Hiram in the Middle West

by Burbank L. Todd

Later the reticent Ted opened his heart to his friend and told him of all his checkered life previous to his coming to Sunnyside Farm.

It was by no means a strange story; except that he was forced to live in a public institution, the management of which chanced to be in rather hard, unsympathetic hands.

Theodore could remember a little of what had happened to him before he was incarcerated in that first institution with its stone walls and strict discipline, and a government scarcely paternal.

He could remember that he had had a little sister, too, whom he loved very much and whom he looked after and carried about in his arms. But they had taken her from him in the orphanage and he had become "Ted C." He never was allowed to see his little sister again.

At twelve years old he was taken by a family who treated him well and who sent him to school and taught him for a few short years what the "worth while" things in life were. Then illness and death in the family cost the boy his home, and he had to struggle for himself. He was soon picked up by the police and the magistrate sent him to the reform school, as there was nobody to speak for him.

How Ted had kept a clean heart during these troubled years was a mystery. There was something, Hiram believed, innately good in the fellow. Like Sister, he possessed traits of character that disposed him toward good rather than toward evil.

But his experiences made him reticent and suspicious. After he ran away from the reform school he never wholly trusted people he met. In the city he was always in fear of the police, as well as of his associates in the reform school who likewise had got out. He was afraid they would get him into further trouble. So he went out into the country and worked his way west from farm to farm.

That he really was Theodore Cheltenham was soon established through letters from the Eastern lawyer who had the matter in charge. At Christmas time both he and Hiram were relieved from duty, and they went to Scoville to spend the holidays at the Atterson farm and to settle with the lawyer about the legacy left to Ted and his sister.

Sister's name, by the way, was Mary, but she always called herself "Mary Cecilia."

"Now I've got money and a brother, both," Sister said to Hiram, "I am somebody. I wish Mr. Fred Crackit and Mr. Peebles and all those others at the boarding house in Crawberry knew about it—and that boy who used to pull my pigtails so.