MAT MORRIS.
"I've been discharged, mother."
"What?"
"I've been discharged."
The face of Mrs. Morris became very grave, and presently her eyes were
turned on the boyish yet manly face of her son Mat. Earnestly she gazed
at him for several seconds, and then her lips parted with a smile
which, wan as it was, expressed satisfaction.
"It was no fault of yours. You did nothing wrong, my son?"
"No, mother, it was not through any fault of mine that I was
discharged. Business has fallen off so very much of late that they
were compelled to reduce the number of hands. And as I was one of the
newest, I was among those laid off."
"Of course I am sorry," said poor Mrs. Morris, "but we must do the best
we can."
"I'll not act the part of a sluggard, mother, you can depend on that.
I'll try and find something to do to keep the wolf from the door. And
my boss gave me a splendid recommendation, and said if business got
better he'd send for me at once."
Mat was a good son.
Few better were to be found.
His worst fault, perhaps, was in being a little reckless, or over-brave
and independent.
None could insult him with impunity, nor could he nor would he stand by
and silently witness anybody being imposed upon. He invariably took the
part of the under dog in the fight.
Hardly had Mat finished speaking, when the door opened and a girl
entered; a girl whom both mother and son greeted with glances of
affection.
Her name was Helen Dilt.
Five years before, when the circumstances of the Morris family had been
better, they had taken her from the street--found starving and freezing
there on a cold winter's night--and had cared for her.
Mr. Morris had died only a year later, since which time Helen had clung
to them, doing what little she could to keep the roof above their heads.
She was not yet sixteen--a slight and winsome little creature; not
beautiful, but with a sweet face that when lighted by a smile was
remarkably winning.
Of her history she knew nothing.
Her knowledge of herself could be summed up in a few words.
For years cared for by a drunken old hag, with only a faint remembrance
of a sweet, sad face before that, she had lost even such a squalid home
as she had when the hag died.
Then she had come with the Morris family.
And well did they love her.
Mrs. Morris loved her like a daughter, and Mat loved her much better
than a sister. And Helen returned the latter's deep regard.
While no word had openly been spoken, it was tacitly understood by
all three that some day, when Mat and Helen were old enough, and the
circumstances permitted, they were to be married.
Mat was of slight build, of lithe and willowy frame, in which, however,
resided an amount of strength which few would have dreamed possible.
He was just eighteen.
There is an old saying--"that it never rains but it pours."
It seems true sometimes.
Helen, employed in a situation bringing her three dollars a week, had
also come home with the news of having been discharged.
It was a grave little trio that gathered about the supper table that
night.
Latterly they had been getting along comfortably, but now destitution
and want again stared them in the face, and must inevitably take up
quarters in the household, unless some one obtained work of some kind
to bring in some money.
Mat was up and away early the next morning, and for many mornings
thereafter, but although he honestly searched all day long for
employment, none was to be found.
And Helen, too, sought for work, but failed to find it, and day by day
their slender stock of money diminished, until at last they had eaten
the last meal, and had no money wherewith to buy another.
That evening Helen left the house and was gone for a short while, and
when she came back she did not say where she had been.
But she had gone with her shawl to a pawn-shop, and hid away in her
dress was the pittance which had been loaned on it.
In the morning she stole out unheard, not long after daylight, and
invested her capital in newspapers.
Her cheeks were flushed with shame as she stood on the street, offering
her papers for sale. But she fought back her pride. They had been very
kind to her, and she should be only too glad, she told herself, to make
the sacrifice for their dear sakes.
And how happy she was when she hastened to their home, and put her
morning's earnings into the hand of Mrs. Morris.
In vain Mat protested against Helen's selling papers. Let him do it, he
said.
"It will need all we can both make to live and pay the rent," Helen
quietly returned.
"But you must not go on the street to sell papers, Helen," protested
Mat.
"I am young and can afford better to do this than that our good mother
should work," said Helen, bravely, casting an affectionate glance
toward Mrs. Morris.
