y hurried forward. Tiger's
yelps could be heard plainer and plainer, mingled now with a muffled,
plaintive little wail.

After a while they found a pitiful little heap of sodden rags, lying at
the foot of a mound of earth and stones thrown upon the side of the
track. It was Titee with a broken leg, all wet and miserable and
moaning.

They picked him up tenderly, and started to carry him home. But he
cried and clung to the mother, and begged not to go.

"Ah, mon pauvre enfant, he has the fever!" wailed the mother.

"No, no, it's my old man. He's hungry," sobbed Titee, holding out a
little package. It was the remnants of his dinner, all wet and
rain-washed.

"What old man?" asked the big brother.

"My old man. Oh, please, please don't go home till I see him. I'm not
hurting much, I can go."

So, yielding to his whim, they carried him farther away, down the sides
of the track up to an embankment or levee by the sides of the Marigny
Canal. Then the big brother, suddenly stopping, exclaimed:

"Why, here's a cave. Is it Robinson Crusoe?"

"It's my old man's cave," cried Titee. "Oh, please go in; maybe he's
dead."

There cannot be much ceremony in entering a cave. There is but one
thing to do,--walk in. This they did, and holding up the lantern,
beheld a weird sight. On a bed of straw and paper in one corner lay a
withered, wizened, white-bearded old man with wide eyes staring at the
unaccustomed light. In the other corner was an equally dilapidated cow.

"It's my old man!" cried Titee, joyfully. "Oh, please, grandpa, I
couldn't get here to-day, it rained all mornin' an' when I ran away, I
fell down an' broke something, an', oh, grandpa, I'm all tired an'
hurty, an' I'm so 'fraid you're hungry."

So the secret of Titee's jaunts down the railroad was out. In one of
his trips around the swamp-land, he had discovered the old man
exhausted from cold and hunger in the fields. Together they had found
this cave, and Titee had gathered the straw and paper that made the
bed. Then a tramp cow, old and turned adrift, too, had crept in and
shared the damp dwelling. And thither Titee had trudged twice a day,
carrying his luncheon in the morning and his dinner in the afternoon.

"There's a crown in heaven for that child," said the officer of charity
to whom the case was referred.

But as for Titee, when the leg was well, he went his way as before.

[Transcriber's Note: I have closed contractions,