On Picket Duty, and Other Tales | Page 5

spider watching for a fly. I longed to fling my billy at
him; but as I couldn't, I held on to the girl. I was new to the thing then,
but though I'd heard about hunger and homelessness often enough, I'd
never had this sort of thing, nor seen that look on a girl's face. A white,
pinched face hers was, with frighted, tired-looking eyes, but so
innocent; she wasn't more than sixteen, had been pretty once I saw,
looked sick and starved now, and seemed just the most helpless,
hopeless little thing that ever was.
"'You'd better come to the Station for to-night, and we'll see to you
to-morrow,' says I.
"'Thank you, sir,' says she, looking as grateful as if I'd asked her home.

I suppose I did speaks kind of fatherly. I ain't ashamed to say I felt so,
seeing what a child she was; nor to own that when she put her little
hand in mine, it hurt me to feel how thin and cold it was. We passed the
eating-house where the red lights made her face as rosy as it ought to
have been; there was meat and pies in the window, and the poor thing
stopped to look. It was too much for her; off came her shawl, and she
said in that coaxing way of hers,--
"'I wish you'd let me stop at the place close by and sell this; they'll give
a little for it, and I'll get some supper. I've had nothing since yesterday
morning, and maybe cold is easier to bear than hunger.'
"'Have you nothing better than that to sell?" I says, not quite sure that
she wasn't all a humbug, like so many of 'em. She seemed to see that,
and looked up at me again with such innocent eyes, I couldn't doubt her
when she said, shivering with something beside the cold,--
"'Nothing but myself.' Then the tears came, and she laid her head down
on my arm, sobbing,--'Keep me! oh, do keep me safe somewhere!'"
Thorn choked here, steadied his voice with a resolute hem! but could
only add one sentence more:
"That's how I found my wife."
"Come, don't stop thar? I told the whole o' mine, you do the same.
Whar did you take her? how'd it all come round?"
"Please tell us, Thorn."
The gentler request was answered presently, very steadily, very quietly.
"I was always a soft-hearted fellow, though you wouldn't think it now,
and when that little girl asked me to keep her safe, I just did it. I took
her to a good woman whom I knew, for I hadn't any women belonging
to me, nor any place but that to put her in. She stayed there till spring
working for her keep, growing brighter, prettier, every day, and fonder
of me I thought. If I believed in witchcraft, I shouldn't think myself

such a cursed fool as I do now, but I don't believe in it, and to this day I
can't understand how I came to do it. To be sure I was a lonely man,
without kith or kin, had never had a sweetheart in my life, or been
much with women since my mother died. Maybe that's why I was so
bewitched with Mary, for she had little ways with her that took your
fancy and made you love her whether you would or no. I found her
father was an honest fellow enough, a fiddler in the some theatre, that
he'd taken good care of Mary till he died, leaving precious little but
advice for her to live on. She'd tried to get work, failed, spent all she
had, got sick, and was going to the devil, as the poor souls can hardly
help doing with so many ready to give them a shove. It's no use trying
to make a bad job better; so the long and short of it was, I thought she
loved me; God knows I loved her, and I married her before the year
was out."
"Show us her picture; I know you've got one; all the fellows have,
though half of 'em won't own up."
"I've only got part of one. I once saved my little girl, and her picture
once saved me."
From an inner pocket Thorn produced a woman's housewife, carefully
untied it, though all its implements were missing but a little thimble
and from one of its compartments took a flattened bullet and the
remnants of a picture.
"I gave her that the first Christmas after I found her. She wasn't as tidy
about her clothes as I liked to see, and I thought if I gave her a handy
thing like this, she'd be willing to sew. But she only made one shirt for
me, and