thankful for that? he asked himself; but alas! his innocence had not been established. Young as he was, he felt the force of that. And he felt it terribly hard that all—all! even his little angel—believed him to be a thief.
Ah! he did not know how sore was Eva Lawrence's little heart, and how she persisted to her father that Benny was innocent, and pleaded with him, but pleaded in vain, for him to take back the poor boy and give him another chance.
And night after night she cried herself to sleep, as she thought of the orphan lad sent adrift on life's treacherous ocean, and wondered what the end would be. And when one day she tried to sing "Love at Home," the words almost choked her, for the pleading, suffering face of the homeless child came up before her, and looked at her with hungry wistful eyes, as if asking for sympathy and help.
But children soon forget their griefs, and as the days wore away, and lengthened into weeks, Benny was almost forgotten, till one day a circumstance occurred which made him again the talk of the Lawrence household. What that circumstance was shall be told in its proper place in the unfolding of this story of Benny's life.
