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  • 1913
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“Isn’t there something you would like that I could do for you?” persisted Starr earnestly, following him into the empty chapel where Mr. Endicott and the president stood looking at a tablet on the wall by the further door.

“Your father has done everything for me,” said Michael sunnily, with a characteristic sweep of his hand that seemed to include himself, his garments and his mental outfit. He turned upon her his blazing smile that spoke more eloquently than words could have done.

“Yes, but that is papa,” said Starr half impatiently, softly stamping her daintily shod foot. “He did that because of what you did for _him_ in saving my life. I should like to do something to thank you for what you did for _me_. I’m worth something to myself you know. Isn’t there something I could do for you.”

She stood still, looking up into his face anxiously, her vivid childish beauty seeming to catch all the brightness of the place and focus it upon him. The two men had passed out of the further door and on to the recitation rooms. The girl and boy were alone for the moment.

“You have done something for me, you did a great deal,” he said, his voice almost husky with boyish tenderness. “I think it was the greatest thing that anybody ever did for me.”

“I did something for you! When? What?” questioned Starr curiously.

“Yes,” he said, “you did a great thing for me. Maybe you don’t remember it, but I do. It was when I was getting well from the shot there at your house, and your nurse used to bring you up to play with me every day; and always before you went away, you used to kiss me. I’ve never forgotten that.”

He said it quite simply as if it were a common thing for a boy to say to a girl. His voice was low as though the depths of his soul were stirred.

A flood of pretty color came into Starr’s cheeks.

“Oh!” she said quite embarrassed at the turn of the conversation, “but that was when I was a baby. I couldn’t do that now. Girls don’t kiss boys you know. It wouldn’t be considered proper.”

“I know,” said Michael, his own color heightening now, “I didn’t mean that. I wanted you to know how much you had done for me already. You don’t know what it is never to have been kissed by your mother, or any living soul. Nobody ever kissed me in all my life that I know of but you.”

He looked down at the little girl with such a grave, sweet expression, his eyes so expressive of the long lonely years without woman’s love, that child though she was Starr seemed to understand, and her whole young soul went forth in pity. Tears sprang to her eyes.

“Oh!” she said, “That is dreadful! Oh!–I don’t care if it isn’t proper–“

And before he knew what she was about to do the little girl tilted to her tiptoes, put up her dainty hands, caught him about the neck and pressed a warm eager kiss on his lips. Then she sprang away frightened, sped across the room, and through the opposite door.

Michael stood still in a bewilderment of joy for the instant. The compelling of her little hands, the pressure of her fresh lips still lingered with him. A flood tide of glory swept over his whole being. There were tears in his eyes, but he did not know it. He stood with bowed head as though in a holy place. Nothing so sacred, so beautiful, had ever come into his life. Her baby kisses had been half unconscious. This kiss was given of her own free will, because she wanted to do something for him. He did not attempt to understand the wonderful joy that surged through his heart and pulsed in every fibre of his being. His lonely, unloved life was enough to account for it, and he was only a boy with a brief knowledge of life; but he knew enough to enshrine that kiss in his heart of hearts as a holy thing, not even to be thought about carelessly.

When he roused himself to follow her she had disappeared. Her father and the president were listening to a recitation, but she was nowhere to be seen. She had gone to her own room. Michael went down by himself in a thicket by the lake.

She met him shyly at dinner, with averted gaze and a glow on her cheeks, as if half afraid of what she had done, but he reassured her with his eyes. His glance seemed to promise he would never take advantage of what she had done. His face wore an exalted look, as if he had been lifted above earth, and Starr, looking at him wonderingly, was glad she had followed her impulse.

They took a horseback ride to the college grove that afternoon, Mr. Endicott, one of the professors, Starr and Michael. The president had borrowed the horses from some friends.

Michael sat like a king upon his horse. He had ridden the college mule bareback every summer, and riding seemed to be as natural to him as any other sport. Starr had been to a New York riding school, and was accustomed to taking her morning exercise with her father in the Park, or accompanied by a footman; but she sat her Florida pony as happily as though he had been a shiny, well-groomed steed of priceless value. Somehow it seemed to her an unusually delightful experience to ride with this nice boy through the beautiful shaded road of arching live-oaks richly draped with old gray moss. Michael stopped by the roadside, where the shade was dense, dismounted and plunged into the thicket, returning in a moment with two or three beautiful orchids and some long vines of the wonderful yellow jessamine whose exquisite perfume filled all the air about. He wreathed the jessamine about the pony’s neck, and Starr twined it about her hat and wore the orchids in her belt.

Starr had never seen an orange grove before and took great delight in the trees heavily loaded with fruit, green and yellow and set about by blossoms. She tucked a spray of blossoms in her dark hair under the edge of her hat, and Michael looked at her and smiled in admiration. Mr. Endicott, glancing toward his daughter, caught the look, and was reminded of the time when he had found the two children in his own drawing room being made a show for his wife’s guests, and sighed half in pleasure, half in foreboding. What a beautiful pair they were to be sure, and what had the future in store for his little girl?

On the way back they skirted another lake and Michael dismounted again to bring an armful of great white magnolia blossoms, and dainty bay buds to the wondering Starr; and then they rode slowly on through the wooded, road, the boy telling tales of adventures here and there; pointing out a blue jay or calling attention to the mocking bird’s song.

“I wish you could be here next week,” said the boy wistfully. “It will be full moon then. There is no time to ride through this place like a moonlight evening. It seems like fairyland then. The moonbeams make fairy ladders of the jessamine vines.”

“It must be beautiful,” said Starr dreamily. Then they rode for a few minutes in silence. They were coming to the end of the overarched avenue. Ahead of them the sunlight shone clearly like the opening of a great tunnel framed in living green. Suddenly Starr looked up gravely:

“I’m going to kiss you good-bye to-night when, we go away,” she said softly; and touching her pony lightly with the whip rode out into the bright road; the boy, his heart leaping with joy, not far behind her.

Before supper Mr. Endicott had a talk with Michael that went further toward making the fatherless boy feel that he had someone belonging to him than anything that had happened yet.

“I think you have done enough for me, sir,” said Michael respectfully opening the conversation as Endicott came out to the porch where the boy was waiting for him. “I think I ought to begin to earn my own living. I’m old enough now–” and he held his head up proudly. “It’s been very good of you all these years–I never can repay you. I hope you will let me pay the money back that you have spent on me, some day when, I can earn enough–“

Michael had been thinking this speech out ever since the president had told him of Endicott’s expected visit, but somehow it did not sound as well to him when he said it as he had thought it would. It seemed the only right thing to do when he planned it, but in spite of him as he looked into Mr. Endicott’s kind, keen eyes, his own fell in troubled silence. Had his words sounded ungrateful? Had he seen a hurt look in the man’s eyes?

“Son,” said Endicott after a pause, and the word stirred the boy’s heart strangely, “son, I owe you a debt you never can repay. You gave me back my little girl, flinging your own life into the chance as freely as if you had another on hand for use any minute. I take it that I have at least a father’s right in you at any rate, and I mean to exercise it until you are twenty-one. You must finish a college course first. When will that be? Three years? They tell me you are doing well. The doctor wants to keep you here to teach after you have graduated, but I had thought perhaps you would like to come up to New York and have your chance. I’ll give you a year or two in business, whatever seems to be your bent when you are through, and then we’ll see. Which would you rather do? Or, perhaps you’d prefer to let your decision rest until the time comes.”

“I think I’m bound to go back to New York, sir,” said Michael lifting his head with that peculiar motion all his own, so like a challenge. “You know, sir, you said I was to be educated so that I might help my friends. I have learned of course that you meant it in a broader sense than just those few boys, for one can help people anywhere; but still I feel as if it wouldn’t be right for me not to go back. I’m sure they’ll expect me.”

Endicott shrugged his shoulders half admiringly.

“Loyal to your old friends still? Well, that’s commendable, but still I fancy you’ll scarcely find them congenial now. I wouldn’t let them hang too closely about you. They might become a nuisance. You have your way to make in the world, you know.”

Michael looked at his benefactor with troubled brows. Somehow the tone of the man disturbed him.

“I promised,” he said simply. Because there had bean so little in his affections that promise had been cherished through the years, and meant much to Michael. It stood for Principle and Loyalty in general.

“Oh, well, keep your promise, of course,” said the man of the world easily. “I fancy you will find the discharge of it a mere form.”

A fellow student came across the campus.

“Endicott,” he called, “have you seen Hallowell go toward the village within a few minutes?”

“He just want, out the gate,” responded Michael pleasantly.

Mr. Endicott looked up surprised.

“Is that the name by which you are known?”

“Endicott? Yes, sir, Michael Endicott. Was it not by your wish? I supposed they had asked you. I had no other name that I knew.”

“Ah! I didn’t know,” pondered Endicott.

There was silence for a moment.

“Would you,–shall I–do you dislike my having it?” asked the boy delicately sensitive at once.

But the man looked up with something like tenderness in his smile.

“Keep it, son. I like it. I wish I had a boy like you. It is an old name and a proud one. Be worthy of it.”

“I will try, sir,” said Michael, as if he were registering a vow.

There was an early supper for the guests and then Michael walked through another sunset to the station with Starr. He carried a small box carefully prepared in which reposed a tiny green and blue lizard for a parting gift. She had watched the lizards scuttling away under the board sidewalks at their approach, or coming suddenly to utter stillness, changing their brilliant colors to gray like the fence boards that they might not be observed. She was wonderfully interested in them, and was charmed with her gift. The particular lizard in question was one that Michael had trained to eat crumbs from his hand, and was quite tame.

The two said little as they walked along together. Each was feeling what a happy time they had spent in one another’s company.

“I shall write and tell you how the lizard is,” said Starr laughing, “and you will tell me all about the funny and interesting things you are doing, won’t you?”

“If–I may,” said Michael wistfully.

At the station a New York acquaintance of the Endicotts’ invited them to ride in his private car which was on the side track waiting for the train to pick them up. Michael helped Starr up the steps, and carried the lizard into the car as well as the great sheaf of flowers she insisted on taking with her.

There were some ladies inside who welcomed Starr effusively; and Michael, suddenly abashed, laid down the flowers, lifted his cap and withdrew. A sudden blank had come upon him. Starr was absorbed by people from another world than his. He would have no opportunity to say good-bye–and she had promised–But then of course he ought not to expect her to do that. She had been very kind to him–

He was going down the steps now. An instant more and he would be on the cinders of the track.

A sudden rush, a soft cry, caused him to pause on the second step of the vestibuled car. It was Starr, standing just above him, and her eyes were shining like her namesake the evening star.

