a shock
of remorse for having let him drift so long. His story was simple
enough. When his mother failed to come back, and, the rent coming due,
the door of what had been home to him, even such as it was, was closed
upon him, he took to the street. He slept in hallways and with the gang
among the docks, never going far from the "village" lest he should miss
news of his mother coming back. The cold nights came, and he shivered
often in his burrows; but he never relaxed his watch. All the time his
mother lay dying less than half a dozen blocks away, but there was no
one to tell him. Had any one done so, it is not likely that the guard
would have let him through the gate, as he looked. Seven weeks he had
spent in the streets when he heard that he was wanted. The other boys
told him that it was the "cruelty" man sure; and then began the game of
hide-and-seek that tried our patience and wore on his mother, sinking
rapidly now, but that eventually turned up Jim.

[Illustration: "'Oh, mother! You were gone so long!'"]

We took him up to the hospital, and into the ward where his mother
lay. Away off at the farther end of the room, he knew her, the last in
the row, and ran straight to her before we could stop him, and fell on
her neck.

"Mother!" we heard him say, while he hugged her, with his head on her
pillow. "Mother, why don't you speak to me? I am all right--I am."

He raised his head and looked at her. Happy tears ran down the thin face
turned to his. He took her in his arms again.

"I am all right, mother; honest, I am. Don't you cry. I couldn't keep
the rooms, mother! They took everything, only the deed to father's
grave. I kept that."

He dug in the pocket of his old jacket, and brought out a piece of
paper, carefully wrapped in many layers of rags and newspaper that hung
in dirty tatters.

"Here it is. Everything else is gone. But it is all right. I've got you,
and I am here. Oh, mother! You were gone so long!"

Longer--poor Jim--the parting that was even then adding another to the
mysteries that had vexed my soul concerning you. Happiness at last had
broken the weary heart. But if it added one, it dispelled another: I
knew then that I erred, Jim, when I thought it were better if you had
never been born!

CHAPTER XI

LETTING IN THE LIGHT

I had been out of town and my way had not fallen through the Mulberry
Bend in weeks until that morning when I came suddenly upon the park that
had been made t