threw my shadow along the road before me. I walked treading on my own
shadow, a very different boy from the one who had come over this same
route sobbing himself almost into convulsions not many months before.

I was ready to swap canal repartee with any of the canallers. It had
become my world. I felt myself a good deal of a man. I could see my
mother's astonished look as she opened the door, and heard me in the
gruffest voice I could command asking her if she could tell me where
Mrs. Rucker lived--and yet, I felt anxious. Somehow a fear that all was
not right grew in me; and when I reached the path leading up to the
house I turned pale, I feel sure, to see that there was no light.

I tapped at the door; but there was no response. I felt for the key in
the place where we used to leave it, but no key was there.

There were no curtains, and as I looked into a room with windows at the
opposite side, I saw no furniture. The house was vacant. I went to the
little leanto which was used as a summer kitchen, and tried a window
which I knew how to open. It yielded to my old trick, and I crawled in.
As I had guessed, the place was empty. I called to my mother, and was
scared, I can't tell how much, at the echo of my voice in the deserted
cabin. I ventured up the stairs, though I was mortally afraid, and found
nothing save the litter of removal. I felt about the closet in my
mother's bedroom, to find out if any of her clothes were there, half
expecting that she would be where I wanted to find her even in the
vacant house. Down in a corner I felt some small article, which I soon
found was a worn-out shoe. With this, the only thing left to remember
her by, I crawled out of the window, shut it carefully behind me--for I
had been brought up to leave things as I found them--and stood alone,
the most forlorn and deserted boy in America, as I truly believe.