“Oh, Roy!” was all she could answer. And the boy and girl stood crowned with the golden halo, in absolute silence. At last, as the sun’s rays were passing away, Roy spoke: “Janet, they’re all gone! Taken away while you went with the work. Janet, the baby was dead in the night.” The child said but one word, “Froze?” “No,” said Roy, “it was the dipthery. And your mother had it, too. Somebody told on ’em, an’ so the Board of Health sent in a jiffy, an’ a great black ambulance came an’ took her an’ all the children, and then some men came and took everything out and burned it all, and did something to the room. I came and looked at them awhile, but they sent me away. I see the ambulance drive off. I was close to it.” “Where?” Janet gasped. “I don’t know,” said the boy. Again there was silence. The children of the slums, born in poverty, sorrow, and disgrace, do not cry. Life is too stern a reality. Then Roy spoke in a whisper, as if in his untutored mind he felt that in the presence of such sorrow a loud word would be a sacrilege—“Janet!” She turned and looked him in the face. He was pale and trembling, and the words came painfully, as if he feared to hurt her any more. “Janet—when they took your mother out of here, she was dead. I seed her face. I didn’t say nothin’, but I know she was dead, and I come now to tell you. But I wish I hadn’t—you look so white and scared.” The only sound was a choking gasp from the poor child. Roy took her hand in his. “Janet, I love you! Don’t look so white! It scares me. If anything happened to you it would kill me. You’re all I’ve got in the world. Don’t look so—I can’t stand it. I’ll take care of you. I earn a good bit of money some days. I’ll work hard, and then when we are older——” “What?” said the girl simply. “Why, then we’ll get the good Bishop to marry us. There now, Janet, be a good girl and come away, before the men come back, for I saw them goin’ out in the street, an’ if they catch us here when they come for the key, they’ll say we have it too, and they’ll take us away in that ugly black ambulance.” So she let him lead her out of that garret so full of memories, down the dark rickety stairs, into the cold street. They were homeless, friendless orphans, starting out on life’s stormy sea, hungry, cold, forsaken. They walked hand in hand until they were several blocks away, in another part of the slums, where Janet had never been. Then, standing in the shelter of a doorway, they looked at each other for some time in silence. At last Roy spoke: “Janet, dear—I don’t know where to take you.” “Where do you go, Roy, at night?” said she. “Oh, anywheres! Sometimes us boys sleeps in boxes, and sometimes they have straw in ’em, and more times not. But you see, Janet, that won’t do for the likes of you.”