he
youngest. The oldest was only ten years old. She was the head of the
house. She had the pluck of a woman. We got along somehow, until one
day, when she and I were scrubbing the floor, she caught cold. She died
in three days."

Here he paused; and, without glancing at Miss Raglan, who sat very
still, but looking at him, he lighted his cigar.

"Then things got worse. My father took to drinking hard, and we had
mighty little to eat. I chored around, doing odd things in the village.
I have often wondered that people didn't see the stuff that was in me,
and give me a chance. They didn't, though. As for my relatives: one was
a harness-maker. He sent me out in the dead of winter to post bills for
miles about, and gave me ten cents for it. Didn't even give me a meal.
Twenty years after he came to me and wanted to borrow a hundred dollars.
I gave him five hundred on condition that he'd not come near me for the
rest of his natural life.

"The next thing I did was to leave home--'run away,' I suppose, is the
way to put it. I got to Boston, and went for a cabin-boy on a steamer;
travelled down to Panama, and from there to Brazil. At Brazil I got on
another ship, and came round to San Francisco. I got into trouble in San
Francisco with the chief mate of the Flying Polly, because I tried to
teach him his business. One of the first things I learned in life was
not to interfere with people who had a trade and didn't understand
it. In San Francisco I got out of the situation. I took to selling
newspapers in the streets.

"There wasn't enough money in it. I went for a cabin-boy again, and
travelled to Australia. There, once more, I resigned my position,
chiefly because I wouldn't cheerfully let the Mate bang me about the
quarter-deck. I expect I was a precocious youth, and wasn't exactly
the kind for Sunday-school prizes. In Melbourne I began to speculate.
I found a ticket for the theatre where an American actor--our biggest
actor today--was playing, and I tried to sell it outside the door of the
theatre where they were crowding to see him. The man who bought it was
the actor himself. He gave me two dollars more than the regular price.
I expect he knew from my voice I was an American. Is there anything
peculiar about my voice, Miss Raglan?"

She looked at him quickly, smiled, and said in a low tone: "Yes,
something peculiar. Please go on."

"Well, anyway, he said to me: 'Look here, where did you come from,
my boy?' I told him