Then, rising, with his heart too full to speak, he turned to the door to leave. Miss Barton, seeing his agitation, came up to speak to him, with her eyes also filled with tears.
"Wait till she awakes," she said.
"I cannot," he replied.
"She expects to see you before you go."
"Tell her—" and he was gone.
CHAPTER XVI.
BILLY BARTON'S FLIGHT.
When Billy Barton left his home and family, he went without a clue to his destination; and he left no word behind of his going.
The world to him had been a series of degenerating allurements ever since he could remember anything; and Evil Repute was the sum of his reward. He was brought up amid the scenes of the river's traffic as a wharf man, or roustabout; and was called the waterman, by reason of an ineradicable habit he had of invariably falling into the stream when intoxicated. This predilection of Billy's might have cured such a failing in any other man; but the more often Billy fell into the river the less inclined he was to accept the water cure. The frequency of these periodic immersions grew to such dimensions that his qualifications as a wharfman became nil, and he thereby lost his right to a permanancy among the gang, causing him, one day early in his years, to be placed on the reserve list to take his chances for obtaining work as an extra.