had never let her kiss me except when she
paid me by a copper or a slice of bread laid thickly with blackberry
jam; and I told myself desperately that if she could only come back now,
I would let her do it for nothing! She might even whip me because I'd
torn my trousers on the back fence, and I thought I should hardly feel
it. I recalled her last birthday, when I had gone down to the market
with five cents of my own to buy her some green gage plums, of which she
was very fond, and how on the way up the hill, being tempted, I had
eaten them all myself. At the time I had stifled my remorse with the
assurance that she would far rather I should have the plums than eat
them herself, but this was cold comfort to me to-night while I regretted
my selfishness. If I had only saved her half, as I had meant to do if
the hill had not been quite so long and so steep.

Samuel snuggled closer to me and we both shivered, for the night was
fresh. The house had grown quiet inside; my father and his new wife had
evidently left the kitchen and gone upstairs. As I sat there I realised
suddenly, with a pang, that I could never go inside the door again; and
rising to my feet, I struck a match and fumbled for a piece of chalk in
my pocket. Then standing before the door I wrote in large letters across
the panel:--

"DEAR PA.
I have gone to work.
Your Aff. son,
BEN STARR."

The blue flame of the match flickered an instant along the words; then
it went out, and with Samuel at my heels, I crept through the back gate
and down the alley to the next street, which led to the ragged brow of
the hill. Ahead of me, as I turned off into Main Street, the scattered
lights of the city showed like blurred patches upon the darkness.
Gradually, while I went rapidly downhill, I saw the patches change into
a nebulous cloud, and the cloud resolve itself presently into straight
rows of lamps. Few people were in the streets at that hour, and when I
reached the dim building of the Old Market, I found it cold and
deserted, except for a stray cur or two that snarled at Samuel from a
heap of trodden straw under a covered wagon. Despite the fact that I was
for all immediate purposes as homeless as the snarling curs, I was not
without the quickened pulses which attend any situation that a boy may
turn to an adventure. A high heart for desperate circumstances has never
failed me, and it bore me company that night when I came back again wi