The young man stood a little apart watching these three until the boys went away, and then he approached the man and said as he took off his hat: “I beg your pardon, sir, but I would like to help you in your labours. I would like to instruct those children in reading and writing, and in other simple arts in which they seem to be deficient.” The man was frankly pleased by this address. “Come to-night to the mission at half-past eight,” he said brusquely, “and we will find work for your hands. See, there is the mission.” He pointed across the street to a grimy building of mean exterior, with a lamp over the door. Accompanied by James Dodson, who left him at the door, the young man came to the mission at half-past eight that evening. Thenceforward every night of the week, he came there at the same hour and in the same company. At the end of a month, the stalwart man, who was somewhat grim of aspect, and rather rough of manner, and who was spoken of as “The Boss,” said: “I don’t know whether you are aware of it, Jordan, but already you have made a difference to us. We other fellows will be getting jealous. You have something that has been given to none of us.” “I think it is,” said William Jordan, “that I am come among my own people.” And he added wistfully, “I would that the time was not so brief.” In the little room he was now saying to his father constantly, “My knowledge has such increase, my father, that now it begins to bear upon me. If only the strength were given to my right hand I would commence author immediately.” And sometimes he would add almost with petulance, “This delay begins to press upon me like a stone. The time is so brief.” At this period he seemed to have journeyed far from the high-wrought excitement and terror which had made his early years so dark. As he said to his father one day: “I walk now upon the seas and the mountains. I live by the light of the sun.” Yet now and again the excitements of his former days would return upon him, not perhaps in the same degree, but in such a manner as to shake and wear a frame which every day appeared to grow more frail. One evening when he returned from the mission the fever of his youth seemed to be burning in his veins. His pallor was intense; his eyes had never looked so eerie in their lustre. “My father,” he said in a strange voice, and his gaunt form quivered like gossamer; “to-night I looked upon my mother’s face.” His father peered at him with eyes of almost horrified perplexity. “I saw,” said the young man, “a wretched unhappy woman, all bent and bedraggled, creep from a gutter, and pass through a narrow and filthy alley leading to the darkest of the slums.” His father’s bewilderment changed to an expression of singular poignancy. “Do you ask, Achilles, for the history of your birth?” he said. “Yes, my father,” said the young man. “I will hear that wonderful story. Perchance it may help me to inscribe my page in the book.”