“You were going without good-bye,” she reproved, and her cheeks were rosy red, but she stood her ground courageously. Placing a soft hand gently on either cheek as he stood below her, his face almost on a level with hers, she tilted his head toward her and touched his lips with her own red ones, delicately as if a rose had swept them.

Simultaneously came the sound of the distant train.

“Good-bye, you nice, splendid boy!” breathed Starr, and waving her hand darted inside the ear.

Mr. Endicott, out on the platform, still talking to the president, heard the oncoming train and looked around for Michael. He saw him coming from the car with his exalted look upon his face, his cap off, and the golden beams of the sun again sending their halo like a nimbus over his hair.

Catching his hand heartily, he said:

“Son, I’m pleased with you. Keep it up, and come to me when you are ready. I’ll give you a start.”

Michael gripped his hand and blundered out some words of thanks. Then the train was upon them, and Endicott had to go.

The two younger ladies in the car, meantime, were plying Starr with questions. “Who is that perfectly magnificent young man. Starr Endicott? Why didn’t you introduce him to us? I declare I never saw such a beautiful face on any human being before.”

A moment more and the private car was fastened to the train, and Starr leaning from the window waved her tiny handkerchief until the train had thundered away among the pines, and there was nothing left but the echo of its sound. The sun was going down but it mattered not. There was sunshine in the boy’s heart. She was gone, his little Starr, but she had left the memory of her soft kiss and her bright eyes; and some day, some day, when he was done with college, he would see her again. Meantime he was content.

CHAPTER VI

The joy of loving kindness in his life, and a sense that somebody cared, seemed to have the effect of stimulating Michael’s mind to greater energies. He studied with all his powers. Whatever he did he did with his might, even his play.

The last year of his stay in Florida, a Department of Scientific Farming was opened on a small scale. Michael presented himself as a student.

“What do you want of farming, Endicott?” asked the president, happening to pass through the room on the first day of the teacher’s meeting with his students. “You can’t use farming in New York.”

There was perhaps in the kindly old president’s mind a hope that the boy would linger with them, for he had become attached to him in a silent, undemonstrative sort of way.

“I might need it sometime,” answered Michael, “and anyway I’d like to understand it. You said the other day that no knowledge was ever wasted. I’d like to know enough at least to tell somebody else.”

The president smiled, wondered, and passed on. Michael continued in the class, supplementing the study by a careful reading of all the Agricultural magazines, and Government literature on the subject that came in his way. Agriculture had had a strange fascination for him ever since a noted speaker from the North had come that way and in an address to the students told them that the new field for growth to-day lay in getting hack to nature and cultivating the earth. It was characteristic of Michael that he desired to know if that statement was true, and if so, why. Therefore he studied.

The three years flew by as if by magic. Michael won honors not a few, and the day came when he had completed his course, and as valedictorian of his class, went up to the old chapel for his last commencement in the college.

He sat on the platform looking down on the kindly, uncritical audience that had assembled for the exercises, and saw not a single face that had come for his sake alone. Many were there who were interested in him because they had known him through the years, and because he bore the reputation of being the honor man of his class and the finest athlete in school. But that was not like having some one of his very own who cared whether he did well or not. He found himself wishing that even Buck might have been there; Buck, the nearest to a brother he had ever had. Would Buck have cared that he had won highest rank? Yes, he felt that Buck would have been proud of him.

Michael had sent out three invitations to commencement, one to Mr. Endicott, one to Starr, and one addressed to Buck, with the inner envelope bearing the words “For Buck and ‘the kids,'” but no response had come to any of them. He had received back the one addressed to Buck with “Not Called For” in big pink letters stamped across the corner. It had reached him that morning, just before he came on the platform. He wished it had not come till night; it gave him a lonely, almost forsaken feeling. He was “educated” now, at least enough to know what he did not know; and there was no one to care.

When Michael sat down after his oration amid a storm of hearty applause, prolonged by his comrades into something like an ovation, some one handed him a letter and a package. There had been a mistake made at the post office in sorting the mail and these had not been put into the college box. One of the professors going down later found them and brought them up.

The letter was from Mr. Endicott containing a businesslike line of congratulations, a hope that the recipient would come to New York if he still felt of that mind, and a check for a hundred dollars.

Michael looked at the check awesomely, re-read the letter carefully and put both in his pocket. The package was tiny and addressed in Starr’s handwriting. Michael saved that till he should go to his room. He did not want to open it before any curious eyes.

Starr’s letters had been few and far between, girlish little epistles; and the last year they had ceased altogether. Starr was busy with life; finishing-school and dancing-school and music-lessons and good times. Michael was a dim and pleasant vision to her.

The package contained a scarf-pin of exquisite workmanship. Starr had pleased herself by picking out the very prettiest thing she could find. She had her father’s permission to spend as much as she liked on it. It was in the form of an orchid, with a tiny diamond like a drop of dew on one petal.

Michael looked on it with wonder, the first suggestion of personal adornment that had ever come to him. He saw the reminder of their day together in the form of the orchid; studied the beautiful name, “Starr Delevan Endicott,” engraved upon the card; then put them carefully back into their box and locked it into his bureau drawer. He would wear it the first time he went to see Starr. He was very happy that day.

The week after college closed Michael drove the college mule to the county seat, ten miles away, and bought a small trunk. It was not much of a trunk but it was the best the town afforded. In this he packed all his worldly possessions, bade good-bye to the president, and such of the professors as had not already gone North for their vacations, took a long tramp to all his old haunts, and boarded the midnight train for New York.

The boy had a feeling of independence which kept him from letting his benefactor know of his intended arrival. He did not wish to make him any unnecessary trouble, and though he had now been away from New York for fourteen years, he felt a perfect assurance that he could find his way about. There are some things that one may learn even at seven, that will never be forgotten.

When Michael landed in New York he looked about him with vague bewilderment for a moment. Then he started out with assurance to find a new spot for himself in the world.

Suit-case he had not, nor any baggage but his trunk to hinder him. He had discovered that the trunk could remain in the station for a day without charge. The handsome raincoat and umbrella which had been a part of the outfit the tailor had sent him that spring were all his encumbrances, so he picked his way unhampered across Liberty Street, eyeing his former enemies, the policemen, and every little urchin or newsboy with interest. Of course Buck and the rest would have grown up and changed some; they wouldn’t likely be selling papers now–but–these were boys such as he had been. He bought a paper of a little ragged fellow with a pinched face, and a strange sensation came over him. When he left this city he was the newsboy, and now he had money enough to buy a paper–and the education to read it! What a difference! Not that he wanted the paper at present, though it might prove interesting later, but he wanted the experience of buying it. It marked the era of change in his life and made the contrast tremendous. Immediately his real purpose in having an education, the uplift of his fellow-beings, which had been most vague during the years, took form and leapt into vivid interest, as he watched the little skinny legs of the newsboy nimbly scrambling across the muddy street under the feet of horses, and between automobiles, in imminent danger of his life.

Michael had thought it all out, just what he would do, and he proceeded to carry out his purpose. He had no idea what a fine picture of well-groomed youth and manly beauty he presented as he marched down the street. He walked like a king, and New York abashed him no more now that he had come back than it did before he went away. There are some spirits born that way. He walked like a “gentleman, unafraid.”

He had decided not to go to Mr. Endicott until he had found lodgings somewhere. An innate delicacy had brought him to this decision. He would not put one voluntary burden upon his kind benefactor. Born and bred in the slums, whence came this fineness of feeling? Who shall say?

Michael threaded his way through the maze of traffic, instinct and vague stirrings of memory guiding him to a quiet shabby street where he found a dingy little room for a small price. The dangers that might have beset a strange young man in the great city were materially lessened for him on account of his wide reading. He had read up New York always wherever he found an article or book or story that touched upon it; and without realizing it he was well versed in details. He had even pondered for hours over a map of New York that he found in the back of an old magazine, comparing it with his faint memories, until he knew the location of things with relation to one another pretty well. A stranger less versed might have gotten into most undesirable quarters.

The boy looked around his new home with a strange sinking of heart, after he had been out to get something to eat, and arranged for his trunk to be sent to his room. It was very tiny and not over clean. The wall paper was a dingy flowered affair quite ancient in design, and having to all appearances far outlived a useful life. The one window looked out to brick walls, chimneys and roofs. The noise of the city clattered in; the smells and the heat made it almost stifling to the boy who had lived for thirteen years in the sunshine of the South, and the freedom of the open.

The narrow bed looked uninviting, the bureau-washstand was of the cheapest, and the reflection Michael saw in its warped mirror would have made any boy with a particle of vanity actually suffer. Michael, however, was not vain. He thought little about himself, but this room was depressing. The floor was covered with a nondescript carpet faded and soiled beyond redemption, and when his trunk was placed between the bureau and the bed there would be scarcely room for the one wooden chair. It was not a hopeful outlook. The boy took off his coat and sat down on the bed to whistle.

Life, grim, appalling, spectral-like, uprose before his mental vision, and he spent a bad quarter of an hour trying to adjust himself to his surroundings; his previous sunny philosophy having a tough tussle with the sudden realities of things as they were. Then his trunk arrived.

It was like Michael to unpack it at once and put all his best philosophical resolves into practice.

As he opened the trunk a whiff of the South, exhaled. He caught his breath with a sudden keen, homesickness. He realized that his school days were over, and all the sweetness and joy of that companionful life passed. He had often felt alone in those days. He wondered at it now. He had never in all his experience known such aloneness as now in this great strange city.

The last thing he had put into his trunk had been a branch of mammoth pine needles. The breath of the tree brought back all that meant home to him. He caught it up and buried his face in the plumy tassels.

The tray of the trunk was filled with flags, pennants, photographs, and college paraphernalia. Eagerly he pulled them all out and spread them over the bumpy little bed. Then he grabbed for his hat and rushed out. In a few minutes he returned with a paper of tacks, another of pins, and a small tack hammer. In an hour’s time he had changed the atmosphere of the whole place. Not an available inch of bare wall remained with, its ugly, dirty wallpaper. College colors, pennants and flags were grouped about pictures, and over the unwashed window was draped Florida moss. Here and there, apparently fluttering on the moss or about the room, were fastened beautiful specimens of semi-tropical moths and butterflies in the gaudiest of colors. A small stuffed alligator reposed above the window, gazing apathetically down, upon the scene. A larger alligator skin was tacked on one wall. One or two queer bird’s nests fastened to small branches hung quite naturally here and there.

