THE SHADOW
Of course you wish to know all about the crooked man whose very shadow
caused the children to stop their play and scamper to their homes.
You remember I told you that one side of Jefferson Square was occupied
by the Convent of the Good Shepherd and the common? Well, this convent
was a source of much interest and not a little awe to the children. They
were always curious to know what was going on behind those high brick
walls.
Nothing in the shape of a man, except the priests, was ever allowed
inside the convent. You can judge, then, of the flutter it caused
when one day at noon, as the children from their windows opposite were
watching the penitents playing in the garden in their blue dresses and
white caps, they saw a little man go boldly in their midst and with a
shovel begin turning up the soil.
To be sure he was old and ugly; his back was bent like a hoop, and his
long nose almost touched his toes as he leaned over his shovel--but all
the same he was a man.
"I wonder who on earth he can be!" said Fanny Morton, and the nurse who
was peering over her head thoughtlessly replied:
"One of Satan's own imps."
They did not see the newcomer for a long time after, then one morning
the word passed that he was there. This time the big iron gates at the
side were open, and he was wheeling barrows of coal into the convent
cellar.
The next meeting was on the common where he was raking over old
rubbish and abstracting rags and bits of iron. The children were
about to speak to him when something in his brown and wrinkled
face recalled the nurse-girl's remark about "Satan's imps," so
they were afraid and ran home.
I do not know who started it, but soon he came to be known as "Paddy on
the Turnpike," and just what this meant would be hard to say. While we
all know that Paddys are common enough in cities, still there wasn't a
turnpike for this one to be on within five miles of Jefferson Square.
Although the children were afraid of the old man, they could not help
teasing him whenever they got a chance. It seemed reckless and brave to
shout out something and then take to their heels. They dared not come
too near, for the same nurse-girl, seeing the sensation that her first
remark had created, added another more astonishing, to the effect that
Paddy had traded his soul to the devil, and was hunting the rubbish on
the common over, for sufficient money to buy it back. Which was, of
course, sheer nonsense, and if the children had been as good as all
children should be, they never for a moment would have believed such a
stupid untruth.
By degrees they grew bolder. They would creep behind when he was bending
over his ash pile, nearer and nearer. Then they would shout something
about the devil and his bartered soul, thinking they were brave indeed.
Once they approached so near that they almost touched him, but he turned
around suddenly and reached out his rake as if he were going to rake
them all in. At this a panic seized them, and they ran like young deer.
[Illustration: "HE TURNED AROUND SUDDENLY."]
Finally Henry Clay Morton made a rhyme about him, and the others took it
up. They never saw the old fellow without shouting to a sing-song tune
that they had made themselves:
"Paddy on the Turnpike
Couldn't count eleven,
Put him on a leather bed,
Thought he was in Heaven."