“Down by the carriage road,” called out Paula, finding it impossible for them to keep up with such haste.
“But is he much injured?” cried a smooth voice at their side.
They turned; it was the short thickset man who had been the other’s companion in the conversation above recorded.
“We trust not,” answered Cicely; “his arm received the blow, and he suffers very much, but we hope it is not serious;” and they hurried on.
They found the father seated on the grass holding the little fellow in his arms. The look on his once handsome but now thoroughly corrupt and dissipated face, made their hearts melt within them. However wicked he might be—and that sly treacherous eye, that false impudent lip, that settling of the whole face into the mould which Vice applies to all her votaries, left no doubt of his complete depravity—he dearly loved his child, and love, no matter how it is expressed, or in what garb it appears, is a sacred and beautiful thing, and ennobles for the time being any creature who displays it.
“’Twas a hard knock up, Dad,” came from the white lips of the child as he felt his father’s trembling hand feel up and down his arm, “but I guess the ‘little fellar’ can stand it.” “Little feller” was evidently the name by which his father was accustomed to address him.
“There are no bones broken,” said the father. “To be lame and maimed too would be—”
He did not finish, for a delicately gloved hand was here laid on his sleeve, and a gentle voice whispered, “Money cannot pay for an injury like that, but please accept this;” and Paula thrust a purse into his hand.
He clutched it eagerly, but at her next request that he should tell her where he lived that they might inquire after the boy, he shook his head with a return of his old emphasis.
“The haunts of bats and jackals are not for ladies.” Then as he caught sight of her pitiful face bending in farewell over the little urchin, some remembrance perhaps of the days when he had a right to stoop to the ear of beautiful women and walk unrebuked at their side, returned to him from the past, and respectfully lowering his voice, he asked her name.