drinking soup from her dirty kettle! How
could he have done it? And yet, he knew no better life then, and he was
hungry, and a little child.

So Michael mused, and all the time with a great heart-hunger to know
what had become of Buck. Could he and Sam together plan some way to
find Buck and help him out of his trouble? How could Buck have done
anything so dreadful? And yet even as he thought it he remembered that
“pinching” had not been a crime in his childhood days, not unless one
was found out. How had these principles, or lack of principles been
replaced gradually in his own life without his realizing it at all? It
was all strange and wonderful. Practically now he, Michael, had been
made into a new creature since he left New York, and so gradually, and
pleasantly that he had not at all realized the change that was going on
in him.

Yet as he thought and marvelled there shot through him a thought like a
pang, that perhaps after all it had not been a good thing, this making
him into a new creature, with new desires and aims and hopes that could
never be fulfilled. Perhaps he would have been happier, better off, if
he had never been taken out of that environment and brought to
appreciate so keenly another one where he did not belong, and could
never stay, since this old environment was the one where he must stay
whether he would or no. He put the thought from him as unworthy at
once, yet the sharpness of the pang lingered and with it a vision of
Starr’s vivid face as he had seen her two nights before in her father’s
home, before he knew that the door of that home was shut upon him
forever.

Michael passed the day in idly wandering about the city trying to piece
together his old knowledge, and the new, and know the city in which he
had come to dwell.

It was nearing midnight, when Michael, by the advice of old Sal, and
utterly fearless in his ignorance, entered the court where his babyhood
had been spent.

The alley was dark and murky with the humidity of the summer night; but
unlike the morning hours it was alive with a writhing, chattering,
fighting mass of humanity. Doorways were overflowing. The narrow alley
itself seemed fairly thronging with noisy, unhappy men and women.
Hoarse laughs mingled with rough cursing, shot through with an
occasional scream. Stifling odors lurked in cellar doorways and struck
one full in the face unawares. Curses seemed to be the setting for all
conversation whether angry or jolly. Babies tumbled in the gutter and
older children fought over some scrap of garbage.

Appalled, Michael halted and almost turned back. Then, remembering that
this was where he had come from,—where he belonged,—and that his duty,
his obligation, was to find his friends, he went steadily forward.

There sat old Sal, a belligerent gleam in her small sodden eyes. Four
men on a step opposite, with a candle stood between them, were playing
cards. Sal muttered a word as Michael approached and the candle was
suddenly extinguished. It looked as if one had carelessly knocked it
down to the pavement, but the glare nickered into darkness and Michael
could no longer see the men’s faces. He had wondered if one of them was
Sam. But when he rubbed his eyes and looked again in the darkness the
four men were gone and the step was occupied by two children holding a
sleeping baby between them and staring at him in open mouthed
admiration.

The flickering weird light of the distant street lamps, the noise and
confusion, the odors and curses filled him anew with a desire to flee,
but he would not let himself turn back. Never had Michael turned from
anything that was his duty from fear or dislike of anything.

He tried to enter into conversation with old Sal again, but she would
have none of him. She had taken “a wee drapth” and was alert and
suspicious. In fact, the whole alley was on the alert for this elegant
stranger who was none of theirs, and who of course could have come but
to spy on some one. He wanted Sam, therefore Sam was hidden well and at
that moment playing a crafty game in the back of a cellar on the top of
an old beer barrel, by the light of a wavering candle; well guarded by
sentinels all along the difficult way. Michael could have no more found
him under those circumstances than he could have hoped to find a needle
in a haystack the size of the whole city of New York.

He wandered for two hours back and forth through the alley seeing
sights long since forgotten, hearing words unspeakable; following out
this and that suggestion of the interested bystanders; always coming
back without finding Sam. He had not yet comprehended the fact that he
was not intended to find Sam. He had taken these people into his
confidence just as he had always taken everyone into his confidence,
and they were playing him false. If they had been the dwellers on Fifth
Avenue he would not have expected them to be interested in him and his
plans and desires; but these were his very own people, at least the
“ownest” he had in the world, and among them he had once gone freely,
confidently. He saw no reason why they should have changed toward him,
though he felt the antagonism in the atmosphere as the night wore on,
even as he had felt it in the Endicott house the day before.

