town." Indeed, it had a certain pride in having a landlord who was rich and powerful, and it boasted about his money and his "big house" in a way that would have greatly astonished the Judge, who, plodding along on his big, rangy Kentucky horse, used to turn his head away when he passed the group of houses self-christened with his honorable name.

It was this neighborly pride, rather than any malice, that made the Judge's orchard a place where Morrison's Shanty town took its outings and its apples. As for the latter, they were poor enoughhard, gnarly russets, or small, bitter rambos. The time was long past since the orchard was in its prime; in those days there had been boys and girls in the "big house," and the Judge himself, the eldest brother, was a serious young man who wore a stock and a flowered waistcoat. The serious young man turned into a serious elderly man, and the brothers and sisters scattered off into the world; and the orchard grew rankly, and the brickmakers began to huddle together at the foot of the hill below the great, dilapidated old house where, with his sister Hannah, the Judge lived, absorbed in his profession, and, when he was not contemptuous, indifferent to all the world besides. If he had a purely human emotion, it was pride that he had never been so great a fool as to care for any human creature; he endured his fellow-beings, and was just to them--he said; but he never knew a man, woman, or child who could not be bought and sold like a bale of cotton. "I could probably be bought myself," he said, "if I could think of anything I wanted enough as a price."

This was the atmosphere into which Theophilus Bell came to live. A silent child, with mild, wide brown eyes, and straight, silken brown hair parted over his candid forehead. Theophilus's mother had been the Judge's younger sister. He had liked her, in his way; at least he liked her better than his older sister, Hannah, who, besides being a woman, was a fool-he had so informed her many times. Judge had supposed that Theophilus's mother was going to keep house for him, and be the meek, subject woman that their mother had been to their father. Instead, when she was over thirty, she suddenly married a poor, good-for-nothing, amiable fellow, an artist-a scallawag, the Judge called him-who had not

VOL. XCVII.-No. 580.-68

The

even kept her alive, for she died in a year, leaving this one child, whom she, with silly feminine sentiment, had chosen to name after her eldest brother.

Thinks I'll leave my money to him," the Judge said to himself when he was informed of the compliment that had been paid him; and his eyes narrowed into a sort of laugh.

"You are welcome to call him Theophilus," he wrote the mother, "but I should think the name would kill him; and perhaps I had better take this opportunity of stating he need have no expectations from me. All my money will go in public bequests."

Theophilus survived the name, but his mother did not long survive the letter. As for his father, when the child was ten years old, the poor, gentle, sickly gentleman realized that he too was going to leave the boy, so his future must be provided for. So he gave Theophilus two charges: "Now, boy, remember, when father isn't here-remember all your life: 'Don't cry; and play fair;" and then he made his will, bequeathing his only possession in the world, Theophilus, to the Judge.

He informed his brother-in-law of this fact by letter. Then he died. The Judge's astonishment and ire made him take a few days to reflect how he was to decline this unexpected gift; and while he reflected, the scallawag was buried and Theophilus arrived.

The stage dropped Theophilus at the gate at the foot of the orchard.

"The Judge lives up on the hill," said the driver, pointing with the handle of his whip; then the old yellow coach creaked, and sagged forward, and went rumbling into the evening dusk.

The little boy stood looking after it with straining eyes. It seemed to be his last friend disappearing around the shoulder of the hill.

As Mr. Bell's funeral had been nobody's business in particular, except an inconvenienced landlady's, who wished to get it over as soon as possible, and an officiating clergyman's, who was in a hurry to go to a parishioner's tea party, there had been nobody who thought it worth while to prepare Mr. Justice Morrison's mind for his nephew's arrival. The landlady "shipped" the child the morning after the funeral, and the undertaker

mailed the bill for his services at the same time. Theophilus was sent through like an express parcel, and dropped here on the road-side with his big valise, which held all his belongings - and held also, squeezed into a corner by the little boy when the landlady was not looking, his father's old pipe. The landlady missed the pipe afterwards when she evened up her account with the poor deceased gentleman. She said she was sure that the undertaker had stolen it, and she felt an added resentment at Mr. Bell for his inconsiderateness in dying in a boarding

house.

The country road was very quiet; the orchard on the hill-side was full of shadows, and the path up to the house was almost hidden by the fringe of grass on either side. Theophilus wondered if his uncle had any dogs. He thought the orchard looked very dark; he thought the valise was pretty heavy; he--wanted his father. Theophilus hunted in his pocket for his handkerchief. He was a very little boy; he was dressed in an old-fashioned way, and had the nervous and silent exactness of a child who has shared an older person's experiences and anxieties. When he had squeezed his handkerchief against his eyes, and swallowed hard, he folded the small square neatly up and put it back into his pocket; then he tugged at the bag, and got it on his shoulder, and began to climb the hill.

