I didn't kill him though, for I saw him on your back porch last Sunday when you were all over the river, and he barked at me." "My poor boy," said Mrs.Elmer, "you have certainly done very wrong; but you have been severely punished for it, and if you are truly sorry and mean to try and do right in the future, you will as certainly be forgiven." So saying, the kind-hearted woman went over and sat down beside the boy, and took his hand in hers.
At this caress, the first he could ever remember to have received, the boy burst into tears, and sobbed out, "I would have been good if I had a mother like you and a pleasant home like this." Mrs.Elmer soothed and quieted him, and gradually drew from him the rest of his story.

His father had once been comfortably well off, and had owned a large mill in Savannah; but during the war the mill had been burned, and he had lost everything.

For some years after that he was very poor, and when Frank was quite a small boy, and his sister a baby, his father used to drink, and when he came home drunk would beat him and his mother.

One night, after a terrible scene of this kind, which Frank could just remember, his mother had snatched up the baby and run from the house.

Afterwards he was told that they were dead; at any rate he never saw them again.