Michael threw down the hammer and sat down to survey his work, drawing a breath of relief. He felt more at home now with the photographs of his fellow students smiling down upon him. Opposite was the base-ball team, frowning and sturdy; to the right the Glee Club with himself as their leader; to the left a group of his classmates, with his special chum in the midst. As he gazed at that kindly face in the middle he could almost hear the friendly voice calling to him: “Come on, Angel! You’re sure to win out!”

Michael felt decidedly better, and fell to hanging up his clothes and arranging his effects on clean papers in the rheumatic bureau drawers. These were cramped quarters but would do for the present until he was sure of earning some money, for he would not spend his little savings more than he could help now and he would not longer be dependent upon the benefaction of Mr. Endicott.

When his box of books arrived he would ask permission to put some shelves over the window. Then he would feel quite cosy and at home.

So he cheered himself as he went about getting into his best garments, for he intended to arrive at Madison Avenue about the time that his benefactor reached home for the evening.

Michael knew little of New York ways, and less of the habits of society; the few novels that had happened in his way being his only instructors on the subject. He was going entirely on his dim memories of the habits of the Endicott home during his brief stay there. As it happened Mr. Endicott was at home when Michael arrived and the family were dining alone.

The boy was seated in the reception room gazing about him with the ease of his habitual unconsciousness of self, when Endicott came down bringing Starr with him. A second time the man of the world was deeply impressed with the fine presence of this boy from obscurity. He did not look out of place even in a New York drawing room. It was incredible; though of course a large part of it was due to his city-made clothing. Still, that would not by any means account for case of manner, graceful courtesy, and an instinct for saying the right thing at the right time.

Endicott invited the lad to dine with them and Starr eagerly seconded the invitation. Michael accepted as eagerly, and a few moments later found himself seated at the elegantly appointed table by the side of a beautiful and haughty woman who stared at him coldly, almost insultingly, and made not one remark to him throughout the whole meal. The boy looked at her half wonderingly. It almost seemed as if she intended to resent his presence, yet of course that could not be. His idea of this whole family was the highest. No one belonging to Starr could of course be aught but lovely of spirit.

Starr herself seemed to feel the disapproval of her mother, and shrink into herself, saying very little, but smiling shyly at Michael now and then when her mother was not noticing her.

Starr was sixteen now, slender and lovely as she had given promise of being. Michael watched her satisfied. At last he turned to the mother sitting in her cold grandeur, and with the utmost earnestness and deference in his voice said, his glance still half toward Starr:

“She is like you, and yet not!”

He said it gravely, as if it were a discovery of the utmost importance to them both, and he felt sure it was the key to her heart, this admission of his admiration of the beautiful girl.

Mrs. Endicott froze him with her glance.

From the roots of his hair down to the tips of his toes and back again he felt it, that insulting resentment of his audacity in expressing any opinion about her daughter; or in fact in having any opinion. For an instant his self-possession deserted him, and his face flushed with mingled emotions. Then he saw a look of distress on Starr’s face as she struggled to make reply for her silent mother:

“Yes, mamma and I are often said to resemble one another strongly,” and there was a tremble in Starr’s voice that roused all the manliness in the boy. He flung off the oppression that was settling down upon him and listened attentively to what Endicott was saying, responding gracefully, intelligently, and trying to make himself think that it was his inexperience with ladies that had caused him to say something inappropriate. Henceforth during the evening he made no more personal remarks.

Endicott took the boy to his den after dinner, and later Starr slipped in and they talked a little about their beautiful day in Florida together. Starr asked him if he still rode and would like to ride with her in the Park the next morning when she took her exercise, and it was arranged in the presence of her father and with his full consent that Michael should accompany her in place of the groom who usually attended her rides.

Mrs. Endicott came in as they were making this arrangement, and immediately called Starr sharply out of the room.

After their withdrawal Endicott questioned the boy carefully about his college course and his habits of living. He was pleased to hear that Michael had been independent enough to secure lodgings before coming to his house. It showed a spirit that was worth helping, though he told him that he should have come straight to him.

As Endicott was going off on a business trip for a week he told Michael to enjoy himself looking around the city during his absence, and on his return present himself at the office at an appointed hour when he would put him in the way of something that would start him in life.

Michael thanked him and went back to his hot little room on the fourth floor, happy in spite of heat and dinginess and a certain homesick feeling. Was he not to ride with Starr in the morning? He could hardly sleep for thinking of it, and of all he had to say to her.

CHAPTER VII

When Michael presented himself at the appointed hour the next morning he was shown into a small reception room by a maid, and there he waited for a full half hour. At the end of that time he heard a discreet rustle of garments in the distance, and a moment later, became aware of a cold stare from the doorway. Mrs. Endicott in an elaborate morning frock was surveying him fixedly through a jewelled lorgnette, her chin tilted contemptuously, and an expression of supreme scorn upon her handsome features. Woman of the world that she was, she must have noted the grace of his every movement as he rose with his habitual courtesy to greet her. Yet for some reason this only seemed to increase her dislike.

There was no welcoming hand held out in response to his good morning, and no answering smile displaced the severity of the woman’s expression as she stood confronting the boy, slowly paralyzing him with her glance. Not a word did she utter. She could convey her deepest meaning without words when she chose.

But Michael was a lad of great self-control, and keen logical mind. He saw no reason for the woman’s attitude of rebuke, and concluded he must be mistaken in it. Rallying his smile once more he asked:

“Is Miss Starr ready to ride, or have I come too early?”

Again the silence became impressive as the cold eyes looked him through, before the thin lips opened.

“My daughter is not ready to ride–with YOU, this morning or at any other time!”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” said Michael now deeply astonished, and utterly unable to fathom the woman’s strange manner. “Have I misunderstood? I thought she asked me to ride with her this morning. May I see her, please?”

“No, you may not see Miss Endicott!” said the cold voice. “And I have come down to tell you that I consider your coming here at all a great impertinence. Certainly my husband has fully discharged any obligations for the slight service he is pleased to assume that you rendered a good many years ago. I have always had my doubts as to whether you did not do more harm than good at that time. Of course you were only a child and it was impossible that you should have done any very heroic thing at that age. In all probability if you had kept out of things the trouble never would have happened, and your meddling simply gave you a wound and a soft bed for a while. In my opinion you have had far more done for you than you ever deserved, and I want you to understand that so far as my daughter is concerned the obligation is discharged.”

Michael had stood immovable while the cruel woman uttered her harangue, his eyes growing wide with wonder and dark with a kind of manly shame for her as she went on. When she paused for a moment she saw his face was white and still like a statue, but there was something in the depth of his eyes that held her in check.

With the utmost calm, and deference, although his voice rang with honest indignation, Michael spoke:

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Endicott,” he said, his tone clear and attention-demanding, “I have never felt that there was the slightest obligation resting upon any of this family for the trifling matter that occurred when, as you say, I was a child. I feel that the obligation is entirely the other way, of course, but I cannot understand what you mean. How is my coming here at Mr. Endicott’s invitation an impertinence?”

The woman looked at him contemptuously as though it were scarcely worth the trouble to answer him, yet there was something about him that demanded an answer.

“I suppose you are ignorant then,” she answered cuttingly, “as you seem to be honest. I will explain. You are not fit company for my daughter. It is strange that you do not see that for yourself! A child of the slums, with nothing but shame and disgrace for an inheritance, and brought up a pauper! How could you expect to associate on a level with a gentleman’s daughter? If you have any respect for her whatever you should understand that it is not for such as you to presume to call upon her and take her out riding. It is commendable in you of course to have improved what opportunities have been given you, but it is the height of ingratitude in a dependent to presume upon kindness and take on the airs of an equal, and you might as well understand first as last that you cannot do it. I simply will not have you here. Do you understand?”

Michael stood as if rooted to the floor, horror and dismay growing in his eyes; and stupor trickling through his veins. For a minute he stood after she had ceased speaking, as though the full meaning of her words had been slow to reach his consciousness. Yet outwardly his face was calm, and only his eyes had seemed to change and widen and suffer as she spoke. Finally his voice came to him:

“Madam, I did not know,” he said in a stricken voice. “As you say, I am ignorant.” Then lifting his head with that fine motion of challenge to the world that was characteristic of him whenever he had to face a hard situation, his voice rang clear and undaunted:

“Madam, I beg your pardon. I shall not offend this way again. It was because I did not understand. I would not hurt your daughter in any way, for she has been the only beautiful thing that ever came into my life. But I will never trouble her again.”

The bow with which he left her and marched past her into the hall and out of the great door where once his boy life had been freely laid down for her child, could have been no more gracefully or dramatically effected if he had been some great actor. It was natural, it was full of dignity and reproach, and it left the lady feeling smaller and meaner than she had ever felt in all of her rose-colored, velvet-lined existence. Somehow all the contempt she had purposely prepared for the crushing of the lad, he had suddenly flung from him as a hated garment and walked from her presence, leaving it wrapped about herself.

“Well, really!” she gasped at last when she realized that he was gone and her eloquence not half finished, “Well, really! What right had he to go away like that without my permission. Impertinent to the end! One would suppose he was a grand Duke. Such airs! I always told Delevan it was a mistake to educate the masses. They simply don’t know their place and will not keep it.”

Nevertheless, the selfish woman was much shaken. Michael had made her feel somehow as if she had insulted a saint or a supernal being. She could not forget how the light had sifted through his wonderful hair and glinted through the depths of his great eyes, as he spoke those last words, and she resented the ease with which he had left her presence. It had been too much like the going of a victor, and not like one crushed back into his natural place. She was cross all day in consequence.

Starr meanwhile was lingering upstairs waiting for Michael. She had been purposely kept busy in a distant room at the back of the house by her mother, and was not told of his coming. As an hour went by beyond the appointed time she grew restless and disappointed; and then annoyed and almost angry that he should have so easily forgotten her; but she did not tell her mother, and the old Scotch nurse who would have been her confidante had been sent on an errand to another part of the city.

Thus, as the days went by, and Michael came no more to the house, the girl grew to think he did not want to come, and her slight disappointment and mortification were succeeded by a haughty resentment, for her mother’s teaching had not been without some result in her character.

Michael had gone into the door of the Endicott mansion a boy with a light heart and a happy vision of the future. He came out from there an hour later, a man, with a heavy burden on his heart, and a blank vision of the future. So much had the woman wrought.

As he walked from the house his bright head drooped, and his spirit was troubled within him. He went as one in a terrible dream. His face had the look of an angel newly turned out of paradise and for no fault of his own; an angel who bowed to the Supreme mandate, but whose life was crushed within him. People looked at him strangely, and wondered as they passed him. It was as if Sorrow were embodied suddenly, and looking through eyes intended for Love. For the first time Michael, beloved of all his companions for his royal unselfishness, was thinking of himself.

