“Has she any relatives living?”
“Only distant ones, and all poor as poverty.”
“How long has your father been dead?”
“Three months.”
“You missed him when he died?”
The boy gave him a look, such a look of utter, hopeless grief, of unavailing, stifled grief, that the Judge’s kind heart ached with a sudden ache of pity and comprehension.
“Boy,” he said, “you want a new father.”
“Ah! that is something I shall never have,” exclaimed Dallas, his whole soul rising in a protest of misery and revolt.
“Here is an unworthy substitute,” said the Judge, quietly tapping his breast. “Stay with me, Dallas; be my boy.”
The lad once more looked at him. He was more demonstrative than Titus. If conditions had been a little different he would have thrown himself on the neck of the kind man before him, he would have sobbed out some of his unhappiness to sympathetic ears. But the Judge was a comparative stranger to him, and he was so miserable, and so ashamed of himself, that it seemed as if he could not be happy for a time at least.