The house loomed up black and desolate in the autumn twilight. Across the closed and shuttered front there was a portico, with wooden columns that had once been white, but from which the blistered paint had cracked and flaked; the ceiling of this porch had been plastered, but the plaster had broken here and there, and fallen, and the laths showed gaunt and dusty; mud-swallows had built their nests in the corners, and a gray ball showed that the paper - wasps liked the crumbling shelter. There had been a garden once in front of the house, but now there was only a vague outline of box borders, dead and broken down, or growing high and stiff in favored spots. There were a good many trees around the house, and in some places their dense foliage kept the ground beneath so shadowed that it was bald and bare, or slippery with green mould. There was not a light anywhere in this forbidding front. Theophilus, panting up the orchard path,

crossed the weedy driveway, and came out before it. It was very still up there on top of the hill, and it is pretty dark on an October evening by six o'clock. Theophilus felt his heart come up into his throat; he stepped stealthily, and started when a twig snapped under foot. The dark shuttered house, brooding in the twilight, and the little boy with his heart in his mouth, confronted each othTheophilus looked over his shoulder breathlessly. Suppose he should run down the hill just as hard as he could? His very legs felt the impulse to run! But what dreadful thing might be behind him if he started? He sobbed once, hauled at the valise, went right up the steps, and tugged at the bell.

er.

The Judge and Miss Hannah were at supper. The dining-room was at the back of the house; in fact, in the liberal days of the Morrison family, before the Judge got rich, this room had been the kitchen; now, Miss Hannah did the cooking in the wash-house, and her brother came in the back way; the front part of the housethe hall, and the double parlors on each side of it had been shut up for many years.

There was a lamp on the table by the Judge's book, but the rest of the room was dark. "Don't waste oil," Miss Hannah had been instructed long ago; so she fumbled about in the dim light, and brought her brother his bread and butter and meat, and pecked at bits from the plates as she carried them in and out, like a thin gray bird with frightened eyes. Then she sat down at the further end of the table, watching her brother, and ready to jump if he lifted his eyes from his book. The Judge's head stood, out gray and wolfish against the nimbus of light from the lamp. The wrinkles on his shaven face spread like threads from the corners of his eyes, and were drawn down in deep sharp folds from his nostrils; his cold, mean mouth was puckered, as if a drawing-string had been run around it and then pulled up tightly. The book he read was a French novel. Miss Hannah ate her bread-and-butter, and wondered when he would be ready for his tea.

Then they both looked up with a start.

The rusty wire running along the ceiling jerked, snapped, and the bell at the end of it jangled faintly, and then swung

back and forth soundless, as if breathless from exertion. The brother and sister looked up at it open-mouthed.

"What's that?" said the Judge. "The-bell," Miss Hannah faltered. "I inferred as much," the Judge said. "Well, go see who it is."

Miss Hannah got up nimbly, as a horse jerks forward at the crack of a whip; she went trotting through the dark hall, but waited a moment before she turned the key in the lock. "Who's there?" she said, faintly.

A small voice answered through the key-hole: "Theophilus."

Miss Hannah caught her breath and stood panting; it took her a good minute to draw the bolt and unlock the door, and when she did, the little boy fell forward into the hall, he had been so crouched against the door, for terror of the night, and the stillness, and the great shadows under the roof of the porch.

"Does my uncle live here?" said Theophilus, sobbing. At that Miss Hannah knelt down in front of him and kissed him, and strained him to her with her trembling old arms.

"I don't know why you're crying," Theophilus remonstrated. “Did I hurt you when I ran against you? The door opened unexpectedly. uncle's cook?"

Are you my

"If

Theophilus tugged at his valise. you'll help me carry this," he said, politely, "I'll ask my uncle to pay you. It's very heavy."

"Oh, don't," poor old Hannah entreated. "Oh, do-oh, my! What will he say?" But she followed, helping with the valise, irresponsible and inconsequent.

As for Theophilus, he made his way to the room where the Judge was waiting for his tea.

"Hannah, you are slower than-" Then he looked up and saw Theophilus.

"Uncle," said the little boy, "father said to tell you that I wouldn't be any trouble. He said I was a pretty good

boy," said Theophilus, his voice shaking, "and I've come to live with you. Is that your cook? I nearly knocked her down when I came in; but I didn't mean to. Shall I have my supper now, uncle?"

