“To Hexton,” said the young man, naming the town he had been making for, before his misadventure, “and from there to Liverpool. I thought I would try in Liverpool to get something to do, and if I did not succeed, I thought perhaps I would go to America.”
“And how would you get there? Have you money?”
“I have a little that I left behind me in the charge of a friend to send after me with my clothes when I get to Liverpool. I thought it better not to carry it with me; I might have been robbed, or,”—and here he smiled again the same wintry little smile that seemed so pathetic on his thin young face—“tempted to spend it, perhaps.”
“And have you any one to go to at Liverpool—any introductions of any kind?”
“No one—none, whatever,” answered the poor boy sadly.
Mr Winthrop reflected a moment.
“I may be able to be of a little use to you in that way; at least, I might be if I knew even a little more about you. You cannot tell me your name?”
The young man coloured and looked down.
“I cannot,” he said. “I thought it all over, and I determined that my only chance was to tell nothing. No, sir, you cannot help me; but I thank you as much as if you had.”
And thus Mr Winthrop was forced to let him go. At the last moment an idea struck him. He gave the boy a few words of introduction to an old friend of his in Liverpool—a friend, though in a different rank of life—the son of a farmer in the neighbourhood, now holding a respectable position in a business house there, telling him all, or rather the exceedingly little, he knew of the stranger who had been three days his guest, and asking him if under the circumstances he could do anything to help, to do it.