us. Father ate all his. But
mine turned into lilies and grew up so high that I felt myself going
with them, and the higher I went the more beautiful grew the birds.
Oh! let me sleep and see if it will be so again."

The outcast raised his gold-headed cane and hobbled up and down the
room with a laced handkerchief at his eyes.

"Great God!" he exclaimed, "another generation is going out, and here
I stay without a stake, playing a lone hand forever and forever."

"Beau," said Reybold, "there's hope while one can feel. Don't go away
until you have a good word from our little passenger."

The outstretched hand of the Northern Congressman was not refused by
the vagrant, whose eccentric sorrow yet amused the Southern
Committeemen.

"Ole Beau's jib-boom of a mustache 'll put his eye out," said Pontotoc
Bibb, "ef he fetches another groan like that."

"Beau's very shaky around the hams an' knees," said Box Izard; "he's
been a good figger, but even figgers can lie ef they stand up too
long."

The little boy unclosed his eyes and looked around on all those
kindly, watching faces.

"Did anybody fire a gun?" he said. "Oh! no. I was only dreaming that I
was hunting with father, and he shot at the beautiful pheasants that
were making such a whirring of wings for me. It was music. When can I
hunt with father, dear gentlemen?"

They all felt the tread of the mighty hunter before the Lord very near
at hand; the hunter whose name is Death.

"There are little tiny birds along the beach," muttered the boy. "They
twitter and run into the surf and back again, and am I one of them? I
must be; for I feel the water cold, and yet I see you all, so kind to
me! Don't whistle for me now; for I don't get much play, gentlemen!
Will the Speaker turn me out if I play with the beach birds just once?
I'm only a little boy working for my mother."

"Dear Uriel," whispered Reybold, "here's Old Beau, to whom you once
spoke angrily. Don't you see him?"

The little boy's eyes came back from far-land somewhere, and he saw
the ruined gamester at his feet.

"Dear Beau," he said, "I can't get off to go home with you. They won't
excuse me, and I give all my money to mother. But you go to the back
gate. Ask for Joyce. She'll give you a nice warm meal every day. Go
with him, Mr. Reybold! If you ask for him it will be all right; for
Joyce--dear Joyce!--she loves you."

The beach birds played again along the strand; the boy ran into the
foam with his