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One evening many years ago a man, accompanied by a girl and a boy, was passing slowly along one of the streets of Baltimore that led to an orphan asylum.
He was above medium height, and although past thirty, was youthful, almost boyish in appearance, with his fair complexion, blonde hair and slight moustache; a handsome man save for the pallor and attenuation of his clear-cut features and the look of hopeless grief in his fine eyes.
His left hand, white and shapely, held that of the little boy who was chatting merrily, and in his right was a package--of which, though bulky, he appeared as oblivious as though his hand were empty.
Beside him walked the girl, whose watchful interest in the package betokened ownership, though intrusted for a time to another's care, but for the safety of which she was responsible.
She had the clear olive complexion, black hair and the brilliant black eyes of the boy, but unlike him, was thin and almost as pallid as the man. But there was no lassitude in her movements; instead they were full of energy, and her meagre face, while intelligent and attractive, lacked repose and the promise of patient endurance of life's trials and disappointments.
"We never were on this street before," she commented, after walking several squares in silence. "Where are we going; tell me?"
There was no response, and she continued, "Does mamma know that you are taking Horace and me away from her? Why don't you talk?"
A sigh, almost a groan, escaped the lips of the man, and he whispered some words which the children did not understand.
An angry flush arose to the girl's face, and her eyes sparkled with the tears that filled them.
"I won't go one step further unless you tell me where we are going," she said, halting and stamping her foot impatiently.
The man seemed to rouse from his abstraction with effort, and in a voice scarcely audible to the eager listener, replied, "We are going where you will see many children, where you will have enough to eat, a comfortable bed and good clothes; you will have a much better home than the one you are leaving."
"But I have good clothes now and pretty ones," and she looked with an air of satisfaction upon the package. "Will mamma come?"
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