When the wolf lingered long at the door I went foraging—foraging as forages a hungry dog and in the same places. Around the hovels of the poor where dogs have clean teeth a boy has little chance. One day, having exhausted the ordinary channels of relief without success, I betook myself to the old swimming-hole on the mill race. The boys had a custom of taking a "shiverin' bite" when they went bathing. It was on a Sunday afternoon in July and quite a crowd sat around the hole. I neither needed nor wanted a bath—I wanted a bite. No one offered a share of his crust. A big boy named Healy was telling of his prowess as a fighter.
"I'll fight ye fur a penny!" said I.
"Where's yer penny?" said Healy.
"I'll get it th' morra."
A man seeing the difficulty and willing to invest in a scrap advanced the wager. I was utterly outclassed and beaten. Peeling my clothes off I went into the race for a swim and to wash the blood off. When I came out Healy had hidden my trousers. I searched for hours in vain. The man who paid the wager gave me an extra penny and I went home holding my jacket in front of my legs. The penny saved me from a "warming," but Anna, feeling that some extra discipline was necessary, made me a pair of trousers out of an old potato sack.
"That's sackcloth, dear," she said, "an' ye can aither sit in th' ashes in them or wear them in earning another pair! Hold fast t' yer penny!"
In this penitential outfit I had to sell my papers. Every fiber of my being tingled with shame and humiliation. I didn't complain of the penance, but I swore vengeance on Healy. She worked the desire for vengeance out of my system in her chimney-corner by reading to me often enough, so that I memorized the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. Miss McGee, the postmistress, gave me sixpence for the accomplishment and that went toward a new pair of trousers. Concerning Healy, Anna said: "Bate 'im with a betther brain, dear!"
Despite my fistic encounters, my dents in the family loaves, my shinny, my marbles and the various signs of total or at least partial depravity, Anna clung to the hope that out of this thing might finally come what she was looking, praying and hoping for.
An item on the credit side of my ledger was that I was born in a caul—a thin filmy veil that covered me at birth. Of her twelve I was the only one born in "luck." In a little purse she kept the caul, and on special occasions she would exhibit it and enumerate the benefits and privileges that went with it. Persons born in a caul were immune from being hung, drawn and quartered, burned to death or lost at sea.
It was on the basis of the caul I was rented to old Mary McDonagh. My duty was to meet her every Monday morning. The meeting insured her luck for the week. Mary was a huckster. She carried her shop on her arm—a wicker basket in which she had thread, needles, ribbons and other things which she sold to the farmers and folks away from the shopping center. No one is lucky while bare-footed. Having no shoes I clattered down Sandy Somerville's entry in my father's. At the first clatter, she came out, basket on arm, and said: