In one of the large cities in the wretched portion where men, women and children hive together, there lived--or existed--a little boy, so small, so insignificant, that the people with whom he came in contact would scarcely have considered him worthy of mention. He was a wee specimen of humanity with flaxen hair and blue eyes, and people who stopped to notice him at all, saw something so strange, so pathetic in the childish look, that they involuntarily turned to look again. He spent the days selling matches; the nights he spent as he could, in empty boxes, on bundles of straw, in miserable alleys, anywhere, where night overtook him. There was no one to make enquiries, for he was alone, alone in the great city, alone in the world. One stormy night a woman found her way to one of the wretched tenement houses, bearing in her arms a tiny burden. One of the inhabitants, more kindly than the rest, took her in, gave her the only bed they had, a pallet of straw, on which she lay for a few days, making no complaint, giving little trouble. The women saw at a glance that she was a different order of being from themselves, that she belonged to another world than theirs. But by what chance had she wandered there? Questions were asked but no answers returned. She simply asked to be left alone. In a short time she died, leaving behind the little bundle of humanity, bequeathing to him nothing but her own sensitive nature, the same blue eyes and flaxen hair, and the name "Ned," nothing more. They buried her in the potter's field, and a life's tragedy was ended. Little Ned lived among them, getting more blows than kind words, nearly always hungry, but never complaining. If they gave him food he ate it; if he got none, he never murmured. The rough women, involuntarily, lowered their voices when little Ned was present, for there was something they could never comprehend about the strange child. They felt he was with them but not of them. He was unlike the children in the street, never seeking, but shunning their society. After a time he was old enough to go on the street and sell matches, and it was a relief to the women when he was gone, for then there was no restraint, and the little lonely waif was turned adrift. Little Ned seemed never quite alone, for he frequently talked alone, asked questions which seemed to have been answered--in fact lived in a world, peopled by his own childish fancy, and passed unharmed through danger and sin, where one, more conscious of evil, would have fallen. How unlike the world he was in, was the one he pictured to himself. At night he crawled into empty boxes, scarcely knowing what it was to go to sleep without feeling hungry, but the Goddess of dreams wove golden threads through the brain of little Ned, weaving her most brilliant colors, through the warp and woof of his childish dreams, as if in compensation for the sombre colors and gloom of his waking moments, and no child lying on his bed of down,