But the truth was—and will you blame me?—that from the crack at the bottom of the door came a tiny streak of light, which told a vivid tale of all I was in danger of forfeiting. How often I had growled at my fate; now, behind that door, lay a paradise.
I crouched there in the dark corner of the stairs leading to the roof. How long I shivered there I do not know. All my senses were alert and ready for the slightest alarm. Once I heard pleading and emphatic denial within, and then all was still—still for a long while.
My gaze was fixed on the door. It seemed hours—perhaps it was—before I heard a slight creaking and saw the reflection of more light on the hallway floor. It disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and then it was dark and quiet again.
But why was that door opened? Something must have happened. I dragged myself to the threshold of my lost home, felt around and found—my shoes, my real, new shoes. And then I tried hard to cry, but could not. The crust had become too hardened.
The crisis had come, was passed, and the curtain fell on my childhood. Ages cannot be measured by years.
A NOMAD OF THE STREETS.
CHAPTER III.
A NOMAD OF THE STREETS.
Seven years old, I stepped into the street, where, by right, I belonged, no longer a child, to begin the journey, which, through many years in the valley, led me to the heights.
It was a bleak December night.