Part 5 (1/2)

”But I feel responsible for him,” urged Miss Allison. ”Since it happened on our place, and my little nephews brought him here, it seems to me that we ought to have the care of him.”

The professor waved her aside, lifting Jonesy's head as tenderly as a nurse could have done, and motioned the coloured men to lift him up.

”No, no, fraulein,” he said. ”I have had eggsperience. It is besser the poor leedle knabe go mit me!”

There was no opposing the old man's masterful way. Miss Allison stepped aside for them to pa.s.s, calling after him her willingness to do the nursing he had taken upon himself, and insisting that she would come early in the morning to help.

Unc' Henry was left to guard the ruins, lest some stray spark should be blown toward the other buildings. ”Dis yere ole n.i.g.g.ah wa'n't mistaken aftah all,” he muttered. ”Dee was somebody prowlin' 'roun' de premises yistiddy evenin'.” Then he searched the ground, all around the cabin, for footprints in the snow. He found some tracks presently, and followed them over the meadow in the starlight, across the road, and down the railroad track several rods. There they suddenly disappeared. The tramp had evidently walked on the rail some distance. If Unc' Henry had gone quarter of a mile farther up the track, he would have found those same sliding imprints on every other crosstie, as if the man had taken long running leaps in his haste to get away.

Jonesy stoutly denied that the man had set fire to the cabin. ”We nearly froze to death that night,” he said, when questioned about it afterward, ”and the boss piled on an awful big lot of wood just before he went to bed.”

”Then what made him take to his heels so fast if he didn't?” some one asked.

”I don't know,” answered Jonesy. ”He said that luck was always against him, and maybe he thought n.o.body would believe him if he did say that he didn't do it.”

Several days after that Malcolm found the tramp's picture in the _Courier-Journal_. He was a noted criminal who had escaped from a Northern penitentiary some two months before, and had been arrested by the Louisville police. There was no mistaking him. That big, ugly scar branded him on cheek and forehead like another Cain.

”And to think that that terrible man was harboured on my place!”

exclaimed Mrs. MacIntyre when she heard of it. ”And you boys were down there in the cabin with him for hours! Sat beside him and talked with him! What will your mother say? I feel as if you had been exposed to the smallpox, and I cannot be too thankful now that the boy who was with him was not brought here. He isn't a fit companion for you. Not that the poor little unfortunate is to blame. He cannot help being a child of the slums, and he must be put in an orphan asylum or a reform school at once. It is probably the only thing that can save him from growing up to be a criminal like the man who brought him here. I shall see what can be done about it, as soon as possible.”

”A child of the slums!” Malcolm and Keith repeated the expression afterward, with only a vague idea of its meaning. It seemed to set poor Jonesy apart from themselves as something unclean,--something that their happy, well-filled lives must not be allowed to touch.

Maybe if Jonesy had been an attractive child, with a sensitive mouth, and big, appealing eyes, he might have found his way more easily into people's hearts. But he was a lean, snub-nosed little fellow, with a freckled face and neglected hair. No one would ever find his cheek a tempting one to kiss, and no one would be moved, by any feeling save pity, to stoop and put affectionate arms around Jonesy. He was only a common little street gamin, as unlovely as he was unloved.

”What a blessing that there are such places as orphan asylums for children of that cla.s.s,” said Mrs. Maclntyre, after one of her visits to him. ”I must make arrangements for him to be put into one as soon as he is able to be moved.”

”I think he will be very loath to leave the old professor,” answered Miss Allison. ”He has been so good to the child, amusing him by the hour with his microscopes and collections of insects, telling him those delightful old German folk-lore tales, and putting him to sleep every night to the music of his violin. What a child-lover he is, and what a delightful old man in every way! I am glad we have discovered him.”

”Yes,” said Mrs. Maclntyre; ”and when this little tramp is sent away, I want the children to go there often. I asked him if he could not teach them this spring, at least make a beginning with them in natural history, and he appeared much pleased. He is as poor as a church mouse, and would be very glad of the money.”

”That reminds me,” said Miss Allison, ”he asked me if the boys could not come down to see Jonesy this afternoon, and bring the bear. He thought it would give the little fellow so much pleasure, and might help him to forget his suffering.”

Mrs. MacIntyre hesitated. ”I do not believe their mother would like it,”

she answered. ”Sydney is careful enough about their a.s.sociates, but Elise is doubly particular. You can imagine how much badness this child must know when you remember how he has been reared. He told me that his name is Jones Carter, and that he cannot remember ever having a father or a mother. I questioned him very closely this morning. He comes from the worst of the Chicago slums. He slept in the cellar of one of its poorest tenement houses, and lived in the gutters. He has a brother only a little older, who is a bootblack. On days when s.h.i.+nes were plentiful they had something to eat, otherwise they starved or begged.”

”Poor little lamb,” murmured Miss Allison.

”It was by the brother's advice he came away with that tramp,” continued Mrs. MacIntyre. ”He had gotten possession of that trained bear in some way, and probably took a fancy to Jones because he could whistle and dance all sorts of jigs. He probably thought it would be a good thing to have a child with him to work on peoples' sympathies. They walked all the way from Chicago to Lloydsborough, Jones told me, excepting three days' journey they made in a wagon. They have been two months on the road, and showed the bear in the country places they pa.s.sed through.

They avoided the large towns.”

”Think what a Christmas he must have had!” exclaimed Miss Allison.

”Christmas! I doubt if he ever heard the word. His speech is something shocking; nothing but the slang of the streets, and so ungrammatical that I could scarcely understand him at times. No, I am very sure that neither Sydney nor Elise would want the boys to be with him.”

”But he is so little, mother, and so sick and pitiful looking,” pleaded Miss Allison. ”Surely he cannot know so very much badness or hurt the boys if they go down to cheer him up for a little while.”

Notwithstanding Mrs. Maclntyre's fears, she consented to the boys visiting Jonesy that afternoon. She could not resist the professor's second appeal or the boys' own urging.

They took the bear with them, which Jonesy welcomed like a lost friend.