Part 2 (2/2)

”I'll teach you a lesson!” fu Matt around and caught him by the throat and the collar But only for an instant was he able to hold the boy in that fashi+on Matt squirave the old auctioneer a push which sent hian could recover, Matt was out of the door and running like a deer up Nassau street

”Hi! hi! stop hiet away”

”Stop him yourself, then,” said one of the bystanders heartlessly ”We have nothing to do with your quarrel with the boy”

”You are in league with hian, as he scrambled to his feet ”But, never mind, I'll catch hiazed perplexedly up and down into the crowd It was useless Matt Lincoln, like his friend, Ida Bartlett, had disappeared

CHAPTER III

SOMETHING OF THE PAST

Matt Lincoln did not stop until he reached Te on the corner of Nassau and Beek breath as he took a stand in one corner of a side corridor

”There, I've put ain, I suppose,” he said, soht, I' into a hole and out without settling anywhere

But I couldn't stand it to see Miss Bartlett threatened It wasn't a fair thing to do, and that auctioneer ought to be run out of the city

I suppose he'll be after e For the past two years he had been depending entirely upon hi stone, although not entirely without an object

Up to his tenth year Matt had lived with his father and reat metropolis He had attended one of the public schools, and, take it all in all, had been a happy boy

Then came a cloud over the Lincoln home Mr Lincoln was interested, as a speculator, in some mines in Montana, and by a peculiar manipulation of the stocks of these s He was an over-sensitive man, and these losses preyed upon his mind until he was affected mentally, and had to be sent to an asylum

For several months Mrs Lincoln and Matt paid weekly visits to the asylu to rejoice over the thought that Mr Lincoln would soon be himself once more, when one day Mrs Lincoln fell down in the middle of Broadway, and a heavily-loaded truck passed directly over her chest

When the poor woman was picked up it was found she was unconscious An ambulance was at once summoned, and she was conveyed to one of the city hospitals Here Matt visited her, and listened to her last words of love and advice She died before sunrise the next day, and three days later was buried

If his mother's unexpected death was a shock to poor Matt, it was even ain was the father and husband's mind unbalanced; this time far worse than ever before He escaped fro the burial services, and then disappeared, no one knehere

Matt's only re relative at this tie of Matt, and took the boy to his hoent search for Mr Lincoln was begun

The search for Matt's father was unsuccessful, although continued for several weeks It was learned that he had boarded a train in Jersey City bound for Philadelphia, but there all trace of his whereabouts was lost

Matt lived with his Uncle Dan for four years He went to school in Bridgeport part of the ti, could be found at Mr Lincoln's shi+p chandlery, a large place, situated down near the docks

It would seeh which he had passed would have made Matt melancholy and low-spirited, but such was not the case Mrs Lincoln had naturally been of a light heart, and the boy partook of much of his mother's disposition He loved a free-and-easy life, loved to roam from place to place With a captain as a friend of Uncle Dan, he had usta, and he had likewise put in teeks at a lu the su odd jobs for the proprietor

”A rolling stone and nothing less,” Uncle Dan had called hiain, and the title seemed to fit Matt exactly