Jerrys Reward | Page 2

would have beaten her had not Willie Baker stuck out his foot, tripping him up so that little Nell easily caught him.
Addy Gravvy protested: "That's no fair, I won't go in the middle." For whoever got caught had to go in the middle until the close of the game.
"She is so little," explained Willie, "that she never could have caught anybody."
"Then she oughtn't to play," said Addy Gravvy.
At this the children all began talking at once, for Nell was a favourite, and matters were looking serious, when suddenly a shadow crossed the bar of light made by the Mortons' open front door.
"Paddy!" "Paddy!" cried a dozen frightened ones, and the little group took to their heels.
In two minutes the street was as silent as midnight, the only person left being a little old man whose back was bent almost double. He turned and looked after the children and gave a long, deep sigh.
CHAPTER II.
THE SHADOW
Of course you wish to know all about the crooked man whose very shadow caused the children to stop their play and scamper to their homes.
You remember I told you that one side of Jefferson Square was occupied by the Convent of the Good Shepherd and the common? Well, this convent was a source of much interest and not a little awe to the children. They were always curious to know what was going on behind those high brick walls.
Nothing in the shape of a man, except the priests, was ever allowed inside the convent. You can judge, then, of the flutter it caused when one day at noon, as the children from their windows opposite were watching the penitents playing in the garden in their blue dresses and white caps, they saw a little man go boldly in their midst and with a shovel begin turning up the soil.
To be sure he was old and ugly; his back was bent like a hoop, and his long nose almost touched his toes as he leaned over his shovel--but all the same he was a man.
"I wonder who on earth he can be!" said Fanny Morton, and the nurse who was peering over her head thoughtlessly replied:
"One of Satan's own imps."
They did not see the newcomer for a long time after, then one morning the word passed that he was there. This time the big iron gates at the side were open, and he was wheeling barrows of coal into the convent cellar.
The next meeting was on the common where he was raking over old rubbish and abstracting rags and bits of iron. The children were about to speak to him when something in his brown and wrinkled face recalled the nurse-girl's remark about "Satan's imps," so they were afraid and ran home.
I do not know who started it, but soon he came to be known as "Paddy on the Turnpike," and just what this meant would be hard to say. While we all know that Paddys are common enough in cities, still there wasn't a turnpike for this one to be on within five miles of Jefferson Square.
Although the children were afraid of the old man, they could not help teasing him whenever they got a chance. It seemed reckless and brave to shout out something and then take to their heels. They dared not come too near, for the same nurse-girl, seeing the sensation that her first remark had created, added another more astonishing, to the effect that Paddy had traded his soul to the devil, and was hunting the rubbish on the common over, for sufficient money to buy it back. Which was, of course, sheer nonsense, and if the children had been as good as all children should be, they never for a moment would have believed such a stupid untruth.
By degrees they grew bolder. They would creep behind when he was bending over his ash pile, nearer and nearer. Then they would shout something about the devil and his bartered soul, thinking they were brave indeed. Once they approached so near that they almost touched him, but he turned around suddenly and reached out his rake as if he were going to rake them all in. At this a panic seized them, and they ran like young deer.
[Illustration: "HE TURNED AROUND SUDDENLY."]
Finally Henry Clay Morton made a rhyme about him, and the others took it up. They never saw the old fellow without shouting to a sing-song tune that they had made themselves:
"Paddy on the Turnpike Couldn't count eleven, Put him on a leather bed, Thought he was in Heaven."
CHAPTER III.
PADDY AND PEGGY
Not seeming to hear the children, the old man used to work in silence, gathering the bottles and rags and things and putting them in his bag. Once a week he sold all he had found and brought the money