And Mat said no more.
It was one day several weeks subsequent to the time when she first
began selling papers, that a gentleman stopped to purchase a _Herald_
of Helen.
He had paid for it in a mechanical way, and was turning away when he
chanced to glance at the face of the newsgirl.
He started slightly, then cast a keen glance at her, paused, and then
in a tone of assumed carelessness, asked:
"Haven't I seen you somewhere else, my girl? You have not always sold
papers?"
"No, sir."
"Where can I have seen you?"
"I don't know, sir," was the only reply, for Helen did not care to talk
to him.
But she saw that he was an elderly man, his hair was streaked with
gray, and in clothing and manner he bore the impress of apparent
respectability.
"What is your name?" he inquired.
"Helen."
"What!" with another start. "Your name is Helen, is it?" recovering
himself. "Helen what, my girl?"
"Helen Morris," was the reply, for she had now for a long time used the
name of her benefactors as her own.
Again the gentleman glanced keenly at her, and then moved away slowly,
muttering to himself:
"Morris--Morris! I can't understand it. That likeness is wonderful, and
cannot exist as a mere accident. I must investigate this, and I'd bet
anything that that is not her name."
The gentleman entered a large building on Broadway, ascended in the
elevator, and opened the door of an office, on which was lettered the
legend:
"JOSEPH BROWN,
_Attorney at Law_."
Having written a note, he dispatched his office boy with it to a liquor
saloon, it being directed to James McGinnis, in care of the saloon's
proprietor.
Late that afternoon a beetle-browed and forbidding-looking individual
entered Brown's office.
"Well, I got your letter and I've come!" was the rather sullen
salutation he gave Brown. "What's up now? Want to badger me again?"
"Don't talk to me in that manner!" said Brown, quietly, yet in a grim
tone. "Remember that I saved your neck from a halter, which I can again
put around it at any moment."
The man shuddered, and became meek as a lamb.
"What do you want?"
"That's better," and Brown smiled. "I don't want much of you just now,"
and then he sank his voice to a whisper.
"That's easy enough," McGinnis said, a few minutes later. "I can let
you know to-morrow morning, I think."
"Very well."
When McGinnis put in an appearance the next morning, it was evident
from his expression that he had been successful in the task required of
him by Brown.
"I've found out that her name isn't Morris. That's the name of the
people as she lives with. She's a kind of an adopted daughter, and they
said as how her real name was Dilk, or something like that."
"Ha! I thought so," Brown exclaimed, inwardly. And then he bade
McGinnis sit down, and for nearly half an hour they conversed in low
tones.
Then Brown put a roll of bills into his confederate's hands, and the
latter withdrew, saying:
"I'll do the job nately, and there'll be no trouble after it."
And that night Helen did not return home. Half-crazed with alarm, Mat
and his mother awaited her coming until nine o'clock, or a little
after, and then the young fellow could stand it no longer, but went in
search of Helen.
He could not find her.
She did not return during the night, nor even the next day, nor when
night again fell.
Mat had scoured the city for her, had visited the places where
she usually sold papers, and had questioned all the boot-blacks
and newsboys, but had only obtained the meager and unsatisfactory
information from one little fellow that he had seen Helen in company
with a man just after dusk.
She had disappeared completely, had vanished as utterly as a mist that
is dissolved by the sun's warm rays.
"She is gone from us, mother," Mat at last said, in a choking voice.
"You remember, mother, what Helen has told us--her impressions
concerning her early childhood. And, mother, I believe there is money
at the bottom of the thing, that Helen stood in somebody's way, and has
been spirited off by this person's orders."
"It is possible."
"Possible! I feel it to be the truth. And I shall not rest night or
day, mother, until I have found her. Good-bye, mother, for I am going.
Heaven in mercy assist you and care for you until I can come back to do
so. Good-bye!"
Mrs. Morris did not wish him to go, but she could not thwart him,
for she knew how much he loved Helen. But her face was very pale and
anguished as she saw him go.