dren. Sunny-haired little
ones were thronging about him; he was looking into their tender eyes;
their soft arms were clinging to his neck; he was holding them tightly
clasped to his bosom.

"Baby," he said. It was the word that came most naturally to his lips.

Andy, who was sitting where a few sunbeams came in through a rent in
the wall, with the warm light on his head, turned and looked into the
bleared but friendly eyes gazing at him so earnestly.

"I'm going out, baby. Will you stay here till I come back?"

"Yes," answered the child, "I'll stay."

"I won't be gone very long, and I'll bring you an apple and something
good for dinner."

Andy's face lit up and his eyes danced.

"Don't go out until I come back. Somebody might carry you off, and then
I couldn't give you the nice red apple."

"I'll stay right here," said Andy, in a positive tone.

"And won't go into the street till I come back?"

"No, I won't." Andy knit his brows and closed his lips firmly.

"All right, little one," answered the man, in a cheery sort of voice
that was so strange to his own ears that it seemed like the voice of
somebody else.

Still, he could not feel satisfied. He was living in the midst of
thieves to whom the most insignificant thing upon which they could lay
their hands was booty. Children who had learned to be hard and cruel
thronged the court, and he feared, if he left Andy alone in the hovel,
that it would not only be robbed of its meagre furniture, but the child
subjected to ill-treatment. He had always fastened the door on going
out, but hesitated now about locking Andy in.

All things considered, it was safest, he felt, to lock the door. There
was nothing in the room that could bring harm to the child--no fire or
matches, no stairs to climb or windows out of which he could fall.

"I guess I'd better lock the door, hadn't I, so that nobody can carry
off my little boy?" he asked of Andy.

Andy made no objections. He was ready for anything his kind friend might
propose.

"And you mustn't cry or make a noise. The police might break in if you
did."

"All right," said Andy, with the self-assertion of a boy of ten.

The man stroked the child's head and ran his fingers through his hair in
a fond way; then, as one who tore himself from an object of attraction,
went hastily out and locked the door.

And now was to begin a new life. Friendless, debased, repulsive in
appearance, everything about him denoting the aband