It had already been closed by Maria, but close beside it lay a small, motionless heap. The woman stooped, curiously, to investigate what seemed to be a bundle of clothes. Before she could touch it the girl who had leaped from the buggy bore down upon her like a small cyclone. [Illustration: _Scene from Mary Pickford's Photoplay_. _Sparrows_. "HE WAS BORN IN A BARN JEST LIKE THIS ONE."] Without a word she brushed Maria aside and examined the little heap tenderly. Then Maria observed that it was a child about a year old. It was not dead at all events, for as the girl raised it in her arms, crooning softly the name of "Buddy", the child raised its voice in piteous, heart-rending wails. Its tiny arm was broken! CHAPTER VII WHERE IS BUDDY? "He that stoppeth his ear to the cry of the poor, shall also cry himself and shall not be heard."--Prov. xxi, 13 It took the combined efforts and intelligence of all to alleviate the suffering of the child injured at the very moment of its arrival at the farm, through Peter's wanton carelessness. Yet no blame could attach to himself, he declared, for at the time of the accident the little fellow was sitting on his sister's lap. "Whut war yo' a-doin'," Peter asked of the distressed little girl. (Cynthy was her name.) "Must hev ben jest a-settin' thar a-sleepin' er a-gawpin' et sumpin'." "Thar hain't nawthin' much ter gawp at aroun' hyar," retorted the girl, angered at the injustice of the accusation. "'Tain't likely I'd go an' drep my little brother thet-a-way jest a-purpose. Whyn't yo'-all tell me yo' war a-gwine ter raise hell a-jumpin' hurdles?" For Cynthy and little Buddie came from some point in Kentucky. There could be no question as to their station in life. They were clad in coarse garments and had sharp, pinched faces. Cynthy was bare-foot but she carried a pair of new, very stout shoes tied together by their strings, and a small bundle of clothes. These were now deposited upon the floor in a corner of the room. Just how these two poor waifs came into Peter Grimes' clutches he alone knew. What he expected to gain by housing them was another mystery. When Maria, disturbed out of her usual lethargy by the unexpected advent of the baby, ventured a question, Peter gruffly told her to "shet up." But clothes and conditions mattered not to Mollie. The cries of a baby in excruciating pain pierced her tender little heart like a knife. As Maria and Cynthy worked over the tortured little one Mollie watched helplessly, her pitying spirit shining in her starry eyes. When Peter came in from the barn and took hold of the broken arm to set it, the baby screamed once and mercifully lost consciousness.