"Who the devil- Is this that man Bell's brat? Hannah, what does this mean?"

66

Oh, brother, it's Mary's child," old Miss Hannah said. "Don't you see?her eyes! and oh, brother, he was named after you."

"Oh, you're my aunt, are you?" Theophilus inquired. "Father said—” but the tears came at the name; "my father, he said—”

"There, dear; there," Hannah whispered; "don't-do-I wouldn't-brother won't like "

"I'm not going to cry," said Theophilus; "father told me not to. Uncle, may I have my supper?"

"Hannah, get me my tea.

Can't you

shut him up? Give him some food and send him to bed. What the devil-" And the Judge took his novel and the lamp and went abruptly out of the room. Miss Hannah and Theophilus, left in the darkness, heard the stairs creak under his angry foot, and then the bang of the library door.

"Oh dear! ought I to take his tea up to him?" panted Miss Hannah, fumbling about for matches and a candle. "Oh, my dear little boy, why did you come?"

"He isn't very pleasant, is he, aunt?" said Theophilus. "Father said he was a pagan."

"A pagan!" Miss Hannah repeated, shocked. Why, no, indeed! A pagan is a heathen, and your uncle is a Christian. You mustn't say such things, my little boy. Pagan! why, not at all-indeed he isn't." Miss Hannah was frightened and ruffled and crying all at once. "I think," said Theophilus, shyly,“father only meant a brute. I'd like my supper a good deal, aunt."

II.

This was the beginning of Theophilus's life with the Judge-or, rather, in the Judge's house. Miss Hannah, palpitating with fright, bade the boy "keep out of brother's way"; and Theophilus was quite willing to do so. The first day or two poor old Hannah scarcely dared to breathe for fear of reminding the Judge of her existence, and so, incidentally, of

his nephew's; she lived in terror of being told that the boy must be sent away"to the poorhouse, or to the devil," her brother was capable of saying.

For the Judge was sharply angry; all the more so because he found himself unable to dismiss the whole thing by packing the child off. "I don't know why I put up with it," he snarled to himself. 'Why should I support other people's brats? And as for leaving him anything of course that's what Bell was up to-" And then the Judge chuckled, and thought of his will. But in a minute he gritted his teeth with anger. Bell had gotten ahead of him, and he couldn't get at him to express his opinion. "Contemptible!" he said. "These men who go off to play on their golden harps, and leave other men to support their progeny, are religious tramps! One of these days we'll get civilized enough to legislate on this matter of offspring; every child that can't be supported properly by its parents will have its neck wrung! and the father's and mother's too, if I had my way."

At which Miss Hannah blanched, and hid Theophilus away still more carefully. But that was how it was conceded that he might remain. So Miss Hannah got her breath, though she was always looking over her shoulder, so to speak, for fear the Judge should "legislate."

As for Theophilus, he was very quiet and obedient. He missed his father with all his little mind and heart, and used to take the pipe out of his valise every night, and hold it in his hands, and sometimes he would blink and draw in his breath in the dark, and remember that he had promised not to cry; but he never spoke of his loss to Miss Hannah, who said to herself that she was glad he "had gotten over it." Theophilus helped her a good deal in her pottering work about the untidy, dilapidated house, and took his food in the wash-house when the Judge had finished his meals, and played about by himself, and crept noiselessly up stairs to go to bed in a little closet of a room far away from his uncle's. He seemed fond of Miss Hannah, and used to sit and hold her hand, and play with the thin old fingers, and lean his head against her knee. He did not talk much, and never about himself; but his soft ways quite hid from his aunt that he was not a confiding child. When the winter came he used to trudge in to Old Chester every morning

to the public school-Miss Hannah would not have dreamed of asking her brother for money to send him to Miss Bailey's little private school. He used to go to Dr. Lavendar's collect class on Saturdays, and he went to church with Miss Hannah every Sunday; but he made no friendships among the Old Chester children.

"He's so shy," Miss Hannah used to explain. But though Theophilus held her skirt in a nervous grip, he looked out from behind it calmly, with far less shyness than was visible in Miss Hannah's own face. He was perfectly silent, unless spoken to, and then answered in gentle monosyllables.

That winter the Judge hardly spoke to him. The first time he had any conversation with him was once when he found Theophilus in the stable, patting the big Kentucky horse. He began to frown immediately, being especially ready to frown because the horse had gone lame the night before.

