What befell me that night while I dreamed of playing with the sweet-faced girl I have wondered often.  Some time in the night Dug Draper had reached the village of Canton, and got rid of me.  He had probably put me out at the water trough.  Kind hands had picked me up and carried me to a little veranda that fronted the door of a law office.  There I slept peacefully until daylight, when I felt a hand on my face and awoke suddenly.  I remember that I felt cold.  A kindly faced man stood leaning over me.

“Hello, boy!” said he.  “Where did you come from?”

I was frightened and confused, but his gentle voice reassured me.

“Uncle Peabody!” I called, as I arose and looked about me and began to cry.

The man lifted me in his arms and held me close to his breast and tried to comfort me.  I remember seeing the Silent Woman pass while I was in his arms.

“Tell me what’s your name,” he urged.

“Barton Baynes,” I said as soon as I could speak.

“Where is your father?”

“In Heaven,” I answered, that being the place to which he had moved, as I understood it.

“Where do you live?”

“In Lickitysplit.”

“How did you get here?”

“Dug Draper brought me.  Do you know where Sally Dunkelberg lives?”

“Is she the daughter of Horace Dunkelberg?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Horace Dunkelberg,” I amended.

“Oh, yes, I know her.  Sally is a friend of mine.  We’ll get some breakfast and then we’ll go and find her.”

He carried me through the open door of his office and set me down at his desk.  The cold air of the night had chilled me and I was shivering.

“You sit there and I’ll have a fire going in a minute and get you warmed up.”

He wrapped me in his coat and went into the back room and built a fire in a small stove and brought me in and set me down beside it.  He made some porridge in a kettle while I sat holding my little hands over the stove to warm them, and a sense of comfort grew in me.  Soon a boy came bringing a small pail of fresh milk and a loaf of bread.  I remember how curiously the boy eyed me as he said to my new friend: 

“Captain Moody wants to know if you’ll come up to dinner?”

There was a note of dignity in the reply which was new to me, and for that reason probably I have always remembered it.

“Please present my thanks to the Captain and tell him that I expect to go up to Lickitysplit in the town of Ballybeen.”

He dipped some porridge into bowls and put them on a small table.  My eyes had watched him with growing interest and I got to the table about as soon as the porridge and mounted a chair and seized a spoon.

“One moment, Bart,” said my host.  “By jingo!  We’ve forgotten to wash, and your face looks like the dry bed of a river.  Come here a minute.”

He led me out of the back door, where there were a wash-stand and a pail and a tin basin and a dish of soft soap.  He dipped the pail in a rain barrel and filled the basin, and I washed myself and waited not upon my host, but made for the table and began to eat, being very hungry, after hastily drying my face on a towel.  In a minute he came and sat down to his own porridge and bread and butter.