Heartsick and baffled at last he took his way slowly, looking back many
times, and leaving many messages for Sam. He felt as if he simply could
not go back to even so uncomfortable a bed an he called his own in his
new lodgings without having found some clew to his old comrades.

Standing at the corner of the alley opposite the flaunting lights of
the saloon he looked back upon the swarming darkness of the alley and
his heart filled with a great surging wave of pity, love, and sorrow.
Almost at his feet in a dark shadow of a doorway a tiny white-faced boy
crouched fast asleep on the stone threshold. It made him think of
little Bobs, and his own barren childhood, and a mist came before his
eyes as he looked up, up at the sky where the very stars seemed small
and far away as if the sky had nothing to do with this part of the
earth.

“Oh, God!” he said under his breath. “Oh, God! I must do something for
them!”

And then as if the opportunity came with the prayer there reeled into
view a little group of people, three or four men and a woman.

The woman was talking in a high frightened voice and protesting. The
men caught hold of her roughly, laughing and flinging out coarse jests.
Then another man came stealing from the darkness of the alley and
joined the group, seizing the woman by the shoulders and speaking words
to her too vile for repetition. In terrible fear the girl turned, for
Michael could see, now that she was nearer, that she was but a young
girl, and that she was pretty. Instantly he thought of Starr and his
whole soul rose in mighty wrath that any man should dare treat any girl
as he had seen these do. Then the girl screamed and struggled to get
away, crying: “It ain’t true, it ain’t true! Lem’me go! I won’t go with
you—”

Instantly Michael was upon them, his powerful arms and supple body
dashing the men right and left. And because of the suddenness of the
attack coming from this most unexpected quarter,—for Michael had stood
somewhat in the shadow—and because of the cowardliness of all bullies,
for the moment he was able to prevail against all four, just long
enough for the girl to slip like a wraith from their grasp and
disappear into the shadows.

Then when the men, dazed from surprise, though not seriously hurt,
discovered that their prey was gone and that a stranger from the higher
walks of life had frustrated their plans they fell upon him in their
wrath.

Michael brave always, and well trained in athletics, parried their
blows for an instant, but the man, the one who had come from the
shadows of the alley, whose face was evil, stole up behind and stabbed
him in the shoulder. The sudden faintness that followed made him less
capable of defending himself. He felt he was losing his senses, and the
next blow from one of the men sent him reeling into the street where he
fell heavily, striking his head against the curbing. There was a loud
cry of murder from a woman’s shrill voice, the padded rush of the
villains into their holes, the distant ring of a policeman’s whistle,
and then all was quiet as a city night could be. Michael lay white and
still with his face looking up to the faint pitying moon so far away
and his beautiful hair wet with the blood that was flowing out on the
pavement. There he lay on the edge of the world that was his own and
would not own him. He had come to his own and his own received him not.




Chapter IX


Michael awoke in the hospital with a bandage around his head and a
stinging pain in his shoulder whenever he tried to move.

Back in his inner consciousness there sounded the last words he heard
before he fell, but he could not connect them with anything at first:

“Hit him again, Sam!”

Those were the words. What did they mean? Had he heard them or merely
dreamed them? And where was he?

A glance about the long room with its rows of white beds each with an
occupant answered his question. He closed his eyes again to be away
from all those other eyes and think.

Sam! He had been looking for Sam. Had Sam then come at last? Had Sam
hit him? Had Sam recognized him? Or was it another Sam?

But there was something queer the matter with his head, and he could
not think. He put up his right arm to feel the bandage and the pain in
his shoulder stung again. Somehow to his feverish fancy it seemed the
sting of Mrs. Endicott’s words to him. He dropped his hand feebly and
the nurse gave him something in a spoon. Then half dreaming he fell
asleep, with a vision of Starr’s face as he had seen her last.