"Uncle," said Theophilus, "Jack had a stone in his shoe. I took it out."

The Judge looked at him, and grunted. Then he felt Jack's leg, and thought to himself that it was the only time since the boy had been in the house that he had been good for anything.

"I don't want you hanging round the stable, young man. Do you hear me?" he said; but he looked at Theophilus once or twice; and that night, when he got home, he said to his sister, sharply: "Hannah, what the devil do you hide that child away for? Have him take his meals in the dining-room. Do you hear? him sit with me, or he'll grow up a barbarian, with no manners!"

Let

And Miss Hannah was far too thankful for this grace on her brother's part to feel any humor in reference to manners.

The Judge's remark about hanging. around the stable did not deter Theophilus from playing there all that winter. If grown people will remember, box-stalls are admirable forts in which to hide during the attacks of Indians; and an old carriage, unused for many years, the cushions slit and dusty, is an excellent vehicle in which to journey to Asia or the north pole, as fancy may chance to drive. Miss Hannah used to wonder sometimes what Theophilus did with himself, all alone in the barn. When she asked him, he would think awhile, and then say, vaguely,

"Oh, just play, aunt;" and Miss Hannah was contented.

She never dreamed of "bringing him up," as Old Chester expressed it; all that the boy did, and the little that he said, were perfect in her mild, frightened eyes. She treated him as an equal, if not as a superior which, if Old Chester had known it, would have been a matter of anxiety and prayer. She used to talk to him a great deal in her incoherent way, and tell him her anxieties about the cost of things, and her worries over the Judge's food. And Theophilus listened, and said, "Yes, aunt," and "No, aunt"; and Miss Hannah felt that at last she had a confidant.

After a while Theophilus began to wander down through the orchard and look at Shantytown-dirty, good-natured, friendly Shantytown; and later in the winter he slipped across the road and made acquaintance with the pigs and chickens, and then with the children, and by-and-by he constructed a society of his own, of which Katy Murphy was the choicest spirit.

The Murphys lived in the second house on the other side of the road. There were seven dirty, happy children, and a big, rosy, comfortable mother, and the usual drunken, bad-tempered father, and two pigs, and a cat, and the hens-such tame hens they were, too, Theophilus noticed, walking all about the room when the family was at table! The house was a series of little pens, without any ventilation to speak of; its earthen floors were laid in refuse bricks, and it was cheerfully and openly dirty. Of course the Murphys ought, by rights, to have been sick. Willie King told Dr. Lavendar that there would be a terrible outbreak of typhoid in Shantytown some day. But so far it had not appeared; which must have been very mortifying and disappointing to Willie.

Theophilus had made acquaintance with Katy by offering her silently over the gate a tumbler of snow ice-cream. Katy, as silently, ate the slushy mixture of sugar and milk and snow, looking with big eyes at Theophilus. After that they became friends-quite speechlessly, however. It was not until spring, when she showed him how to make licorice-water in a bottle, that their friendship began to be eloquent.

But Theophilus said nothing about

Miss

Katy or Shantytown to his aunt. Hannah sometimes saw the flutter of a ragged petticoat or a shock of tangled hair under a dirty cap; and once she asked him anxiously if he didn't think perhaps he was seeing too much of those rowdy children.

"No, aunt," said Theophilus; which closed the subject-though Miss Hannah did suggest, hesitatingly, that perhaps he had better not let his uncle see him playing with the Shantytown children, because he might be displeased.

"He's almost always displeased, isn't he, aunt?" Theophilus said, meditatively, but had no thought of committing himself to a promise.

At first all the Murphy children played with him in the orchard, and there were the usual squabbles and bickerings. Katy, however, followed Theophilus's lead in all their games, and never had any ideas of her own. She used to look at him with her mouth open and her eyes wide with wonder, but she never made an objection. So, by degrees, Nelly and Tommy and the other children were gently but firmly dropped. Theophilus found that friendship à deux was quite enough for him, so Katy became his constant companion. It was through this love for Katy that the Judge first really wounded the child, and laid up wrath against the day of wrath. It was the summer of the seventeen-year locusts. Old Chester will not soon forget that summer. On every leaf, on every stalk of blossoming grass, on all the clover tops, were the locusts; the hot, still air was full of their endless z-z-z-ing, like the sharpening of a scythe. The children of Shantytown added largely to family incomes by collecting the locusts, picking them by the hatful or the basketful, as though they were berries, and being paid by the farmers a few cents a peck. Theophilus, however, forbade Katy's taking part in this industry, which caused her soft eyes to well over with