"Very well. You shall not suffer for your kind act. I'll go at once to notify the Coroner and the proper authorities, and meantime my mother will probably step around. Shall I have this fellow taken to the station?" "No," said Mary, with another disgusted look at the drunken man. "Let the beast sleep it out; he's beyond hurting anybody, and _she_ wouldn't want him sent to the station." * * * * * "It was the most solemnly awful sight I ever saw," said John Birge, telling it all over to his friend McElroy. "I never shall forget that woman's prayer. It was the most tremendous temperance lecture I ever heard." "Is the woman buried?" "Yes, this afternoon. They hurry such matters abominably, McElroy. Mother saw, though, that things were decent, and did what she could. We mean to keep an eye on the boy. He has great wild eyes, and a head that suggests great possibilities of good or evil, as the case may be. We would like to get him into one of the Children's Homes, and look after him. I meant to go around there this very evening and see what I could do. What do you say to going with me now?" "Easy enough thing to accomplish, I should think. I presume his father will be glad to get rid of him; but it's storming tremendously, is it not?" "Pretty hard. It does four-fifths of the time in Albany, you know. Wouldn't you venture?" "Why, it strikes me not, unless it were a case of life and death, or something of that sort. I should like to assist in rescuing the waif, but won't it do to-morrow?" "I presume so. We'll go to-morrow after class, then. Well, take the rocking chair and an apple, and make yourself comfortable. I say, McElroy, when I get into my profession I'll preach temperance, shall not you?" * * * * * Rain and wind and storm were over by the next afternoon; the sun shone out brilliantly, trying to glorify even the upper end of Rensselaer Street through which the two young men were sauntering, in search of the waif on whom John Birge meant to keep an eye. "I'm strangely interested in the boy," Birge was saying. "That prayer was something so strange, so fearfully solemn, and the circumstances connected with my stumbling upon them at all were so sad. I was sorry after I left that I had not tried to impress upon the little fellow's mind the solemn meaning of his mother's last words. I half went back to have a little talk with him, but then I thought there would be sufficient opportunity for that in the future. Here, this is the cellar. Be careful how you tread, these steps are abominable. Hallo! Why, what on earth!" They descended the stairs; they knocked at the door, but they received no answer; they tried the door, it was locked; they looked in at the rickety window, the miserable stove, the rags, even the straw, were gone--no trace of human residence was to be seen.