Three weeks he lay upon that narrow white bed, and learned to face the
battalion of eyes from the other narrow beds around him; learned to
distinguish the quiet sounds of the marble lined room from the rumble
of the unknown city without; and when the rumble was the loudest his
heart ached with the thought of the alley and all the horrible sights
and sounds that seemed written in letters of fire across his spirit.

He learned to look upon the quiet monotonous world of ministrations as
a haven from the world outside into which he must presently go; and in
his weakened condition he shrank from the new life. It seemed to be so
filled with disappointments and burdens of sorrow.

But one night a man in his ward died and was carried, silent and
covered from the room. Some of his last moaning utterances had reached
the ears of his fellow sufferers with a swift vision of his life and
his home, and his mortal agony for the past, now that he was leaving it
all.

That night Michael could not sleep, for the court and the alley, and
the whole of sunken humanity were pressing upon his heart. It seemed to
be his burden that he must give up all his life’s hopes to bear. And
there he had it out with himself and accepted whatever should come to
be his duty.

Meantime the wound on his head was healed, the golden halo had covered
the scar, and the cut in his shoulder, which had been only a flesh,
wound, was doing nicely. Michael, was allowed to sit up, and then to be
about the room for a day or two.

It was in those days of his sitting up when the sun which crept in for
an hour a day reached and touched to flame his wonderful hair, that the
other men of the ward began to notice him. He seemed to them all as
somehow set apart from the rest; one who was lifted above what held
them down to sin and earth. His countenance spoke of strength and
self-control, the two things that many of those men lacked, either
through constant sinning or through constant fighting with poverty and
trouble, and so, as he began to get about they sent for him to come to
their bedsides, and as they talked one and another of them poured out
his separate tale of sorrow and woe, till Michael felt he could bear no
more. He longed for power, great power to help; power to put these
wretched men on their feet again to lead a new life, power to crush
some of the demons in human form who were grinding them down to earth.
Oh! for money and knowledge and authority!

Here was a man who had lost both legs in a defective machine he was
running in a factory. He was a skilled workman and had a wife and three
little ones. But he was useless now at his trade. No one wanted a man
with no legs. He might better be dead. Damages? No, there was no hope
of that. He had accepted three hundred dollars to sign a release. He
had to. His wife and children were starving and they must have the
money then or perish. There was no other way. Besides, what hope had he
in fighting a great corporation? He was a poor man, a stranger in this
country, with no friends. The company had plenty who were willing to
swear it was the man’s own fault.

Yonder was another who had tried to asphyxiate himself by turning on
the gas in his wretched little boarding-house room because he had lost
his position on account of ill health, and the firm wished to put a
younger man in his place. He had almost succeeded in taking himself out
of this life.

Next him was one, horribly burned by molten metal which he had been
compelled to carry without adequate precautions, because it was a
cheaper method of handling the stuff and men cost less than machinery.
You could always get more men.

The man across from him was wasted away from insufficient food. He had
been out of work for months, and what little money he could pick up in
odd jobs had gone mostly to his wife and children.

And so it was throughout the ward. On almost every life sin,—somebody’s
sin,—had left its mark. There were one or two cheery souls who, though
poor, were blest with friends and a home of some kind and were looking
forward to a speedy restoration; but these were the exception. Nearly
all the others blamed someone else for their unhappy condition and in
nearly every case someone else was undoubtedly to blame, even though in
most cases each individual had been also somewhat responsible.

All this Michael gradually learned, as he began his practical study of
sociology. As he learned story after story, and began to formulate the
facts of each he came to three conclusions: First, that there was not
room enough in the city for these people to have a fair chance at the
great and beautiful things of life. Second, that the people of the
cities who had the good things were getting them all for themselves and
cared not a straw whether the others went without. Third, that somebody
ought to be doing something about it, and why not he?

Of course it was absurd for a mere boy just out of college, with
scarcely a cent to his name—and not a whole name to call his own—to
think of attempting to attack the great problem of the people
single-handed; but still he felt he was called to do it, and he meant
to try.

