“I went to his mother and asked her about it, and she told me that it was true, that I wasn’t really her child, but that she thought as much of me as if I was, and that there wasn’t any charity about it.  But I wanted to know all about myself, and at last she said that I’d been given to Mr. Morrisey when I was a wee baby by a friend of his who couldn’t afford to keep me and who made him vow that he’d never tell where I came from.

“Jimmy only found it out by accident one night, listening to his father and mother talking when they thought he was asleep.  She said I wasn’t to feel bad about it; because they thought everything of me.

“But I did feel bad about it.  It seemed too hard when the Morriseys had all they could do to get along they should have one more mouth—­ and that not a Morrisey one—­ to feed.

“I studied as hard as I could at school, so as to try and get through sooner and go to work and begin to pay them back, but when I was twelve Mr. Morrisey was kicked to death by a horse and the next year Mrs. Morrisey married a man who took her and the children out to Dakota to live.

“She wanted me to go along, but I knew Mr. Rollings didn’t like me, and besides I wanted to stay East where there was some chance of my finding out who my parents were.  I got a place as cash boy in a Japanese store and boarded with some people who lived across the hall from where the Morriseys had their rooms.

“But Mr. Benton used to get drunk and when he was that way he’d beat me, just for the fun of it, it seemed to me.  Then when they cut down the number of boys employed in the store and I couldn’t find another place right away, he growled so about my not paying my board that I did my things up in a bundle one night and hid myself on a canal boat down at the East River docks.

“The captain was awful mad when he found me after we had got clear up the North River.  He gave me a good thrashing and then said he was going to drop me overboard.  But he didn’t and I stayed on board all that season, driving mules and being sworn at and kicked and trounced like any other boy on the canal.  I sometimes wonder why I didn’t wear out.

“When navigation closed I was set adrift, and had a hard scrub of it to get along for a time.  I almost starved for a while in Albany, trying to pick up odd jobs.  Then I came near freezing to death.

“Finally I got a place as errand boy in a grocery store and kept that till some money was missing and they said I took it.  I never stole in my life.  Mrs. Morrisey brought me up too well for me to do that.  But I couldn’t prove I didn’t and I had to go.  The man said I ought to consider myself lucky I wasn’t sent to jail.

“After that I had a worse time of it than ever.  Whenever I applied for a position they wanted to know why I had left my last place.  And when I told them, they wouldn’t have anything to do with me.

“Then came the days when sometimes I thought I might as well steal, I was suffering because I was accused of doing it.  When I was very hungry and saw chances of sneaking apples out of grocery-men’s barrels, it seemed as if I had almost a right to do it.  But I never did.