"I don't know, ma'am--I mean, Miss Lucy. The kids call me Towhead.
Towsley Towhead is all I know, though Mother Molloy, she thinks it may
be Smith or Jones or something. Why, ma'am? I haven't done any harm,
have I?"

"No, child. No, none at all. I merely wish to have everything
understood from the beginning. I am going to adopt you. You are to be
my little boy hereafter. You are no longer Towsley Towhead. You are
Lionel Armacost. You are to have no further connection with Mother
Molloy or any other objectionable person. Your home is now at Number
One-thousand-and-one, Washington Avenue, West. Good night. I would
like to kiss you, but your face is too dirty. To-morrow, at breakfast,
when you are in proper condition, I will do so. Good-night."

Towsley listened in increasing astonishment and--terror. Whether owing
to a diet of mince pie exclusively or to the unusual daintiness of his
surroundings, he had not rested as well as he was accustomed to do
upon the steam hole of the _Express_ office cellar. He had never seen
anybody that looked just like Miss Lucy, with her high-crowned night
cap, her long trailing wrapper, her gleaming glasses, and her air of
stern determination, which the flare of her candle flame seemed to
accentuate. This grim expression, had he known it, was due mainly to
the fact that her fastidious gaze had become riveted upon his very
black finger-nails, as they clutched the white spread, and her
resolution to alter their aspect as soon as daylight dawned. But he
did not know this, of course, and he watched her go away--glide, he
fancied--till she melted into the dimness of the hall beyond, and
finally slipped, slipped, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, in her cloth shoes,
down the stairs and out of hearing.

Then he sat up. The room was very warm and comfortable and it made him
drowsy. Yet he could not now afford this drowsiness. While that queer
little old lady was safely out of the way he must act, and act
quickly.

As noiselessly as a cat the child stole out of bed, and fumbled around
for his clothes--his own clothes; the familiar rags and tatters which,
at Jefferson's command, he had removed outside the bathroom door, and
from which he had never before been separated since they came into his
possession, the "cast-offs" of a bigger companion.

Of course he did not find them. Jefferson had taken the best of care
that he should not, and they had already been consumed among the coals
of the great furnace whic