He hadn’t an idea at this time whether anybody else had seen it just
this way or not. He had read a little of city missions, and charitable
enterprises, but they had scarcely reached his inner consciousness. His
impression gathered from such desultory reading had been that the
effort in that direction was sporadic and ineffective. And so, in his
gigantic ignorance and egotism, yet with his exquisite sensitiveness to
the inward call, Michael henceforth set himself to espouse the cause of
the People.

Was he not one of them? Had he not been born there that he might be one
of them, and know what they had to suffer? Were they not his kindred so
far as he had any kindred? Had he not been educated and brought into
contact with higher things that he might know what these other human
souls might be if they had the opportunity? If he had known a little
more about the subject he would have added “and if they _would_.” But
he did not; he supposed all souls were as willing to be uplifted as he
had been.

Michael went out from the hospital feeling that his life work was
before him. The solemn pledge he had taken as a little child to return
and help his former companions became a voluntary pledge of his young
manhood. He knew very little indeed about the matter, but he felt much,
and he was determined to do, wherever the way opened. He had no doubt
but that the way would open.

“Now young man, take care of yourself,” said the doctor in parting from
his patient a few days later, “and for the land’s sake keep away from
back alleys at night. When you know a little more about New York you’ll
learn that it’s best to keep just as far away from such places as
possible. Don’t go fooling around under the impression that you can
convert any of those blackguards. They need to be blown up, every one
of them, and the place obliterated. Mind, I say, keep away from them.”

Michael smiled and thanked the doctor, and walked unsteadily down the
hospital steps on feet that were strangely wobbly for him. But Michael
did not intend to obey the doctor. He had been turning the matter over
in his mind and he had a plan. And that very night about ten o’clock he
went back to the alley.

Old Sal was sitting on her doorstep a little more intoxicated than the
last time, and the young man’s sudden appearance by her side startled
her into an Irish howl.

“The saints presarve us!” she cried tottering to her feet. “He’s cum
back to us agin, sure he has! There’s no killin’ him! He’s an angel
shure. B’ys rin! bate it! bate it! The angel’s here agin!”

There was a sound of scurrying feet and the place seemed to suddenly
clear of the children that had been under foot. One or two scowling
men, or curiously apathetic women in whose eyes the light of life had
died and been left unburied, peered from dark doorways.

Michael stood quietly until the howling of Sal had subsided, and then
he spoke in a clear tone.

“Can you tell if Sam has been around here tonight? Is he anywhere near
here now?”

There was no answer for a minute but some one growled out the
information that he might and then he might not have been. Some one
else said he had just gone away but they didn’t know where. Michael
perceived that it was a good deal as it had been before.

“I have brought a message for him, a letter,” he said, and he spoke so
that anyone near-by might hear. “Will you give it to him when he comes.
He will want to see it, I am sure. It is important. I think he will be
glad to get it. It contains good news about an old friend of his.”

He held out the letter courteously to old Sal, and she looked down at
its white crispness as though it had been a message from the lower
regions sent to call her to judgment. A letter, white, square-cornered
and clean, with clear, firm inscription, had never come within her gaze
before. Old Sal had never learned to read. The writing meant nothing to
her, but the whole letter represented a mystic communication from
another world.

Instinctively the neighbors gathered nearer to look at the letter, and
Sal, seeing herself the centre of observation, reached forward a dirty
hand wrapped in a corner of her apron, and took the envelope as though
it had been hot, eyeing it all the while fearfully.

Then with his easy bow and touching his hat to her as though she had
been a queen, Michael turned and walked away out of the alley.

Old Sal stood watching him, a kind of wistful wonder in her bleary
eyes. No gentleman had ever tipped his hat to her, and no man had ever
done her reverence. From her little childhood she had been brought up
to forfeit the respect of men. Perhaps it had never entered her dull
mind before that she might have been aught but what she was; and that
men might have given her honor.

