“Fessenden’s fool!” cries the lady.  “What’s your name?”

“Please, Ma’am, that’s my name.”  Meekly spoken, with an earnest, staring face.  “Do you want me?”

“No; we don’t want a boy with such a name as that!”

And the lady scowls, and shakes her head, and half closes the forbidding door,—­not thinking of that other mother’s heart,—­never dreaming that such a gaunt and pallid wight ever had a mother at all.  For the idea that those long, lean hands, reaching far out of the short and split coat-sleeves, had been a baby’s pure, soft hands once, and had pressed the white maternal breasts, and had played with the kisses of the fond maternal lips,—­it was scarcely conceivable; and a delicate-minded matron, like Mrs. Gingerford, may well be excused for not entertaining any such distressing fancy.

“Wal!  I’ll go!” And the youth turned away.

She could not shut the door.  There was something in the unresentful, sad face, pale cheeks, and large eyes, that fascinated her; something about the tattered clothes, thin, wet locks of flaxen hair, and ravelled straw hat-brim, fantastic and pitiful.  And as he walked wearily away, and she saw the night closing in black and dark, and felt the cold dash of the rain blown against her own cheek, she concluded to take pity on him.  For she was by no means a hard-hearted woman; and though her house was altogether too good for poor folks, and she really didn’t know what she should do with him, it seemed too bad to send him away shelterless, that stormy November night.  Besides, her husband was a rising politician,—­the public-spirited Judge Gingerford, you know,—­the eloquent philanthropist and reformer;—­and to have it said that his door had been shut against a perishing stranger might hurt him.  So, as I remarked, she concluded to take pity on the boy, and, after duly weighing the matter, to call him back.  And she called,—­though, as I suspect, not very loud.  Moreover, the wind was whistling through the leafless shrubbery, and his rags were fluttering, and his hat was flapping about his ears, and the rain was pelting him; and just then the Judge’s respectable dog put his head out of the warm, dry kennel, and barked; so that he did not hear,—­the lady believed.

He had heard very well, nevertheless.  Why didn’t he go back, then?  Maybe, because he was a fool.  More likely, because he was, after all, human.  Within that husk of rags, under all that dull incumbrance of imperfect physical organs that cramped and stifled it, there dwelt a soul; and the soul of man knows its own worth, and is proud.  The coarsest, most degraded drudge still harbors in his wretched house of clay a divine guest.  There is that in the convict and slave which stirs yet at an insult.  And even in this lank, half-witted lad, the despised and outcast of years, there abode a sense of inalienable dignity,—­an immanent instinct that he, too, was a creature of God, and worthy therefore to be treated with a certain tenderness and respect, and not to be roughly repulsed.  This was as strong in him as in you.  His wisdom was little, but his will was firm.  And though the house was cheerful and large, and had room and comforts enough and to spare, rather than enter it, after he had been flatly told he was not wanted, he would lie down in the cold, wet fields and die.