“Oh! it’s good enough,” replied the man, noticing the boy’s embarrassment, and trying to reassure him, “it’s plenty good enough, but it’s red you see, and red won’t do.  Here, I have a white one.  This is just the thing,” he added, tearing his own handkerchief into strips and binding them carefully about the wounded hand.  “There!” giving the bandage a final adjustment; “that will be better for it.  Now, then, you’re off to the circus; good-by.”

The lad took a step or two forward, hesitated a moment, and then turned back.  The breaker boss and the screen-room boss were already gone and he was alone with Mr. Burnham.

“Would it make any dif’rence to you,” he asked, holding up the silver coin, “if I spent this money for sumpthin’ else, an’ didn’t go to the circus with it?”

“Why, no!” said the man, wonderingly, “I suppose not; but I thought you boys would rather spend your money at the circus than to spend it in almost any other way.”

“Oh!  I’d like to go well enough.  I al’ays did like a circus, an’ I wanted to go to this one, ‘cause it’s a big one; but they’s sumpthin’ else I want worse’n that, an’ I’m a-tryin’ to save up a little money for it.”

Robert Burnham’s curiosity was aroused.  Here was a boy who was willing to forego the pleasures of the circus that he might gratify some greater desire; a strong and noble one, the man felt sure, to call for such a sacrifice.  Visions of a worn-out mother, an invalid sister, a mortgaged home, passed through his mind as he said:  “And what is it you are saving your money for, my boy, if I am at liberty to ask?”

“To’stablish my’dentity, sir.”

“To do what?”

“To’stablish my’dentity; that’s what Uncle Billy calls it.”

“Why, what’s the matter with your identity?”

“I ain’t got any; I’m a stranger; I don’t know who my ’lations are.”

“Don’t know—­who—­your relations are!  Why, what’s your name?”

“Ralph, that’s all; I ain’t got any other name.  They call me Ralph Buckley sometimes, ’cause I live with Uncle Billy; but he ain’t my uncle, you know,—­I only call him Uncle Billy ’cause I live with him, an’—­an’ he’s good to me, that’s all.”

At the name “Ralph,” coming so suddenly from the lad’s lips, the man had started, turned pale, and then his face flushed deeply.  He drew the boy down tenderly on the bench beside him, and said:—­

“Tell me about yourself, Ralph; where do you say you live?”

“With Uncle Billy,—­Bachelor Billy they call him; him that dumps at the head, pushes the cars out from the carriage an’ dumps ’em; don’t you know Billy Buckley?”

The man nodded assent and the boy went on:—­

“He’s been awful good to me, Uncle Billy has; you don’t know how good he’s been to me; but he ain’t my uncle, he ain’t no ’lation to me; I ain’t got no ’lations ’at I know of; I wish’t I had.”

The lad looked wistfully out through the open window to the far line of hills with their summits veiled in a delicate mist of blue.