The neighbors too were awed for the moment and stood watching in
silence, till when Michael turned the corner out of sight, Sal
exclaimed:

“Now that’s the angel, shure! No gintlemin would iver uv tipped his ’at
to the loikes of Sal. Saints presarve us! That we should hev an angel
in this alley!”

When Michael reached his lodging he found that he was trembling so from
weakness and excitement that he could scarcely drag himself up the
three flights to his room. So had his splendid strength been reduced by
trouble and the fever that came with his wounds.

He lay down weakly and tried to think. Now he had done his best to find
Sam. If Sam did not come in answer to his letter he must wait until he
found him. He would not give up. So he fell asleep with the burden on
his heart.

The letter was as follows:

Dear Sam:
    You can’t have forgotten Mikky who slept with you in the boiler
    room, and with whom you shared your crusts. You remember I promised
    when I went away to college I would come back and try to make
    things better for you all? And now I have come and I am anxious to
    find the fellows and see what we can do together to make life
    better in the old alley and make up for some of the hard times when
    we were children. I have been down to the alley but can get no
    trace of you. I spent the best part of one night hunting you and
    then a slight accident put me in the hospital for a few days, but I
    am well now and am anxious to find you all. I want to talk over old
    times, and find out where Buck and Jim are; and hear all about
    Janie and little Bobs.
    I am going to leave this letter with Aunt Sally, hoping she will
    give it to you. I have given my address below and should be glad to
    have you come and see me at my room, or if you would prefer I will
    meet you wherever you say, and we will go together and have
    something to eat to celebrate.
    Hoping to hear from you very soon, I am as always,


Your brother and friend,


MIKKY.


“Address, Michael Endicott, No —— West 23rd St.”

A few days later a begrimed envelope addressed in pencil was brought to
the door by the postman. Michael with sinking heart opened it. It read:

MiKY ef yo be reely hym cum to KelLys karner at 10 tumoroW nite. Ef you
are mIK youz thee old whissel an doante bring no une wit yer Ef yO du I
wunt be thar.


SAM.


Michael seated on his lumpy bed puzzled this out, word by word, until
he made fairly good sense of it. He was to go to Kelly’s corner. How
memory stirred at the words. Kelly’s corner was beyond the first turn
of the alley, it was at the extreme end of an alley within an alley,
and had no outlet except through Kelly’s saloon. Only the “gang” knew
the name, “Kelly’s Corner,” for it was not really a corner at all only
a sort of pocket or hiding place so entitled by Buck for his own and
“de kids” private purpose. If Michael had been at all inclined to be a
coward since his recent hard usage in the vicinity of the alley he
would have kept away from Kelly’s corner, for once in there with
enemies, and alone, no policeman’s club, nor hospital ambulance would
ever come to help. The things that happened at Kelly’s corner never got
into the newspapers.

Memory and instinct combined to make this perfectly dear to Michael’s
mind, and if he needed no other warning those words of the letter,
“Don’t bring no one with you. If you do, I won’t be there,” were
sufficient to make him wise.

Yet Michael never so much as thought of not keeping the appointment.
His business was to find Sam, and it mattered as little to him now that
danger stood in the way as it had the day when he flung his neglected
little body in front of Starr Endicott and saved her from the
assassin’s bullet. He would go, of course, and go alone. Neither did it
occur to him to take the ordinary precaution of leaving his name and
whereabouts at the police station to be searched for in case he did not
turn up in reasonable time. It was all in the day’s work and Michael
thought no more about the possible peril he was facing than he had
thought of broken limbs and bloody noses the last hour before a
football scrimmage.

There was something else in the letter that interested Michael and
stirred the old memories. That old whistle! Of course he had not
forgotten that, although he had not used it much among his college
companions. It was a strange, weird, penetrating sound, between a call
and whistle. He and Buck had made it up between them. It was their old
signal. When Michael went to college he had held it sacred as belonging
strictly to his old friends, and never, unless by himself in the woods
where none but the birds and the trees could hear, had he let its
echoes ring. Sometimes he had flung it forth and startled the mocking
birds, and once he had let it ring into the midst of his astonished
comrades in Florida when he was hidden from their view and they knew
not who had made the sound. He tried it now softly, and then louder and
louder, until with sudden fear he stopped lest his landlady should
happen to come up that way and think him insane. But undoubtedly he
could give the old signal.

