Jump to content

Page:Orange Grove.djvu/289

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

about begging a subsistence, going every night to a place where my mother had made it her home; but they soon got tired of me, and treated me harshly if I failed to bring them home something. After a while I found it was impossible to get enough to satisfy my own hunger; and one dark, stormy night, when I was suffering intensely with cold and hunger, not daring to go home, as I called it, I thought I would try some of the rich folk's houses, and sec if I could get something there. Seeing a bright light in a large house standing a little back from the street, I ventured to go there, and before I dared to knock, I peeped through the window; and then a dog barked and frightened me, and I ran off. That night, and what I saw through the window, I never could forget, I suffered so much. I knew you the minute I looked towards you in the court-room, and the first thought was that you had come to seal my fate. You were a young boy then, but your face is not changed. You looked so happy as you sat at the table; and right opposite was a girl with curly hair, who looked up as I turned away, and a cat lay there asleep. I thought of my own wretchedness, when a spirit of revenge and hatred took possession of me, that I, a child, should be doomed to such misery, while even the brutes of the rich man's family were cared for and fed. What had I done that no one should care for me? When I went into the street again a watchman took me up and put me in a room somewhere where they kept me till morning, when, with a reprimand, I was permitted to go at large again. I grew heedless of my looks and ac-