where he was never made welcome.

"The whole family rebelled against him. The father satisfied his
resentment against the boy's dead mother by beating her son, by
encouraging his wife to abuse him, and inspiring the other children
to despise him. It seems impossible such conditions should exist.
The only proof of their possibility lies in the fact of their
existence.

"I need not go into the details of the crime. He had been beaten by
his father that evening after a quarrel with his stepmother about
spilling the milk. He went, as usual, to his bed in the barn; but
the hay was suffocating, his head ached, and he could not sleep. He
arose in the middle of the night, went to the house, and killed both
his father and stepmother.

"I shall not pretend to say what thoughts surged through the boy's
brain as he lay there in the stifling hay with the hot blood
pounding against his temples. I shall not pretend to say whether he
was sane or insane as he walked to the house for the perpetration of
the awful crime. I do not even affirm it would not have happened had
there been some human being there to lay a cooling hand on his hot
forehead, and say a few soothing, loving words to take the sting
from the loneliness, and ease the suffering. I ask you to consider
only one thing: he was eleven years old at the time, and he had no
friend in all the world. He knew nothing of sympathy; he knew only
injustice."

Senator Harrison was still looking out at the budding things on the
State-house grounds, but in a vague way he was following the story.