Yet even so there was no selfishness in his thought. It was only as if that which had always given him life and the breath of gladness had suddenly been withdrawn from him, and left him panting, gasping in a wide and unexpected emptiness.

Somehow he found his way to his room and locked the door.

Then the great spirit gave way and he flung himself upon the bed in supreme exhaustion. He seemed not to have another atom of strength left wherewith, to move or think or even breathe consciously. All his physical powers had oozed away and deserted him, now in this great crisis when life’s foundations were shaken to their depths and nothing seemed to be any more. He could not think it over or find a way out of the horror, he could only lie and suffer it, fact by fact, as it came and menaced him, slowly, cruelly throughout that length of day.

Gradually it became distinct and separated itself into thoughts so that he could follow it, as if it were the separate parts of some great dragon come to twine its coils about him and claw and crush and strangle the soul of him.

First, there was the fact like a great knife which seemed to have severed soul from body, the fact that he might not see Starr, or have aught to do with her any more. So deeply had this interdiction taken hold upon him that it seemed to him in his agitation he might no longer even think of her.

Next, following in stern and logical sequence, came the reason for this severing of soul from all it knew and loved; the fact of his lowly birth. Coming as it did, out of the blue of a trustful life that had never questioned much about his origin but had sunnily taken life as a gift, and thought little about self; with the bluntness and directness of an un-lovingkindness, it had seemed to cut and back in every direction, all that was left of either soul or body, so that there came no hope of ever catching things together again.

That was the way it came over and over again as the boy without a friend in the whole wide world to whom he could turn in his first great trouble, lay and took it.

Gradually out of the blackness he began to think a little; think back to his own beginning. Who was he? What was he? For the first time in his life, though he knew life more than most of the boys with whom he had associated, the thought of shame in connection with his own birth came to him, and burrowed and scorched its way into his soul.

He might have thought of such a possibility before perhaps, had not his very youngest years been hedged about by a beautiful fancy that sprang from the brain of an old Irish woman in the slums, whose heart was wide as her ways were devious, and who said one day when little Mikky had run her an errand, “Shure, an’ then Mikky, yer an angel sthraight frum hiven an’ no misthake. Yer no jest humans like the rist av us; ye must av dhropped doon frum the skoy.” And from that it had gone forth that Mikky was the child of the sky, and that was why no one knew who were his parents.

The bit of a fancy had guarded the boy’s weird babyhood, and influenced more than he knew his own thought of existence, until life grew too full to think much on it.

Out of the darkness and murk of the slums the soul of Mikky had climbed high, and his ambitions reached up to the limitless blue above him. It had never occurred to him once that there might be an embargo put upon his upward movements. He had taken all others to be as free hearted and generous as himself. Heir of all things, he had breathed the atmosphere of culture as though it were his right. Now, he suddenly saw that he had no business climbing. He had been seized just as he was about to mount a glorious height from which he was sure other heights were visible, when a rude hand had brushed him back and dropped him as though he had been some crawling reptile, down, down, down, at the very bottom of things. And the worst of all was that he might not climb back. He might look up, he might know the way up again, but the honor in him–the only bit of the heights he had carried back to the foot with him–forbade him to climb to the dizzy heights of glory, for they belonged to others: those whom fortune favored, and on whose escutcheon there was no taint of shame.

And why should it be that some souls should be more favored than others? What had he, for instance, to do with his birth? He would not have chosen shame, if shame there was. Yet shame or not he was branded with it for life because his origin was enveloped in mystery. The natural conclusion was that sin had had its part.

Then through the boy’s mind there tumbled a confusion of questions all more or less unanswerable, in the midst of which he slept.

He seemed to have wandered out into the open again with the pines he loved above him, and underneath the springy needles with their slippery resinous softness; and he lay looking up into the changeless blue that covered all the heights, asking all the tumultuous questions that throbbed through his heart, asking them of God.

Silently the noises of the city slunk away and dropped into the ceaseless calm of the southland he had left. The breeze fanned his cheek, the pines whispered, and a rippling bird song touched his soul with peace. A quietness came down upon his troubled spirit, and he was satisfied to take the burden that had been laid him and to bear it greatly. The peace was upon him when he awoke, far into the next morning.

The hot June sun streamed into his stuffy room and fell aslant the bed. He was sodden and heavy with the heat and the oppression of his garments. His head ached, and he felt as nearly ill as he had ever felt in his life. The spectre of the day before confronted him in all its torturing baldness, but he faced it now and looked it squarely in the eyes. It was not conquered yet, not by any means. The sharp pain of its newness was just as great, and the deep conviction was still there that it was because of wrong that this burden was laid upon him, but there was an adjustment of his soul to the inevitable that there had not been at first.

The boy lay still for a few minutes looking out upon a new life in which everything had to be readjusted to the idea of himself and his new limitations. Heretofore in his mind there had been no height that was not his for the climbing. Now, the heights were his, but he would not climb because the heights themselves might be marred by his presence. It was wrong, it was unfair, that things should be so; but they were so, and as long as Sin and Wrong were in the world they would be so.

He must look upon life as he had looked upon every contest through his education. There were always things to be borne, hard things, but that only made the conquest greater. He must face this thing and win.

And what had he lost that had been his before? Not the beautiful girl who had been the idol of his heart all these years. She was still there, alive and well, and more beautiful than ever. His devotion might yet stand between her and harm if need arose. True, he had lost the hope of companionship with her, but that had been the growth of a day. He had never had much of it before, nor expected it when he came North. It would have been a glory and a joy beyond expression, but one could live without those things and be true. There was some reason for it all somewhere in the infinite he was sure.

It was not like the ordinary boy to philosophize in this way, but Michael had never been an ordinary boy. Ever his soul had been open to the greatness of the universe and sunny toward the most trying surroundings. He had come out of the hardest struggle his soul had yet met, but he had come out a man. There were lines about his pleasant mouth that had not been there the day before, which spoke of strength and self-control. There were new depths in his eyes as of one who had looked down, and seen things unspeakable, having to number himself with the lowly.

A new thought came to him while he lay there trying to take in the change that had come to him. The thought of his childhood companions, the little waifs like himself who came from the offscourings of the earth. They had loved him he knew. He recalled slowly, laboriously, little incidents from his early history. They were dim and uncertain, many of them, but little kindnesses stood out. A bad out on his foot once and how Buck had bathed it and bound it up in dirty rags, doing double duty with the newspapers for several days to save his friend from stepping. There was a bitter cold night way back as far as he could remember when he had had bad luck, and came among the others supperless and almost freezing. Buck had shared a crust and found a warm boiler-room where they crawled out of sight and slept. There were other incidents, still more blurred in his memory, but enough to recall how loyal the whole little gang had been to him. He saw once more their faces when they heard he was going away to college; blanched with horror at the separation, lighting with pleasure when he promised to return!

The years, how they had changed and separated! Where were they, these who really belonged to him; who were his rightful companions? What had the years done to them? And he had a duty toward them unperformed. How was it that he had been in the city all these hours and not even thought of going to look for those loyal souls who had stood by him so faithfully when they were all mere babies? He must go at once. He had lost his head over attempting to reach things that were not for him, and this shock had come to set him straight.

Gravely he rose at last, these thoughts surging through his brain.

The heat, the stifling air of the room, his recent struggling and the exhausting stupor made him reel dizzily as he got up, but his mettle was up now and he set his lips and went about making himself neat. He longed for a dip in the crystal waters of the little lake at college. The tiny wash-bowl of his room proved a poor substitute with its tepid water and diminutive towel.

He went out and breakfasted carefully as if it were a duty, and then, with his map in his pocket, started out to find his old haunts.

CHAPTER VIII

Thirteen years in New York had brought many changes. Some of the well-remembered landmarks were gone and new buildings in their places. A prosperous looking saloon quite palatial in its entrance marked the corner where he used to sell papers. It used to be a corner grocery store. Saloons! Always and everywhere there were saloons! Michael looked at them wonderingly. He had quite forgotten them in his exile, for the college influence had barred them out from its vicinity.

The boy Mikky had been familiar enough with saloons, looking upon them as a necessary evil, where drinking fathers spent the money that ought to have bought their children food. He had been in and out of them commonly enough selling his papers, warming his feet, and getting a crust now and then from an uneaten bit on the lunch counter. Sometimes there had been glasses to drain, but Mikky with his observing eyes had early decided that he would have none of the stuff that sent men home to curse their little children.

College influence, while there had been little said on the subject, had filled the boy with horror for saloons and drunkards. He stood appalled now as he turned at last into an alley where familiar objects, doorsteps, turnings, cellars, met his gaze, with grog shops all along the way and sentinelling every corner.

A strange feeling came over him as memory stirred by long-forgotten sights awoke. Was this really the place, and was that opening beyond the third steps the very blind alley where Janie used to live? Things were so much dirtier, so much, worse in every way than he remembered them.

He hurried on, not noticing the attention he was attracting from the wretched little children in the gutters, though he scanned them all eagerly, hurriedly, with the, wild idea that Buck and the rest might be among them.

Yes, the alley was there, dark and ill-smelling as ever, and in its dim recesses on a dirty step a woman’s figure hunched; a figure he knew at once that he had seen before and in that very spot. Who was she? What had they called her? Sally? Aunt Sal?

He hurried up to where she sat looking curiously, apathetically at him; her gray hair straggling down on her dirty cotton frock open at the neck over shrivelled yellow skin; soiled old hands hanging carelessly over slatternly garments; stockingless feet stuck into a great tattered pair of men’s shoes. Nothing seemed changed since he saw her last save that the hair had been black then, and the skin not so wrinkled. Aunt Sally had been good natured always, even when she was drunk; her husband, when he came home was always drunk also, but never good natured. These things came back to the boy as he stood looking down at the wreck of a woman before him.

The bleary eyes looked up unknowing, half resentful of his intrusion.

“Aunt Sally!” impulsively cried the boyish voice. “Aren’t you Aunt Sally?”

The woman looked stupidly surprised.

“I be,” she said thickly, “but wot’s that to yous? I beant no hant o’ yourn.”

“Don’t you remember Mikky?” he asked almost anxiously, for now the feeling had seized him that he must make her remember. He must find out if he could whether anything was known of his origin. Perhaps she could help him. Perhaps, after all, he might be able to trace his family, and find at least no disgrace upon him.

“Mikky!” the woman repeated dully. She shook her head.

“Mikky!” she said again stolidly, “Wot’s Mikky?”

