I may as well take this opportunity to describe the newsboy who is to be the hero of my present story. As already mentioned, he was fifteen years old, stoutly¹ built, with a clear, fresh complexion², and a resolute³, good-humored face. He was independent and self-reliant, feeling able to work his own way without help, and possessed⁴ a tact⁵ and spirit of enterprise which augured⁶ well for his success in life. Though not so carefully dressed as most of the boys who will read this story, he was far from being as ragged⁷ as many of his fellow-newsboys. There were two reasons for this: he had a feeling of pride, which made him take some care of his clothes, and besides, until within a year, he had had a mother to look after him. In this respect he had an advantage over the homeless boys who wander about the streets, not knowing where they shall find shelter.

But, within a year, circumstances had changed with our young hero. His mother had been left a widow when he was nine years old. Two years later she married a man, of whom she knew comparatively little, not from love, but chiefly that she might secure a comfortable support for her two children. This man, Martin, was a house-carpenter, and was chiefly employed in Brooklyn and New York. He removed his new wife and the children from the little Connecticut village, where they had hitherto lived, to New York, where he found lodgings⁸ for them.

In the course of a few months, she found that the man she had so hastily married had a violent, and even

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