“Yes.”

“All right.  Then there’ll be nothing in the way.  Your train’s about ready.  Take good care of yourself, and come back rested.  Telegraph me whenever you can.  Good-by.”

CHAPTER XXXI.

A MOMENT OF ARROGANCE.

Henry wandered through the old familiar streets.  How vividly came back the years, the dreary long ago!  Here, on a door-step, he had passed many a nodding hour, kept in half-consciousness by the clank of the printing-press, waiting for the dawn and his bundle of newspapers.  No change had come to soften the truth of the picture that a by-gone wretchedness threw upon his memory.  The attractive fades, but how eternal is the desolate!  Yonder he could see the damp wall where he used to hunt for snails, and farther down the narrow street was the house in which had lived the old Italian woman.  “You think I’m a stranger,” he mused, as he passed a policeman, “but I know all this.  I have been in dens here that you have never seen.”

He went to the Foundlings’ Home and walked up and down in front of the long, low building.  An old woman, dragging a rocking-chair, came out on the veranda and sat down.  He halted at the gate, stood for a moment and then rang the bell.  A negro opened the gate and politely invited him to enter.  The old woman arose as he came up the steps.

“Keep your seat, madam.”

“Did you want to see anybody?” she asked.

“No; and don’t let me disturb you.”

He gave her a closer look and thought that he remembered her as the woman who had taken him on her lap and told him that his father was dead.

“No disturbance at all,” she answered.  “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Yes, I should like to look through this place.”

“Very well, but you may find things pretty badly tumbled up.  We’re cleaning house.  Come this way, please.”

He saw the corner in which he used to sleep, and there was the same iron bedstead, with a fever-fretted child lying upon it.  He thought of the nights when he had cried himself to sleep, and of the mornings when he lay there weaving his fancies while a spider high above the window was spinning his web.  There was the same old smell, and he sniffed the sorrow of his childhood.

“How long has this been here?” he asked.

“He was brought here about two weeks ago.”

“I mean the bedstead.  How long has it been in this corner?”

“Oh, I can’t say as to that.  I thought you meant the child.  I’ve been here a long time, and I never saw the bedstead anywhere else.  It will soon be thirty years since I came here.  Do you care to go into any of the other rooms?”

“No, thank you.”

They returned to the veranda.  “Won’t you sit down?” the old woman asked.

“No, I’ve but a few moments to stay.  By the way, some time ago I met a man who said that he had lived here when a child.  I was trying to think of his name.  Oh, it was a man named Henry DeGolyer, I believe.  Do you remember him?”