The next night at precisely ten o’clock Michael’s ringing step sounded
down the alley; firm, decisive, secure. Such assurance must Daniel have
worn as he faced the den of lions; and so went the three Hebrew
children into the fiery furnace.

“It’s him! It’s the angel!” whispered old Sal who was watching. “Oi
tould yez he’d come fer shure!”

“He’s got his nerve with him!” murmured a girl with bold eyes and a
coarse kind of beauty, as she drew further back into the shadow of the
doorway. “He ain’t comin’ out again so pretty I guess. Not if Sam don’t
like. Mebbe he ain’t comin’ out ’tall!”

“Angels has ways, me darlint!” chuckled Sal. “He’ll come back al
roight, ye’ll see!”

On walked Michael, down the alley to the narrow opening that to the
uninitiated was not an opening between the buildings at all, and
slipped in the old way. He had thought it all out in the night. He was
sure he knew just how far beyond Sal’s house it was; on into the fetid
air of the close dark place, the air that struck him in the face like a
hot, wet blanket as he kept on.

It was very still all about when he reached the point known as Kelly’s
corner. It had not been so as he remembered it. It had been the place
of plots, the hatching of murders and robberies. Had it so changed that
it was still tonight? He stood for an instant hesitating. Should he
wait a while, or knock on some door? Would it be any use to call?

But the instinct of the slums was upon him again, his birthright. It
seemed to drop upon him from the atmosphere, a sort of stealthy
patience. He would wait. Something would come. He must do as he had
done with the birds of the forest when he wished to watch their habits.
He must stand still unafraid and show that he was harmless.

So he stood three, perhaps five minutes, then softly at first and
gradually growing clearer, he gave the call that he had given years
before, a little barefoot, hungry child in that very spot many times.

The echo died away. There was nothing to make him know that a group of
curious alley-dwellers huddled at the mouth of the trap in which he
stood, watching with eyes accustomed to the darkness, to see what would
happen; to block his escape if escape should be attempted.

Then out of the silence a sigh seemed to come, and out of the shadows
one shadow unfolded itself and came forward till it stood beside him.
Still Michael did not stir; but softly, through, half-open lips,
breathed the signal once more.

Sibilant, rougher, with a hint of menace as it issued forth the signal
was answered this time, and with a thrill of wonder the mantle of the
old life fell upon Michael once more. He was Mikky—only grown more
wise. Almost the old vernacular came to his tongue.

“Hi! Sam! That you?”

The figure in the darkness seemed to stiffen with sudden attention. The
voice was like, and yet not like the Mikky of old.

“Wot yous want?” questioned a voice gruffly.

“I want you, Sam. I want to see if you look as you used to, and I want
to know about the boys. Can’t we go where there’s light and talk a
little? I’ve been days hunting you. I’ve come back because I promised,
you know. You expected me to come back some day, didn’t you, Sam?”

Michael was surprised to find how eager he was for the answer to this
question.

“Aw, what ye givin’ us?” responded the suspicious Sam. “D’yous s’pose I
b’lieve all that gag about yer comin’ here to he’p we’uns? Wot would a
guy like yous wid all dem togs an’ all dem fine looks want wid us? Yous
has got above us. Yous ain’t no good to us no more.”

Sam scratched a match on his trousers and lit an old pipe that he held
between his teeth, but as the match flared up and showed his own face a
lowering brow, shifty eyes, a swarthy, unkempt visage, sullen and sly,
the shifty eyes were not looking at the pipe but up at the face above
him which shone out white and fine with its gold halo in the little
gleam in the dark court. The watchers crowding at the opening of the
passage saw his face, and almost fancied there were soft shadowy wings
behind him. It was thus with old Sal’s help that Michael got his name
again, “The Angel.” It was thus he became the “angel of the alley.”

“Sam!

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