"I think I could tell you almost anything if you asked me that way,
my boy. It isn't that I'm too proud,--and you're right about my
sometimes wanting to free my mind,--but it's because a man of forty
don't just like to open out to young fellows, if there is any danger
of their laughing at him, though he may deserve it. I guess there
isn't now, and I'll tell you how I found my wife."

Dick sat up, and Phil drew nearer, for the earnestness that was in
the man dignified his plain speech, and inspired an interest in his
history, even before it was begun. Looking gravely at the river and
never at his hearers, as if still a little shy of confidants, yet
grateful for the relief of words, Thorn began abruptly,--

"I never hear the number eighty-four without clapping my hand to my
left breast and missing my badge. You know I was on the police in
New York, before the war, and that's about all you do know yet. One
bitter cold night, I was going my rounds for the last time, when, as
I turned a corner, I saw there was a trifle of work to be done. It
was a bad part of the city, full of dirt and deviltry; one of the
streets led to a ferry, and at the corner an old woman had an apple-
stall. The poor soul had dropped asleep, worn out with the cold, and
there were her goods left, with no one to watch 'em. Somebody was
watching 'em, however; a girl, with a ragged shawl over her head,
stood at the mouth of an alley close by, waiting for a chance to
grab something. I'd seen her there when I went by before, and
mistrusted she was up to some mischief; as I turned the corner, she
put out her hand and cribbed an apple. She saw me the minute she did
it, but neither dropped it nor ran, only stood stocks still with the
apple in her hand till came up.