“'Have you nothing better than that to sell?” I says, not quite sure that she wasn't all a humbug, like so many of 'em. She seemed to see that, and looked up at me again with such innocent eyes, I couldn't doubt her when she said, shivering with something beside the cold,—
“'Nothing but myself.' Then the tears came, and she laid her head down on my arm, sobbing,—'Keep me! oh, do keep me safe somewhere!'”
Thorn choked here, steadied his voice with a resolute hem! but could only add one sentence more:
“That's how I found my wife.”
“Come, don't stop thar? I told the whole o' mine, you do the same. Whar did you take her? how'd it all come round?”
“Please tell us, Thorn.”
The gentler request was answered presently, very steadily, very quietly.
“I was always a soft-hearted fellow, though you wouldn't think it now, and when that little girl asked me to keep her safe, I just did it. I took her to a good woman whom I knew, for I hadn't any women belonging to me, nor any place but that to put her in. She stayed there till spring working for her keep, growing brighter, prettier, every day, and fonder of me I thought. If I believed in witchcraft, I shouldn't think myself such a cursed fool as I do now, but I don't believe in it, and to this day I can't understand how I came to do it. To be sure I was a lonely man, without kith or kin, had never had a sweetheart in my life, or been much with women since my mother died. Maybe that's why I was so bewitched with Mary, for she had little ways with her that took your fancy and made you love her whether you would or no. I found her father was an honest fellow enough, a fiddler in the some theatre, that he'd taken good care of Mary till he died, leaving precious little but advice for her to live on. She'd tried to get work, failed, spent all she had, got sick, and was going to the devil, as the poor souls can hardly help doing with so many ready to give them a shove. It's no use trying to make a bad job better; so the long and short of it was, I thought she loved me; God knows I loved her, and I married her before the year was out.”
“Show us her picture; I know you've got one; all the fellows have, though half of 'em won't own up.”
“I've only got part of one. I once saved my little girl, and her picture once saved me.”