Morris Goldberg was a shoemaker and plied his humble calling with such patient industry, and such thrift, that after a year of struggle he had proudly paid back the money loaned him, and then he moved his wife and daughter to the back room on the floor above, while he pegged and sewed and smoked and sang at his work.
The daughter grew into a beautiful womanhood, with all the rich coloring of her race, with snowy teeth, thick waving black hair, and beautiful large dark eyes.
She was the loveliest girl in all the neighborhood, with a dainty, graceful figure and a gay, merry soul. Words could not tell how she loved her father; for, after a few years of peace and joy in this land, the mother, who had never recovered from the horrors through which she had passed, died. Her last hours were so sweetly peaceful that the loss to those left behind was more of a chastened sorrow than a poignant grief.
Dora was now sixteen, and matured like the maidens of her race.
The father loved Dora with a brooding tenderness almost womanlike in its intensity, and her little hands held his very heart in their grasp. Nothing she did seemed wrong to him, and everything she wanted, that was in his power to give, she had.
Above all, he was proud of her education, for that had been his first desire. Dora was kept in school when other girls of her age had worked in factories. She kept house for him in the room above the shop, and she was a good, sweet, obedient daughter. What more could a man ask? A business that kept them from want, and something left over every month. No wonder the honest shoemaker sang as he worked in his little shop as he listened to the steps of his daughter above.
CHAPTER I.
This brief preamble brings the reader to the day and hour when the first movements in this moving human drama began.
Morris Goldberg had left his humble store in charge of Dora and a little semi-idiotic boy, whom he had rescued from the streets. The little fellow was thin and white, and dressed in a medley of garments purchased for him from a second-hand store nearby. The child was trying to sew a shoe while seated upon the vacant bench. Dora sat beside him, trying to guide the clumsy fingers, with infinite patience.