believe that Rucker would try to help her find me. She had been kidnaped
away from me. I threw myself down on the dead grass, and found the
worn-out shoe I had picked up in the closet. It had every curve of her
foot--that foot which had taken so many weary steps for me. I put my
forehead down upon it, and lay there a long time--so long that when I
roused myself and went down to the canal, I had not sat on my old stump
a minute when I saw Captain Sproule's boat approaching from the west.
With a heavy heart I stepped aboard, carrying the worn-out shoe and the
letter, which I have yet. The boat was the only home left me. It had
become my world.



CHAPTER IV

I BECOME A SAILOR, AND FIND A CLUE

I was just past thirteen when I had my great wrestle with loneliness and
desertion that night under the old apple-tree at Tempe; and the next
three and a half years are not of much concern to the reader who is
interested only in the history of Vandemark Township. I was just a
growing boy, tussling, more alone than I should have been, and with no
guidance or direction, with that problem of keeping soul and body
together, which, after all, is the thing with which all of us are
naturally obliged to cope all through our lives. I lived here and there,
most of the time looking to Eben Sproule as a prop and support, as a boy
must look to some one, or fall into bad and dangerous ways--and even
then, maybe he will.

I was a backward boy, and this saved me from some deadfalls, I guess;