“Don’t you remember Mikky the little boy that sold papers and brought you water sometimes? Once you gave me a drink of soup from your kettle. Think!”

A dim perception came into the sodden eyes.

“Thur wus a Mikky long ago,” she mused. “He had hair like a h’angel, bless the sweet chile; but he got shot an’ never come back. That war long ago.”

Michael took off his hat and the little light in the dark alley seemed to catch and tangle in the gleam of his hair.

The old woman started as though she had seen a vision.

“The saints presarve us!” she cried aghast, shrinking back into her doorway with raised hands, “an’ who be yez? Yeh looks enough like the b’y to be the father of ‘im. He’d hair loike the verra sunshine itself. Who be yez? Spake quick. Be ye man, b’y, er angel?”

There was something in the woman’s tone that went to the heart of the lonely boy, even while he recoiled from the repulsive creature before him.

“I am just Mikky, the boy, grown a little older,” he said gently, “and I’ve come back to see the place where I used to live, and find the people I used to know.”

“Y’ve lost yer way thin fer shure!” said the woman slightly recovering her equilibrium. “The loikes uv yous nivver lived in dis place; fer ef yous ain’t angel you’s gintulmun; an’ no gintulmun ivver cum from the loikes o’ this. An’ besoides, the b’y Mikky, I tel’d yez, was shot an’ nivver comed back no more. He’s loikely up wid de angels where he b’longs.”

“Yes, I was shot,” said Michael, “but I wasn’t killed. A good man sent me to college, and I’ve just graduated and come back to look up my friends.”

“Frinds, is it, ye’ll be afther a findin’? Thin ye’d bist look ilsewhar, fer thur’s no one in this alley fit to be frinds with the loikes uv you. Ef that’s wot they does with b’ys at co-lidge a pity ’tis more uv um can’t git shot an’ go there. But ef all yous tell is thrue, moi advice to yez is, juist bate it as hoird as ivver yez kin out’n yere, an’ don’t yez nivver set oies on this alley agin. Ye’d better stay to co-lidge all the days uv yer loife than set fut here agin, fer juist let ’em got holt uv yez an’ they’ll spile the pretty face uv ye. Look thar!” she pointed tragically toward a wreck of humanity that reeled into the alley just then. “Would yez loike to be loike that? My mon come home loike that ivvery day of his loife, rist his bones, an’ he nivver knowed whin he died.”

Maudlin tears rolled down the poor creature’s cheeks, for they could be no tears of affection. Her man’s departure from this life could have been but a relief. Michael recoiled from the sight with a sickening sadness. Nevertheless he meant to find out if this woman knew aught of his old friends, or of his origin. He rallied his forces to answer her.

“I don’t have to be like that,” he said, “I’ve come down to look up my friends I tell you, and I want you to tell me if you know anything about my parents. Did you ever hear anything about me? Did anybody know who I was or how I came to be here?”

The old woman looked at him only half comprehending, and tried to gather her scattered faculties, but she shook her grizzled head hopelessly.

“I ain’t niver laid oies on yea before, an’ how cud I know whar yez cum from, ner how yez cam to be here?” she answered.

He perceived that it would require patience to extract information from this source.

“Try to think,” he said more gently. “Can you remember if anyone ever belonged to the little boy they called Mikky? Was there ever any mother or father, or–anybody that belonged to him at all.”

Again, she shook her head.

“Niver as Oi knows on. They said he just comed a wee babby to the coourt a wanderin’ with the other childer, with scarce a rag to his back, an’ a smile on him like the arch-angel, and some said as how he niver had no father ner mother, but dthrapped sthraight frum the place where de angels live.”

“But did no one take care of him, or ever try to find out about him?” questioned Michael wistfully.

“Foind out, is it? Whist! An’ who would tak toime to foind out whin ther’s so miny uv their own. Mikky was allus welcome to a bite an’ a sup ef any uv us had it by. There wuz old Granny Bane with the rheumatiks. She gave him a bed an’ a bite now an’ agin, till she died, an afther that he made out to shift fer hisse’f. He was a moighty indepindint babby.”

“But had he no other name? Mikky what? What was his whole name?” pursued Michael with an eagerness that could not give up the sought-for information.

The old woman only stared stupidly.

“Didn’t he have any other name?” There was almost despair in his tone.

Another shake of the head.

“Juist Mikky!” she said and her eyes grew dull once more.

“Can you tell me if there are any other people living here now that used to know Mikky? Are there any other men or women who might remember?”

“How kin Oi tell?” snarled the woman impatiently. “Oi can’t be bothered.”

Michael stood in troubled silence and the woman turned her head to watch a neighbor coming down the street with a basket in her hand. It would seem that her visitor interested her no longer. She called out some rough, ribaldry to the woman who glanced up fiercely and deigned no further reply. Then Michael tried again.

“Could you tell me of the boys who used to go with Mikky?”

“No, Oi can’t,” she answered crossly, “Oi can’t be bothered. Oi don’t know who they was.”

“There was Jimmie and Sam and Bobs and Buck. Surely you remember Buck, and little Janie. Janie who died after Mikky went away?”

The bleared eyes turned full upon him again.

“Janie? Fine Oi remimber Janie. They had a white hurse to her, foiner’n any iver cum to the coourt before. The b’ys stayed up two noights selling to git the money fur it, an’ Buck he stayed stiddy while she was aloive. Pity she doied.”

“Where is Buck?” demanded Michael with a sudden twinging of his heart strings that seemed to bring back the old love and loyalty to his friend. Buck had needed him perhaps all these years and he had not known.

“That’s whot the _po_lice would like fer yez to answer, I’m thinkin’!” laughed old Sal. “They wanted him bad fer breakin’ into a house an’ mos’ killin’ the lady an’ gittin’ aff wid de jewl’ry. He beat it dat noight an’ ain’t none o’ us seen him these two year. He were a slick one, he were awful smart at breakin’ an’ stealin’. Mebbe Jimmie knows, but Jimmie, he’s in jail, serving his time fer shootin’ a man in the hand durin’ a dhrunken fight. Jimmie, he’s no good. Never wuz. He’s jest like his foither. Bobs, he got both legs cut aff, bein’ runned over by a big truck, and he doied in the horspittle. Bobs he were better dead. He’d uv gone loike the rist. Sam, he’s round these parts mostly nights. Ye’ll hev to come at noight ef yez want to see him. Mebbe he knows more ’bout Buck’n he’ll tell.”

Sick at heart Michael put question, after question but no more information was forthcoming and the old woman showed signs of impatience again. Carefully noting what she said about Sam and getting a few facts as to the best time and place to find him Michael turned and walked sadly out of the alley. He did not see the alert eyes of old Sal following him, nor the keen expression of her face as she stretched her neck to see which way he turned as he left the alley. As soon as he was out of sight she shuffled down from her doorstep to the corner and peered after him through the morning sunshine. Then she went slowly, thoughtfully back to her doorstep.

“Now whut in the divil could he be a wantin’ wid Buck an’ Sammie?” she muttered to herself. “All that story ’bout his bein’ Mikky was puttin’ it on my eye, I’ll giv warnin’ to Sammie this night, an’ ef Buck’s in these pairts he better git out west some’res. The _po_lice uv got onto ‘im. But hoiwiver did they know he knowed Mikky? Poor little angel Mikky! I guv him the shtraight about Bobs an’ Jimmie, fer they wuz beyant his troublin’ but he’ll niver foind Sammie from the directin’ I sayed.”

Michael, sorrowing, horror-filled, conscience-stricken, took his way to a restaurant and ate his dinner, thinking meanwhile what he could do for the boys. Could he perhaps visit Jimmie in prison and make his life more comfortable in little ways? Could he plan something for him when he should come out? Could he help Sam? The old woman had said little about Sam’s condition. Michael thought he might likely by this time have built up a nice little business for himself. Perhaps he had a prosperous news stand in some frequented place. He looked forward eagerly to meeting him again. Sam had always been a silent child dependent on the rest, but he was one of the little gang and Michael’s heart warmed toward his former comrade. It could not be that he would find him so loathsome and repulsive as the old woman Sal. She made him heart-sick. Just to think of drinking soup from her dirty kettle! How could he have done it? And yet, he knew no better life then, and he was hungry, and a little child.

So Michael mused, and all the time with a great heart-hunger to know what had become of Buck. Could he and Sam together plan some way to find Buck and help him out of his trouble? How could Buck have done anything so dreadful? And yet even as he thought it he remembered that “pinching” had not been a crime in his childhood days, not unless one was found out. How had these principles, or lack of principles been replaced gradually in his own life without his realizing it at all? It was all strange and wonderful. Practically now he, Michael, had been made into a new creature since he left New York, and so gradually, and pleasantly that he had not at all realized the change that was going on in him.

Yet as he thought and marvelled there shot through him a thought like a pang, that perhaps after all it had not been a good thing, this making him into a new creature, with new desires and aims and hopes that could never be fulfilled. Perhaps he would have been happier, better off, if he had never been taken out of that environment and brought to appreciate so keenly another one where he did not belong, and could never stay, since this old environment was the one where he must stay whether he would or no. He put the thought from him as unworthy at once, yet the sharpness of the pang lingered and with it a vision of Starr’s vivid face as he had seen her two nights before in her father’s home, before he knew that the door of that home was shut upon him forever.

Michael passed the day in idly wandering about the city trying to piece together his old knowledge, and the new, and know the city in which he had come to dwell.

It was nearing midnight, when Michael, by the advice of old Sal, and utterly fearless in his ignorance, entered the court where his babyhood had been spent.

The alley was dark and murky with the humidity of the summer night; but unlike the morning hours it was alive with a writhing, chattering, fighting mass of humanity. Doorways were overflowing. The narrow alley itself seemed fairly thronging with noisy, unhappy men and women. Hoarse laughs mingled with rough cursing, shot through with an occasional scream. Stifling odors lurked in cellar doorways and struck one full in the face unawares. Curses seemed to be the setting for all conversation whether angry or jolly. Babies tumbled in the gutter and older children fought over some scrap of garbage.

Appalled, Michael halted and almost turned back. Then, remembering that this was where he had come from,–where he belonged,–and that his duty, his obligation, was to find hie friends, he went steadily forward.

There sat old Sal, a belligerent gleam in her small sodden eyes. Four men on a step opposite, with a candle stood between them, were playing cards. Sal muttered a word as Michael approached and the candle was suddenly extinguished. It looked as if one had carelessly knocked it down to the pavement, but the glare nickered into darkness and Michael could no longer see the men’s faces. He had wondered if one of them was Sam. But when he rubbed his eyes and looked again in the darkness the four men were gone and the step was occupied by two children holding a sleeping baby between them and staring at him in open mouthed admiration.

