setting sun shone through the open flap, Jon Connington

Here he stopped, being for a second time in his life at a loss what to say.

"Sarve 'em right, sarve 'em right," muttered John, whose quick eye saw everything. "Ole Sam payin' him off good. He think he'll be in the seventh heaven when he got a boy, and he mighty nigh torment that little gal's life out with his mexens and things; but now he got a boy, he feel a heap like the bad place."

Still much as John rejoiced that his master was so punished, his heart went out in pity toward the helpless child whom he almost worshiped, carrying him often to the fields, where, seeking out the shadiest spot and the softest grass for a throne, he would place the child upon it, and then pay him obeisance by bobbing up and down his wooly head in a manner quite as satisfactory to Louis as if he indeed had been a king and John his loyal subject. Old Hannah, too, was greatly softened, and many a little cake and pie she baked in secret for the child, while even Nellie gave up to him her favorite playthings, and her blue eyes wore a pitying look whenever they rested on the poor unfortunate. All loved him seemingly the more-- all, save the cruel father, who, as the months and years rolled on, seemed to acquire a positive dislike to the little boy, seldom noticing him in any way except to frown if he were brought into his sight. And Louis, with the quick instinct of childhood, learned to expect nothing from his father, whose attention he never tried to attract.

As if to make amends for his physical deformity, he possessed an uncommon mind, and when he was nearly six years of age accident revealed to him the reason of his father's continued coldness, and wrung from him the first tears he had ever shed for his misfortune. He heard one day his mother praying that God would soften her husband's heart toward his poor hunchback boy, who was not to blame for his misfortune--and laying his head upon the broad arm of the chair which had been made for him, he wept bitterly, for he knew now why he was not loved. That night, as in his crib he lay, watching the stars which shone upon him through the window, and wondering if in heaven there were hunchback boys like him, he overheard his father talking to his mother, and the words that his father said were never forgotten to his dying day. There were, "Don't ask me to be reconciled to a cripple! What good can he do me? He will never earn his own living, lame as he is, and will only be in the way."

"Oh, father, father," the cripple essayed to say, but he could not speak, so full of pain was his little, bursting heart, and that night he lay awake, praying that he might die and so be out of the way.

The next morning he asked Maude to draw him to the churchyard where "his other mother," as he called her, was buried. Maude complied, and when they were there, placed him at his request upon the ground, where stretching himself out at his full length, he said: "Look, Maude, won't mine be a little grave?" then, ere she could answer the strange question, he continued, "I want to die so bad; and if you leave me lying here in the long grass maybe God's angel will take me up to heaven. Will I be lame, there, think you?"

"Oh, Louis, Louis, what do you mean?" cried Maude, and as well as he could, for the tears he shed, Louis told her what he meant.

"Father don't love me because I'm lame, and he called me a cripple, too. What is a cripple, Maude? Is it anything very bad?" and his beautiful brown eyes turned anxiously toward his sister.

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