"Oh, ma'am,"--he turned his face from the fence, and clasped his hands in excitement,--"it was a poor widow woman who come here with her baby that was a-dying, and she prayed to the Virgin Mary, and the Virgin Mary made the baby live--" He dropped his voice, the words falling slower and slower. As he raised his face, one could see then that he was blind, and the accident that had happened to him, in fording the street. What sightless eyes! What a wet, muddy little skeleton! Ten? No; hardly ten years of age. "The widow woman she picked up her baby, and she run down the walk here, and out into the street screaming--she was so glad,"--putting his eyes to the peep-hole again,--"and the Virgin Mary come down the walk after her, and come through the gate, too; and that was all she seed--the widow woman." "Did you know the widow woman?" He shook his head. "How do you know it?" "That was what they told me. And they told me, the birds all begun to sing at once, and the flowers all lighted up like the sun was shining on them. They seed her. And she come down the walk, and through the gate," his voice lowering again to a whisper. Aye, how the birds must have sung, and the flowers shone, to the widowed mother as she ran, nay, leaped, down that rose-hedged walk, with her restored baby clasped to her bosom! "_They_ seed her," repeated the little fellow. "And that is why you stand here--to see her, too?" His shoulder turned uneasily in the clasp upon it. "They seed her, and they ain't got no eyes." "Have you no mother?" "Ain't never had no mother." A thought struck him. "Would that count, ma'am? Would that count? The little baby that was dying--yes, ma'am, it had a mother; and it's the mothers that come here constant with their children; I sometimes hear 'em dragging them in by the hand." "How long have you been coming here?" "Ever since the first time I heard it, ma'am." Street ragamuffins do not cry: it would be better if they did so, when they are so young and so blind; it would be easier for the spectator, the auditor. "They seed her--I might see her ef--ef I could see her once--ef--ef I could see anything once." His voice faltered; but he stiffened it instantly. "She might see me. She can't pass through this gate without seeing me; and--and--ef she seed me--and I didn't even see her--oh, I'm so tired of being blind!" "Did you never go inside to pray?" How embarrassing such a question is, even to a child! "No, ma'am. Does that count, too? The little baby didn't pray, the flowers didn't go inside, nor the birds. And they say the birds broke out singing all at once, and the flowers shined, like the sun was shining on 'em--like the sun was shining in 'em," he corrected himself. "The birds they can see, and the flowers they can't see, and they seed her." He shivered with the damp cold--and perhaps too with hunger. "Where do you live?" He wouldn't answer. "What do you live on?" He shook his head.