"I don't wonder at that," I said; "and he seems very fond of you, too. But what became of the widow and orphans?"
"Oh, she's done finely. She bought out a small grocery, and she got so well known, owing to her misfortune, that all the folks came to trade with her. I drop in on her sometimes when I have to lay over for an hour or two, and she always asks after Jocko, as she calls him; but it's such a common monkey name that I called him Carbo, which means something; and then she mostly cries a little, thinking of the old man. I don't know as she thinks Carbo brought her much luck altogether, but he kept the family in coal for a whole winter—no one would ever have thought of throwing at a dog, even on top of a pole—and he brought five hundred dollars that saved 'em from the poor-house.
"But here's the express signaled, so I guess you'd better get down. I've told that story a hundred times, I reckon, and I'm 'most tired of telling it; but I saw you was a stranger in these parts, so I didn't mind telling it to you. Good-night to you, sir, and a pleasant journey!"
[A ROLL OF HONOR.]
BY G. T. LANIGAN.
Our young readers are already familiar with the stories of Kate Shelley, Edith Baxter, and the young hero of the Wardley coal mine, which have been told within a short time in Young People. Here are some other names that may be added to this noble list.
Every year, on the occasion of the national fêtes, the Belgian government makes a public distribution of rewards to persons who have displayed remarkable courage in a good cause. At the last festival at Brussels the Home Minister pinned a medal on the breast of a little boy of nine, whom he rightly called "a young hero." Genin, while playing in a field near the Sambre, had seen a little girl fall into the river, and jumping in after her, saved her, with much difficulty, and then found that it was his little sister that he had rescued. She had been playing on the river's edge against their parents' strict command, and to save her from punishment he took the blame of her disobedience on himself, and received a severe beating like a little Spartan. His sister, however, could not bear to see him suffer, and told the truth; and the story being confirmed by the evidence of an eye-witness, little Genin was sent for to Brussels, and decorated amid the cheers of a hundred thousand people.
Charles Mahony was a boy of twelve, who was playing on the banks of the Aire, in May last, with his two brothers, aged five and two, when they fell into the stream, swollen with the spring floods. Charles plunged in and brought the younger child to shore, and then swam for the elder one, who was drowning in the middle of the torrent, but the current was too powerful and the water too cold, and though he reached him, it was only to sink with him.
At Ashton-under-Lyne, Edward Wilcox, a peasant boy of fourteen, heard one night not long ago cries of distress from a canal near the house where he lived, and running out found a woman drowning, while two men were looking on, terrified and incapable of aiding her. Jumping into the water, he seized her as she was sinking, and brought her ashore and placed her in the warm bed he had just left, until he could run off for assistance. He thus earned the medal given him by the Humane Society.