"Sit down here, by the bed," he would say eagerly, taking her plump, brown wrist in his wasted fingers, "and tell me about yourself." She would obey him, laughing gently, less at the nature of the request, than at the eagerness with which it was made. "Now begin," he said one evening, for the twentieth time, settling himself beneath the bed-clothes to listen, as though he had never heard the story before; "and mind you don't leave anything out." "Well," she commenced, "I was a little wandering mite, with hardly any clothes and only one shoe. I was----" His hand was on her arm in an instant. This was the first time she had mentioned the fact that, when she was found by the friends by whom she had been brought up, one of her feet was without a shoe. "Only one shoe, did you say?" asked "Cobbler" Horn, in tremulous tones. "Yes," she replied, not suspecting the tumult of thoughts her simple statement had excited in his mind. In truth, her statement had agitated her listener in no slight degree. He did not, as yet, fully perceive its significance. But the coincidence was so very strange! One shoe! Only one shoe! His little Marian had lost one of her shoes when she strayed away. A wonderful coincidence, indeed! "I was very dirty, and my clothes were torn," resumed Miss Owen; "and I was altogether a very forlorn little thing, I have no doubt. I don't remember much about it, myself, you know; but Mrs. Burton has often told me that I was crying at the time, and appeared to have been so engaged for some time. It was one evening in June, and getting dusk. Mr. and Mrs. Burton had been for a walk in the country, and were returning home, when they came upon me, walking very slowly, poking my fists into my eyes, and crying, as I said. When they asked me what was the matter, I couldn't tell them much. I seemed to be trying to say something about a 'bad woman,' and my 'daddy.' They couldn't even make out, with certainty, what I said my name was. Little as you might think it, Mr. Horn. I was a very bad talker in those days. 'Mary Ann Owen' was what my kind friends thought I called myself; and 'Mary Ann Owen' I have been ever since. "Well, these dear people took me home; and, after they had washed me, and found some clothes for me which had belonged to a little girl they had lost--their only child--they gave me a good basin of bread and milk, and put me to bed.