The flickering weird light of the distant street lamps, the noise and confusion, the odors and curses filled him anew with a desire to flee, but he would not let himself turn back. Never had Michael turned from anything that was his duty from fear or dislike of anything.

He tried to enter into conversation with old Sal again, but she would have none of him. She had taken “a wee drapth” and was alert and suspicious. In fact, the whole alley was on the alert for this elegant stranger who was none of theirs, and who of course could have come but to spy on some one. He wanted Sam, therefore Sam was hidden well and at that moment playing a crafty game in the back of a cellar on the top of an old beer barrel, by the light of a wavering candle; well guarded by sentinels all along the difficult way. Michael could have no more found him under those circumstances than he could have hoped to find a needle in a haystack the size of the whole city of New York.

He wandered for two hours back and forth through the alley seeing sights long since forgotten, hearing words unspeakable; following out this and that suggestion of the interested bystanders; always coming back without finding Sam. He had not yet comprehended the fact that he was not intended to find Sam. He had taken these people into his confidence just as he had always taken everyone into his confidence, and they were playing him false. If they had been the dwellers on Fifth Avenue he would not have expected them to be interested in him and his plans and desires; but these were his very own people, at least the “ownest” he had in the world, and among them he had once gone freely, confidently. He saw no reason why they should have changed toward him, though he felt the antagonism in the atmosphere as the night wore on, even as he had felt it in the Endicott house the day before.

Heartsick and baffled at last he took his way slowly, looking back many times, and leaving many messages for Sam. He felt as if he simply could not go hack to even so uncomfortable a bed an he called his own in his new lodgings without having found some clew to his old comrades.

Standing at the corner of the alley opposite the flaunting lights of the saloon he looked back upon the swarming darkness of the alley and his heart filled with a great surging wave of pity, love, and sorrow. Almost at his feet in a dark shadow of a doorway a tiny white-faced boy crouched fast asleep on the stone threshold. It made him think of little Bobs, and his own barren childhood, and a mist came before his eyes as he looked up, up at the sky where the very stars seemed small and far away as if the sky had nothing to do with this part of the earth.

“Oh, God!” he said under his breath. “Oh, God! I must do something for them!”

And then as if the opportunity came with the prayer there reeled into view a little group of people, three or four men and a woman.

The woman was talking in a high frightened voice and protesting. The men caught hold of her roughly, laughing and flinging out coarse jests. Then another man came stealing from the darkness of the alley and joined the group, seizing the woman by the shoulders and speaking words to her too vile for repetition. In terrible fear the girl turned, for Michael could see, now that she was nearer, that she was but a young girl, and that she was pretty. Instantly he thought of Starr and his whole soul rose in mighty wrath that any man should dare treat any girl as he had seen these do. Then the girl screamed and struggled to get away, crying: “It ain’t true, it ain’t true! Lem’me go! I won’t go with you–“

Instantly Michael was upon them, his powerful arms and supple body dashing the men right and left. And because of the suddenness of the attack coming from this most unexpected quarter,–for Michael had stood somewhat in the shadow–and because of the cowardliness of all bullies, for the moment he was able to prevail against all four, just long enough for the girl to slip like a wraith from their grasp and disappear into the shadows.

Then when the men, dazed from surprise, though not seriously hurt, discovered that their prey was gone and that a stranger from the higher walks of life had frustrated their plans they fell upon him in their wrath.

Michael brave always, and well trained in athletics, parried their blows for an instant, but the man, the one who had come from the shadows of the alley, whose face was evil, stole up behind and stabbed him in the shoulder. The sudden faintness that followed made him less capable of defending himself. He felt he was losing his senses, and the next blow from one of the men sent him reeling into the street where he fell heavily, striking his head against the curbing. There was a loud cry of murder from a woman’s shrill voice, the padded rush of the villains into their holes, the distant ring of a policeman’s whistle, and then all was quiet as a city night could be. Michael lay white and still with his face looking up to the faint pitying moon so far away and his beautiful hair wet with the blood that was flowing out on the pavement. There he lay on the edge of the world that was his own and would not own him. He had come to his own and his own received him not.

CHAPTER IX

Michael awoke in the hospital with a bandage around his head and a stinging pain in his shoulder whenever he tried to move.

Back in his inner consciousness there sounded the last words he heard before he fell, but he could not connect them with anything at first:

“Hit him again, Sam!”

Those were the words. What did they mean? Had he heard them or merely dreamed them? And where was he?

A glance about the long room with its rows of white beds each with an occupant answered his question. He closed his eyes again to be away from all those other eyes and think.

Sam! He had been looking for Sam. Had Sam then come at last? Had Sam hit him? Had Sam recognized him? Or was it another Sam?

But there was something queer the matter with his head, and he could not think. He put up his right arm to feel the bandage and the pain in his shoulder stung again. Somehow to his feverish fancy it seemed the sting of Mrs. Endicott’s words to him. He dropped his hand feebly and the nurse gave him something in a spoon. Then half dreaming he fell asleep, with a vision of Starr’s face as he had seen her last.

Three weeks he lay upon that narrow white bed, and learned to face the battalion of eyes from the other narrow beds around him; learned to distinguish the quiet sounds of the marble lined room from the rumble of the unknown city without; and when the nimble was the loudest his heart ached with the thought of the alley and all the horrible sights and sounds that seemed written in letters of fire across his spirit.

He learned to look upon the quiet monotonous world of ministrations as a haven from the world outside into which he must presently go; and in his weakened condition he shrank from the new life. It seemed to be so filled with disappointments and burdens of sorrow.

But one night a man in his ward died and was carried, silent and covered from the room. Some of his last moaning utterances had reached the ears of his fellow sufferers with a swift vision of his life and his home, and his mortal agony for the past, now that he was leaving it all.

That night Michael could not sleep, for the court and the alley, and the whole of sunken humanity were pressing upon his heart. It seemed to be his burden that he must give up all his life’s hopes to bear. And there he had it out with himself and accepted whatever should come to be his duty.

Meantime the wound on his head was healed, the golden halo had covered the scar, and the cut in his shoulder, which had been only a flesh, wound, was doing nicely. Michael, was allowed to sit up, and then to be about the room for a day or two.

It was in those days of his sitting up when the sun which crept in for an hour a day reached and touched to flame his wonderful hair, that the other men of the ward began to notice him. He seemed to them all as somehow set apart from the rest; one who was lifted above what held them down to sin and earth. His countenance spoke of strength and self-control, the two things that many of those men lacked, either through constant sinning or through constant fighting with poverty and trouble, and so, as he began to get about they sent for him to come to their bedsides, and as they talked one and another of them poured out his separate tale of sorrow and woe, till Michael felt he could bear no more. He longed for power, great power to help; power to put these wretched men on their feet again to lead a new life, power to crush some of the demons in human form who were grinding them down to earth. Oh! for money and knowledge and authority!

Here was a man who had lost both legs in a defective machine he was running in a factory. He was a skilled workman and had a wife and three little ones. But he was useless now at his trade. No one wanted a man with no legs. He might better be dead. Damages? No, there was no hope of that. He had accepted three hundred dollars to sign a release. He had to. His wife and children were starving and they must have the money then or perish. There was no other way. Besides, what hope had he in fighting a great corporation? He was a poor man, a stranger in this country, with no friends. The company had plenty who were willing to swear it was the man’s own fault.

Yonder was another who had tried to asphyxiate himself by turning on the gas in his wretched little boarding-house room because he had lost his position on account of ill health, and the firm wished to put a younger man in his place. He had almost succeeded in taking himself out of this life.

Next him was one, horribly burned by molten metal which he had been compelled to carry without adequate precautions, because it was a cheaper method of handling the stuff and men cost less than machinery. You could always get more men.

The man across from him was wasted away from insufficient food. He had been out of work for months, and what little money he could pick up in odd jobs had gone mostly to his wife and children.

And so it was throughout the ward. On almost every life sin,–somebody’s sin,–had left its mark. There were one or two cheery souls who, though poor, were blest with friends and a home of some kind and were looking forward to a speedy restoration; but these were the exception. Nearly all the others blamed someone else for their unhappy condition and in nearly every case someone else was undoubtedly to blame, even though in most cases each individual had been also somewhat responsible.

All this Michael gradually learned, as he began his practical study of sociology. As he learned story after story, and began to formulate the facts of each he came to three conclusions: First, that there was not room enough in the city for these people to have a fair chance at the great and beautiful things of life. Second, that the people of the cities who had the good things were getting them all for themselves and cared not a straw whether the others went without. Third, that somebody ought to be doing something about it, and why not he?

Of course it was absurd for a mere boy just out of college, with scarcely a cent to his name–and not a whole name to call his own–to think of attempting to attack the great problem of the people single-handed; but still he felt he was called to do it, and he meant to try.

He hadn’t an idea at this time whether anybody else had seen it just this way or not. He had read a little of city missions, and charitable enterprises, but they had scarcely reached his inner consciousness. His impression gathered from such desultory reading had been that the effort in that direction was sporadic and ineffective. And so, in his gigantic ignorance and egotism, yet with his exquisite sensitiveness to the inward call, Michael henceforth set himself to espouse the cause of the People.

Was he not one of them? Had he not been born there that he might be one of them, and know what they had to suffer? Were they not his kindred so far as he had any kindred? Had he not been educated and brought into contact with higher things that he might know what these other human souls might be if they had the opportunity? If he had known a little more about the subject he would have added “and if they _would_.” But he did not; he supposed all souls were as willing to be uplifted as he had been.

Michael went out from the hospital feeling that his life work was before him. The solemn pledge he had taken as a little child to return and help his former companions became a voluntary pledge of his young manhood. He knew very little indeed about the matter, but he felt much, and he was determined to do, wherever the way opened. He had no doubt but that the way would open.

“Now young man, take care of yourself,” said the doctor in parting from his patient a few days later, “and for the land’s sake keep away from back alleys at night. When you know a little more about New York you’ll learn that it’s best to keep just as far away from such places as possible. Don’t go fooling around under the impression that you can convert any of those blackguards. They need to be blown up, every one of them, and the place obliterated. Mind, I say, keep away from them.”

Michael smiled and thanked the doctor, and walked unsteadily down the hospital steps on feet that were strangely wobbly for him. But Michael did not intend to obey the doctor. He had been turning the matter over in his mind and he had a plan. And that very night about ten o’clock he went back to the alley.

