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In Murphy's Alley
109


"No, madam."

"And you don't know his name?"

"No, madam. I never knew it."

With a despairing gesture Mrs. Carew turned back to the boy.

"But think, think—don't you remember anything of your name but—Jamie?"

The boy shook his head. Into his eyes was coming a puzzled wonder.

"No, nothing."

"Haven't you anything that belonged to your father, with possibly his name in it?"

"There wasn't anythin' worth savin' but them books," interposed Mrs. Murphy. "Them's his. Maybe you'd like to look at 'em," she suggested, pointing to a row of worn volumes on a shelf across the room. Then, in plainly uncontrollable curiosity, she asked: "Was you thinkin' you knew him, ma'am?"

"I don't know," murmured Mrs. Carew, in a half-stifled voice, as she rose to her feet and crossed the room to the shelf of books.

There were not many—perhaps ten or a dozen. There was a volume of Shakespeare's plays, an "Ivanhoe," a much-thumbed "Lady of the Lake," a book of miscellaneous poems, a coverless "Tennyson," a dilapidated "Little Lord Fauntleroy," and two or three books of ancient and medieval history. But, though Mrs. Carew looked carefully through every one, she found nowhere any written word. With a despairing sigh she turned back to the boy and to the