Tired from a day’s play, or perchance lazy from the heat, I sprawled upon the front step of our house, which was next the residence of the Faringfields, in what was then called Queen Street.  I believe the name of that, as of many another in New York, has been changed since the war, having savoured too much of royalty for republican taste.[1] The Faringfield house, like the family, was one of the finest in New York; and there were in that young city greater mansions than one would have thought to find in a little colonial seaport—­a rural-looking provincial place, truly, which has been likened to a Dutch town almost wholly transformed into the semblance of some secondary English town, or into a tiny, far-off imitation of London.  It lacked, of course, the grand, gray churches, the palaces and historic places, that tell of what a past has been London’s; but it lacked, too, the begriming smoke and fog that are too much of London’s present.  Indeed, never had any town a clearer sky, or brighter sunshine, than are New York’s.

From the Summer power of this sunshine, our part of Queen Street was sheltered by the trees of gardens and open spaces; maple, oak, chestnut, linden, locust, willow, what not?  There was a garden, wherein the breeze sighed all day, between our house and the Faringfield mansion, to which it pertained.  That vast house, of red and yellow brick, was two stories and a garret high, and had a doubly-sloping roof pierced with dormer windows.  The mansion’s lower windows and wide front door were framed with carved wood-work, painted white.  Its garden gate, like its front door, opened directly to the street; and in the garden gateway, as I lounged on our front step that Summer evening, Madge Faringfield stood, running her fingers through the thick white and brown hair of her huge dog at her side.

The dog’s head was almost on a level with hers, for she was then but eight years old, a very bright and pretty child.  She turned her quick glance down the street as she stood; and saw me lying so lazy; and at once her gray eyes took on a teasing and deriding light, and I felt I was in for some ironical, quizzing speech or other.  But just then her look fell upon something farther down the way, toward Hanover Square, and lingered in a half-amused kind of curiosity.  I directed my own gaze to see what possessed hers, and this is what we both beheld together, little guessing what the years to come should bring to make that moment memorable in our minds.

A thin but well-formed boy of eleven; with a pleasant, kindly face, somewhat too white, in which there was a look—­as there was evidence in his walk also—­of his being tired from prolonged exertion or endurance.  He was decently, though not expensively, clad in black cloth, his three-cornered felt hat, wide-skirted coat, and ill-fitting knee-breeches, being all of the same solemn hue.  I was to perceive later that his clothes were old and carefully mended.  His gray silk stockings ill accorded with his poor shoes, of which the buckles were of steel.  He carried in one hand a large, ancient travelling-bag, so heavy that it strained his muscles and dragged him down, thus partly explaining the fatigued look in his face; and in his other hand a basket, from the open top of which there appeared, thrust out, the head of a live gray kitten.