Old Sal was sitting on her doorstep a little more intoxicated than the last time, and the young man’s sudden appearance by her side startled her into an Irish howl.

“The saints presarve us!” she cried tottering to her feet. “He’s cum back to us agin, sure he has! There’s no killin’ him! He’s an angel shure. B’ys rin! bate it! bate it! The angel’s here agin!”

There was a sound of scurrying feet and the place seemed to suddenly clear of the children that had been under foot. One or two scowling men, or curiously apathetic women in whose eyes the light of life had died and been left unburied, peered from dark doorways.

Michael stood quietly until the howling of Sal had subsided, and then he spoke in a clear tone.

“Can you tell if Sam has been around here to-night? Is he anywhere near here now?”

There was no answer for a minute but some one growled out the information that he might and then he might not have been. Some one else said he had just gone away but they didn’t know where. Michael perceived that it was a good deal as it had been before.

“I have brought a message for him, a letter,” he said, and he spoke so that anyone near-by might hear. “Will you give it to him when he comes. He will want to see it, I am sure. It is important. I think he will be glad to get it. It contains good news about an old friend of his.”

He held out the letter courteously to old Sal, and she looked down at its white crispness as though it had been a message from the lower regions sent to call her to judgment. A letter, white, square-cornered and clean, with clear, firm inscription, had never come within her gaze before. Old Sal had never learned to read. The writing meant nothing to her, but the whole letter represented a mystic communication from another world.

Instinctively the neighbors gathered nearer to look at the letter, and Sal, seeing herself the centre of observation, reached forward a dirty hand wrapped in a corner of her apron, and took the envelope as though it had been hot, eyeing it all the while fearfully.

Then with his easy bow and touching his hat to her as though she had been a queen, Michael turned and walked away out of the alley.

Old Sal stood watching him, a kind of wistful wonder in her bleary eyes. No gentleman had ever tipped his hat to her, and no man had ever done her reverence. From her little childhood she had been brought up to forfeit the respect of men. Perhaps it had never entered her dull mind before that she might have been aught but what she was; and that men might have given her honor.

The neighbors too were awed for the moment and stood watching in silence, till when Michael turned the corner out of sight, Sal exclaimed:

“Now that’s the angel, shure! No gintlemin would iver uv tipped his ‘at to the loikes of Sal. Saints presarve us! That we should hev an angel in this alley!”

When Michael reached his lodging he found that he was trembling so from weakness and excitement that he could scarcely drag himself up the three flights to his room. So had his splendid strength been reduced by trouble and the fever that came with his wounds.

He lay down weakly and tried to think. Now he had done his best to find Sam. If Sam did not come in answer to his letter he must wait until he found him. He would not give up. So he fell asleep with the burden on his heart.

The letter was as follows:

“Dear Sam:

“You can’t have forgotten Mikky who slept with you in the boiler room, and with whom you shared your crusts. You remember I promised when I went away to college I would come back and try to make things better for you all? And now I have come and I am anxious to find the fellows and see what we can do together to make life better in the old alley and make up for some of the hard times when we were children. I have been down to the alley but can get no trace of you. I spent the best part of one night hunting you and then a slight accident put me in the hospital for a few days, but I am well now and am anxious to find you all. I want to talk over old times, and find out where Buck and Jim are; and hear all about Janie and little Bobs.

“I am going to leave this letter with Aunt Sally, hoping she will give it to you. I have given my address below and should be glad to have you come and see me at my room, or if you would prefer I will meet you wherever you say, and we will go together and have something to eat to celebrate.

“Hoping to hear from you very soon, I am as always,

“Your brother and friend,

“MIKKY.

“Address, Michael Endicott,
No —- West 23rd St.”

A few days later a begrimed envelope addressed in pencil was brought to the door by the postman. Michael with sinking heart opened it. It read:

“MiKY ef yo be reely hym cum to KelLys karner at 10 tumoroW nite. Ef you are mIK youz thee old whissel an doante bring no une wit yer Ef yO du I wunt be thar.

“SAM.”

Michael seated on his lumpy bed puzzled this out, word by word, until he made fairly good sense of it. He was to go to Kelly’s corner. How memory stirred at the words. Kelly’s corner was beyond the first turn of the alley, it was at the extreme end of an alley within an alley, and had no outlet except through Kelly’s saloon. Only the “gang” knew the name, “Kelly’s Corner,” for it was not really a corner at all only a sort of pocket or hiding place so entitled by Buck for his own and “de kids” private purpose. If Michael had been at all inclined to be a coward since his recent hard usage in the vicinity of the alley he would have kept away from Kelly’s corner, for once in there with enemies, and alone, no policeman’s club, nor hospital ambulance would ever come to help. The things that happened at Kelly’s corner never got into the newspapers.

Memory and instinct combined to make this perfectly dear to Michael’s mind, and if he needed no other warning those words of the letter, “Don’t bring no one with you. If you do, I won’t be there,” were sufficient to make him wise.

Yet Michael never so much as thought of not keeping the appointment. His business was to find Sam, and it mattered as little to him now that danger stood in the way as it had the day when he flung his neglected little body in front of Starr Endicott and saved her from the assassin’s bullet. He would go, of course, and go alone. Neither did it occur to him to take the ordinary precaution of leaving his name and whereabouts at the police station to be searched for in case he did not turn up in reasonable time. It was all in the day’s work and Michael thought no more about the possible peril he was facing than he had thought of broken limbs and bloody noses the last hour before a football scrimmage.

There was something else in the letter that interested Michael and stirred the old memories. That old whistle! Of course he had not forgotten that, although he had not used it much among his college companions. It was a strange, weird, penetrating sound, between a call and whistle. He and Buck had made it up between them. It was their old signal. When Michael went to college he had held it sacred as belonging strictly to his old friends, and never, unless by himself in the woods where none but the birds and the trees could hear, had he let its echoes ring. Sometimes he had flung it forth and startled the mocking birds, and once he had let it ring into the midst of his astonished comrades in Florida when he was hidden from their view and they knew not who had made the sound. He tried it now softly, and then louder and louder, until with sudden fear he stopped lest his landlady should happen to come up that way and think him insane. But undoubtedly he could give the old signal.

The next night at precisely ten o’clock Michael’s ringing step sounded down the alley; firm, decisive, secure. Such assurance must Daniel have worn as he faced the den of lions; and so went the three Hebrew children into the fiery furnace.

“It’s him! It’s the angel!” whispered old Sal who was watching. “Oi tould yez he’d come fer shure!”

“He’s got his nerve with him!” murmured a girl with bold eyes and a coarse kind of beauty, as she drew further back into the shadow of the doorway. “He ain’t comin’ out again so pretty I guess. Not if Sam don’t like. Mebbe he ain’t comin’ out ‘tall!”

“Angels has ways, me darlint!” chuckled Sal. “He’ll come back al roight, ye’ll see!”

On walked Michael, down the alley to the narrow opening that to the uninitiated was not an opening between the buildings at all, and slipped in the old way. He had thought it all out in the night. He was sure he knew just how far beyond Sal’s house it was; on into the fetid air of the close dark place, the air that struck him in the face like a hot, wet blanket as he kept on.

It was very still all about when he reached the point known as Kelly’s corner. It had not been so as he remembered it. It had been the place of plots, the hatching of murders and robberies. Had it so changed that it was still to-night? He stood for an instant hesitating. Should he wait a while, or knock on some door? Would it be any use to call?

But the instinct of the slums was upon him again, his birthright. It seemed to drop upon him from the atmosphere, a sort of stealthy patience. He would wait. Something would come. He must do as he had done with the birds of the forest when he wished to watch their habits. He must stand still unafraid and show that he was harmless.

So he stood three, perhaps five minutes, then softly at first and gradually growing clearer, he gave the call that he had given years before, a little barefoot, hungry child in that very spot many times.

The echo died away. There was nothing to make him know that a group of curious alley-dwellers huddled at the mouth of the trap in which he stood, watching with eyes accustomed to the darkness, to see what would happen; to block his escape if escape should be attempted.

Then out of the silence a sigh seemed to come, and out of the shadows one shadow unfolded itself and came forward till it stood beside him. Still Michael did not stir; but softly, through, half-open lips, breathed the signal once more.

Sibilant, rougher, with a hint of menace as it issued forth the signal was answered this time, and with a thrill of wonder the mantle of the old life fell upon Michael once more. He was Mikky–only grown more wise. Almost the old vernacular came to his tongue.

“Hi! Sam! That you?”

The figure in the darkness seemed to stiffen with sudden attention. The voice was like, and yet not like the Mikky of old.

“Wot yous want?” questioned a voice gruffly.

“I want you, Sam. I want to see if you look as you used to, and I want to know about the boys. Can’t we go where there’s light and talk a little? I’ve been days hunting you. I’ve come back because I promised, you know. You expected me to come back some day, didn’t you, Sam?”

Michael was surprised to find how eager he was for the answer to this question.

“Aw, what ye givin’ us?” responded the suspicious Sam. “D’yous s’pose I b’lieve all that gag about yer comin’ here to he’p we’uns? Wot would a guy like yous wid all dem togs an’ all dem fine looks want wid us? Yous has got above us. Yous ain’t no good to us no more.”

Sam scratched a match on his trousers and lit an old pipe that he held between his teeth, but as the match flared up and showed his own face a lowering brow, shifty eyes, a swarthy, unkempt visage, sullen and sly, the shifty eyes were not looking at the pipe but up at the face above him which shone out white and fine with its gold halo in the little gleam in the dark court. The watchers crowding at the opening of the passage saw his face, and almost fancied there were soft shadowy wings behind him. It was thus with old Sal’s help that Michael got his name again, “The Angel.” It was thus he became the “angel of the alley.”

“Sam!” he said, and his voice was very gentle, although he was perfectly conscious that behind him there were two more shadows of men and more might be lurking in the dark corners. “Sam, if you remember me you will know I couldn’t forget; and I do care. I came back to find you. I’ve always meant to come, all the time I was in college. I’ve had it in mind to come back here and make some of the hard things easier for”–he hesitated, and–“for _us_ all.”

“How did yous figger yous was goin’ to do that?” Sam asked, his little shifty eyes narrowing on Michael, as he purposely struck another match to watch the effect of his words.

Then Michael’s wonderful smile lit up his face, and Sam, however much he may have pretended to doubt, knew in his deepest heart that this was the same Mikky of old. There was no mistaking that smile.

“I shall need you to help me in figuring that out, Sam. That’s why I was so anxious to find you.”

A curious grunt from behind Michael warned him that the audience was being amused at the expense of Sam, Sam’s brows were lowering.

