He paused for an instant, paling at the recollection. "I saw it all," he pursued, "and knew that after twenty or thirty years of infamy that fate would be mine. If I refused to obey my masters a few blows of the gasket very soon got the better of my resistance. To be beaten by the mud-larks or lashed by the hangman—such was the frightful choice which was offered me, such the view of life which I enjoyed for eight years. Eight years! The age of dependence, confidence, and joy! The age which should know the sweetness of a mother's love and caress!"
Esther's eyes filled with tears as she grasped poor Frank's hands and held them in her clasp.
"Neither have I known a mother," she said; "but I have not suffered as you have. Those about me were kind enough, and I can smile when I compare my miseries with yours."
"One night," continued Frank, "when I refused to play my part in an expedition with the pirates, one of them in a fit of rage threw me into the dark river which hissingly closed over my head."
Esther uttered a cry as though she saw it all, saw with her own eyes the child plunge headlong into the water.
"Fortunately I could swim. I knew the river and it seemed less wicked, less hostile than man. It almost seemed like a mother to me, since it had rocked me upon its bosom and nourished me for so many years. I succeeded in gaining the shore, where I wandered about, shivering, until daybreak. I don't see what prevented my dying, except that such wretches as I are blessed with more enduring vitality than others. Nevertheless, I had some terrible trials to bear. For several days I subsisted upon mouldy crusts floating in the water, cabbage leaves, and other rubbish which I picked up about the market-places. I devoured these sad repasts while inhaling the odor of roasts in Cheapside and Fleet Street. Now and again a charitable gentleman would give me alms without my daring to solicit it other than with my wretched, famished glances. At night I slept sometimes in a church porch, sometimes in an abandoned stable, sometimes under an old wall, which screened me from the wind. One morning I lay asleep, with a stone for a pillow, in the neighborhood of Covent Garden, when I was awakened by a strange voice which seemed to address me. I saw a middle-aged gentleman of modest appearance, with a kind and venerable air, who stood gazing upon me as he leaned on his silver-headed cane. This cane and his old-fashioned wig would have caused me to divine that he was a doctor, had I known the costumes of the different professions.
"'My boy,' he said to me, 'what are you doing there? Why are you not at home at such an hour? Surely your parents must be anxious about you.'
"I answered him rudely, for I knew no other mode of speech.
"'I have no home, and no parents.'
"'What is your name?'