"You shall never beat my father again! I will never suffer you to do it again, never! I am growing taller and stronger every day, and I will henceforth always help him. You cannot treat me worse than you have hitherto done, unless you kill me outright. Do that if you dare; for if you do, you know you will be hanged!"
Actually struck dumb with astonishment and rage, the woman looked down upon the defiant little hero. Recovering herself, however, she seized him by the arm, dragged him to the front door, and, as she pushed him down the steps, cried after him,—
"Off with you! off with you, you good-for-nothing little rascal! Go and beg your bread where you can! If you ever dare to enter my house again, I'll strike you dead with a club, like a mad dog! I'll teach you to bite like a bloodhound!"
The heavy bolt fell jarringly in its place, and Walter stood in the street alone!
Soon after, the school-children, full of joyous prattle, began to return from their festival, and poor Walter hid himself, that they might not see him as they passed by. The moon looked calmly down upon the house from which he had just been driven. He had never known any home but this, and although he had spent many wretched days there, yet the separation from it pained his heart. He said to himself, as the big tears rolled rapidly down his cheeks,—
"How many stories she will tell about me! The good pastor, who spoke so very kindly to me to-day, and my teacher,—oh! they will all learn to think so badly of me, for she will tell them all what a wicked, dreadful boy I am! But she might say of me all she could, if she would only stick to the truth. But she won't do that! Suppose I were to go myself to the pastor, and tell him how it all happened? But that would be of no use to me, for perhaps he would not believe me, and it would not bring me back to my home. Nothing would ever induce me to enter the house again! No, she shall never again have a chance to beat me like a mad dog! I need not beg either, as she says I must. I can support myself very well, if she would only let me have my fiddle! Ah! if Maggie had been there, she could have told the pastor that I only tried to help her father, because he is so much weaker than this strong, cruel woman!"
As these thoughts were passing through the mind of Walter, the door of the house was softly opened, and Maggie slipped noiselessly up the street, looking searchingly in every direction, and at last cried, with a suppressed voice,—
"Walter!"
"I am here!" answered the boy, and Maggie hastened to meet him.