“Humph!” he said, ungraciously striking a third match just in time to watch Michael’s face. “Where’s yer pile?”

“What?”

“Got the dough?”

“Oh,” said Michael comprehendingly, “no, I haven’t got money, Sam. I’ve only my education.”

“An’ wot good’s it, I’d like to know. Tell me those?”

“So much good that I can’t tell it all in one short talk,” answered Michael steadily. “We’ll have to get better acquainted and then I hope I can make you understand how it has helped. Now tell me about the others. Where is Buck?”

There was a dead silence.

“It’s hard to say!” at last muttered Sam irresponsibly.

“Don’t you know? Haven’t you any kind of an idea, Sam? I’d so like to hunt him up.”

The question seemed to have produced a tensity in the very atmosphere, Michael felt it.

“I might, an’ then agin’ I might not,” answered Sam in that tone of his that barred the way for further questions.

“Couldn’t you and I find him and–and–help him, Sam? Aunt Sally said he was in trouble.”

Another match was scratched and held close to his face while the narrow eyes of Sam seemed to pierce his very soul before Sam answered with an ugly laugh.

“Oh, he don’t need none o’ your help, you bet. He’s lit out. You don’t need to worry ’bout Buck, he kin take car’ o’ hisse’f every time.”

“But won’t he come back sometime?”

“Can’t say. It’s hard to tell,” non-committally.

“And Jim?” Michael’s voice was sad.

“Jim, he’s doin’ time,” sullenly.

“I’m sorry!” said Michael sadly, and a strange hush came about the dark group. Now why should this queer chap be sorry? No one else cared, unless it might be Jim, and Jim had got caught. It was nothing to them.

“Now tell me about Janie–and little Bobs–” The questioner paused. His voice was very low.

“Aw, cut it out!” snarled Sam irritably. “Don’t come any high strikes on their account. They’re dead an’ you can’t dig ’em up an’ weep over ’em. Hustle up an’ tell us wot yer wantin’ to do.”

“Well, Sam,” said Michael trying to ignore the natural repulsion he felt at the last words of his one-time friend, “suppose you take lunch with me to-morrow at twelve. Then we can talk over things and get back old times. I will tell you all about my college life and you must tell me all you are doing.”

Sam was silent from sheer astonishment. Take lunch! Never in his life had he been invited out to luncheon. Nor had he any desire for an invitation now.

“Where?” he asked after a silence so long that Michael began to fear he was not going to answer at all.

Michael named a place not far away. He had selected it that morning. It was clean, somewhat, yet not too clean. The fare was far from princely, but it would do, and the locality was none too respectable. Michael was enough of a slum child still to know that his guest would never go with him to a really respectable restaurant, moreover he would not have the wardrobe nor the manners. He waited Sam’s answer breathlessly.

Sam gave a queer little laugh as if taken off his guard. The place named was so entirely harmless, to his mind, and the whole matter of the invitation took on the form of a great joke.

“Well, I might,” he drawled indifferently. “I won’t make no promises, but I might, an’ then again I might not. It’s jes’ as it happens. Ef I ain’t there by twelve sharp you needn’t wait. Jes’ go ahead an’ eat. I wouldn’t want to spoil yer digestion fer my movements.”

“I shall wait!” said Michael decidedly with his pleasant voice ringing clear with satisfaction. “You will come, Sam, I know you will. Good night!”

And then he did a most extraordinary thing. He put out his hand, his clean, strong hand, warm and healthy and groping with the keenness of low, found the hardened grimy hand of his one-time companion, and gripped it in a hearty grasp.

Sam started back with the instant suspicion of attack, and then stood shamedly still for an instant. The grip of that firm, strong hand, the touch of brotherhood, a touch such as had never come to his life before since he was a little child, completed the work that the smile had begun, and Sam knew that Mikky, the real Mikky was before him.

Then Michael walked swiftly down that narrow passage,–at the opening of which, the human shadows scattered silently and fled, to watch from other furtive doorways,–down through the alley unmolested, and out into the street once more.

“The saints presarve us! Wot did I tell yez?” whispered Sal. “It’s the angel all right fer shure.”

“I wonder wot he done to Sam,” murmured the girl. “He’s got his nerve all right, he sure has. Ain’t he beautiful!”

CHAPTER X

Michael went early to his lunch party. He was divided between wondering if his strange guest would put in an appearance at all; if he did, what he should talk about; and how he would pilot him through the embarrassing experience of the meal. One thing he was determined upon. He meant to find out if possible whether Sam knew anything about his, Michael’s, origin. It was scarcely likely; and yet, Sam might have heard some talk by older people in the neighborhood. His one great longing was to find out and clear his name of shame if possible.

There was another thing that troubled Michael. He was not sure that he would know Sam even supposing that he came. The glimpse he had caught the night before when the matches were struck was not particularly illuminating. He had a dim idea that Sam was below the medium height; with thin, sallow face; small, narrow eyes; a slouching gait; and a head that was not wide enough from front to back. He had a feeling that Sam had not room enough in his brain for seeing all that ought to be seen. Sam did not understand about education. Would he ever be able to make him understand?

Sam came shuffling along ten minutes after twelve. His sense of dignity would not have allowed him to be on time. Besides, he wanted to see if Michael would wait as he had said. It was a part of the testing of Michael; not to prove if he were really Mikky, but to see what stuff he was made of, and how much he really had meant of what he said.

Michael was there, standing anxiously outside the eating house. He did not enjoy the surroundings nor the attention he was attracting. He was too well dressed for that locality, but these were the oldest clothes he had. He would have considered them quite shabby at college. He was getting worried lest after all his plan had failed. Then Sam slouched along, his hat drawn down, his hands in his pockets, and wearing an air of indifference that almost amounted to effrontery. He greeted Michael as if there had been no previous arrangement and this were a chance meeting. There was nothing about his manner to show that he had purposely come late to put him to the test, but Michael knew intuitively it was so.

“Shall we go in now?” said Michael smiling happily. He found he was really glad that Sam had come, repulsive in appearance though he was, hard of countenance and unfriendly in manner. He felt that he was getting on just a little in his great object of finding out and helping his old friends, and perhaps learning something more of his own history.

“Aw, I donno’s I care ’bout it!” drawled Sam, just as if he had not intended going in all the time, nor had been thinking of the “feed” all the morning in anticipation.

“Yes, you better,” said Michael putting a friendly hand on the others’ shoulder. If he felt a repugnance to touching the tattered, greasy coat of his one-time friend, he controlled it, remembering how he had once worn garments far more tattered and filthy. The greatness of his desire to uplift made him forget everything else. It was the absorption of a supreme task that had come upon the boy to the exclusion of his own personal tastes.

It was not that Michael was so filled with love for this miserable creature who used to be his friend, nor so desired to renew old associations after these long years of separation; it was the terrible need, the conditions of which had been called vividly to his experience, that appealed to his spirit like a call of authority to which he answered proudly because of what had once been done for him. It had come upon him without his knowledge, suddenly, with the revival of old scenes and memories, but as with all workers for humanity it had gone so deeply into his soul as to make him forget even that there was such a thing as sacrifice.

They passed into the restaurant. Michael in his well-made clothing and with his strikingly handsome face and gold hair attracting at once every eye in the place: Sam with an insolent air of assurance to cover a sudden embarrassment of pride at the company he was in.

Michael gave a generous order, and talked pleasantly as they waited. Sam sat in low-browed silence watching him furtively, almost disconcertingly.

It was when they had reached the course of three kinds of pie and a dab of dirty looking, pink ice cream professing to be fresh strawberry, that Michael suddenly looked keenly at his guest and asked:

“What are you doing now, Sam? In business for yourself?”

Sam’s eyes narrowed until they were almost eclipsed, though a keen steel glitter could be seen beneath the colorless lashes. A kind of mask, impenetrable as lead, seemed to have settled over his face, which had been gradually relaxing during the meal into a half indulgent grin of interest in his queer host.

“Yas, I’m in business fer myself,” he drawled at last after carefully scrutinizing the other’s face to be sure there was no underlying motive for the question.

“News-stand?” asked Michael.

“Not eggs-act-ly!”

“What line?”

Sam finished his mince pie and began on the pumpkin before he answered.

“Wal, ther’s sev’ral!”

“Is that so? Got more than one string to your bow? That’s a good thing. You’re better off than I am. I haven’t looked around for a job yet. I thought I’d get at it to-morrow. You see I wanted to look you fellows up first before I got tied down to anything where I couldn’t get off when I wanted to. Perhaps you can put me onto something. How about it?”

It was characteristic of Michael that he had not once thought of going to Endicott for the position and help offered him, since the setting down he had received from Mrs. Endicott. The time appointed for his going to Endicott’s office was long since passed. He had not even turned the matter over in his mind once since that awful night of agony and renunciation. Mrs. Endicott had told him that her husband “had done enough for him” and he realized that this was true. He would trouble him no more. Sometime perhaps the world would turn around so that he would have opportunity to repay Endicott’s kindness that he might not repay in money, but until then Michael would keep out of his way. It was the one poor little rag of pride he allowed himself from the shattering of all his hopes.

Sam narrowed his eyes and looked Michael through, then slowly widened them again, an expression of real interest coming into them.

“Say! Do you mean it?” he asked doubtfully. “Be you straight goods? Would you come back into de gang an not snitch on us ner nothin’?”

“I’m straight goods, Sam, and I won’t snitch!” said Michael quickly. He knew that he could hope for no fellow’s confidence if he “snitched.”

“Wal, say, I’ve a notion to tell yeh!”

Sam attacked his ice cream contemplatively.

“How would a bluff game strike you?” he asked suddenly as the last delectable mouthful of cream disappeared and he pulled the fresh cup of coffee toward him that the waiter had just set down.

“What sort?” said Michael wondering what he was coming on in the way of revelation, but resolving not to be horrified at anything. Sam must not suspect until he could understand what a difference education had made in the way of looking at things.

“Wal, there’s diffrunt ways. Cripple’s purty good. Foot all tied up in bloody rags, arm an’ hand tied up, a couple o’ old crutches. I could lend the clo’es. They’d be short fer yeh, but that’d be all the better gag. We cud swap an’ I’d do the gen’lman act a while.” He looked covetously at Michael’s handsome brown tweeds–“Den you goes fom house to house, er you stands on de corner–“

“Begging!” said Michael aghast. His eyes were on his plate and he was trying to control his voice, but something of his horror crept into his tones. Sam felt it and hastened on apologetically–

“Er ef you want to go it one better, keep on yer good cloes an’ have