"I wish I could go now. I should like to see my dear mother and my
sisters."

"And your father?"

"I don't want to see him," said Giacomo, bitterly. "He sold me to the
padrone. My mother wept bitterly when I went away, but my father only
thought of the money."

Filippo and Giacomo were from the same town in Calabria. They were the
sons of Italian peasants who had been unable to resist the offers of the
padrone, and for less than a hundred dollars each had sold his son into
the cruelest slavery. The boys were torn from their native hills, from
their families, and in a foreign land were doomed to walk the streets
from fourteen to sixteen hours in every twenty-four, gathering money
from which they received small benefit. Many times, as they trudged
through the streets, weary and hungry, sometimes cold, they thought with
homesick sadness of the sunny fields in which their earliest years had
been passed, but the hard realities of the life they were now leading
soon demanded their attention.

Naturally light-hearted, Filippo, or Phil, bore his hard lot more
cheerfully than some of his comrades. But Giacomo was more delicate, and
less able to bear want and fatigue. His livelier comrade cheered him up,
and Giacomo always felt better after talking with Phil.

As the two boys were walking together, a heavy hand was laid on the
shoulder of each, and a harsh voice said: "Is this the way you waste
your time, little rascals?"