"A Brand From The Burning"

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Title:     "A Brand From The Burning"
Author: Myra Kelly [More Titles by Kelly]

"Where did you get him?" said the Principal.

"In the back yard of one of those double-deckers down by the river," answered the Truant Officer. "Ain't he the bird!" he added in professional enthusiasm. "I've been chasing him for two or three days. He's just about as easy to handle as an eel, and to-day he bit me as we were coming along. He's a beauty, he is!"

"And you say he doesn't speak Yiddish?" queried the Principal.

"He don't speak the kind I do," the other answered. "I get on all right with the rest of the folks around here, and I certainly never expected to have trouble rounding up a kid that ain't knee-high to a grasshopper. No, you don't, sonny!" he broke off as his charge was sliding toward the door. "You've got to stay here now and have a nice lady learn you how to read and write and cipher."

The boy looked up at his captor with the wide, desperate eyes of an animal at bay, recognizing his helplessness, but determined to bite and fight to the very end.

"Will you look at that now?" the Truant Officer exclaimed; "he thinks every one's going to hurt him. That's the way some of those kids feel."

"Oh, he'll soon get over that here," the Principal laughed. "I've seen them much wilder on their first appearance. The teachers know how to handle them."

Left alone with his new charge, the Principal turned and studied him. The boy was in the corner, his eyes fixed on the closed door, his whole little body tense. His visible clothing consisted of a man's coat, cut short at the sleeves and pinned across the breast. The child was so small that this reached far below his knees, where it was supplemented by ragged stockings and shoes. He was unkempt and dirty, even according to the unexacting East Side's standard. But there was something about the poise of his head and the slow, lithe movements of his body that differentiated him from the ordinary street waif. There was no fear in him--no pleading, no snivelling, nothing but a harsh, almost mature, defiance.

"Come here!" said the Principal. At the sound of his voice the child turned and looked at him, and the man found himself returning the cool regard of a pair of violet-blue eyes. Blue eyes picked up in the heart of that dusky neighborhood, where he had learned to expect all children's eyes to be either black or brown!

"I wonder what he is, and where he comes from," he sighed, as he rang the bell and summoned the teacher who generally acted as his interpreter. "David Copperfield's poor old friend, Mr. Dick, would find plenty of use for his famous prescription, 'wash him,' if he were in my place."

Miss Rosen soon arrived and began her usual inquiries as to name, age, residence. The little stranger heard her through, and then he uttered a sharp three or four word sentence, clear cut, imperious; and Miss Rosen, a sweet and portly lady of fifteen years' faithful teaching, flushed to the edge of her hard black pompadour, and stared, incredulous, at the ragged form before her.

"Well," said the Principal, as she made no effort at translation. "What does he say?"

"I do not speak his language," she answered.

"And yet you understand him?"

"I understand him--yes----"

"Well," repeated the Principal, in no mind to allow one small boy to upset his morning's routine, "well, if you understand him, tell me what he said. What language was that he used?"

"Russian," she replied, "pure Russian, and what he said is the only Russian phrase which many of the Jewish people ever hear. I have not heard it since I escaped from Russia with my parents years and years ago. I had hoped never to hear it again. I must refuse to translate it to you."

When she had gone, all shaken, back to her class, the Principal shook a remonstrating head at his captive, who was by this time examining the book-case with a disparaging eye. Catching the man's glance, he made some remark in his liquid speech, and thumped his chest.

"Perhaps so, my boy," Mr. Trevar agreed. "But I'm studying your case. No English, horrid temper, young wild animal, in fact. It's hard on the girl," he admitted to his own conscience; "but I guess it's a case for Room 18," and rang the bell again and sent word to Room 18 to summon Miss Bailey to his office.

"We've caught a tartar," he told her, "almost literally a Tartar. He seems to have strong racial prejudices, and I shall have to assign him to you until he learns a little English."

"But if he speaks no English at all," Miss Bailey remonstrated--for children of this kind were her greatest trial, and she was already laboring with three of them--"would he not be happier with one of the teachers who could understand him?"

"Ah! but they wouldn't," he replied; "that's just the point. Miss Rosen tells me he's a Russian and not a Jew. He said something extremely rude to her just now. No, you'll have to take him, at least for a few days, until I can make some inquiries about him. We shall have to get the Truant Officer to give us the child's name and address. Will you take him with you now?"

Constance Bailey had a smile to which many a lonely frightened little novice had yielded a shy and sweet response, but there was no answering smile here. She stretched out a hand to take the boy's, but he eluded her, reached the door, opened it, and stood at stiff attention until she had preceded him into the hall.

"Well, I'll be blamed!" reflected the Principal. "Manners, and princely ones at that!"

On the way to Room 18, Miss Bailey's newest responsibility walked beside her with a free and upright carriage strangely at variance with the shoes he walked in. Once or twice she spoke to him, and his answer was an uncomprehending but courteous inclination of the little head. Once he spoke to her. It was when they passed the platform in the Assembly Room. He pointed to the piano and said something eagerly, authoritatively, in that language whose like Miss Bailey had never heard. She nodded and smiled at him, and they fared on together.

Again, at the door of Room 18, he punctiliously allowed her to precede him. But as he entered after her and met the full regard of Room 18's dark eyes, he stopped and returned the glances bent upon him with a cool, insulting indifference.

"This is a new little boy," announced Miss Bailey, "to whom I want you all to be very kind. He doesn't speak much English, but we shall teach him that. Morris, he will sit near you."

Morris Mowgelewsky, all timid friendliness, approached the stranger. Here surely was a queer new little boy in a "from man's" coat, and an exceeding dirty face; yet if Miss Bailey hailed him as a new little friend, then as a new little friend he must be made welcome.

"Talk to him a moment, Morris," Teacher commanded. "See if he won't tell you what his name is."

Morris obeyed, and the child answered him in the words that had so upset Miss Rosen. But Morris had left Russia when he was only two years old, and the phrase held no meaning for him, though the tone made him pause.

"I don't know how he says," Morris reported to Miss Bailey. "I says out of Jewish, 'What is your name, little boy?' und I don't know what he says. On'y it ain't names, und it ain't lovin'."

"Very well, dear, you may go back to your place. I'll keep him here beside me for a while," answered Teacher, more than ever at a loss, for the winningness of Morris had never failed to charm a stranger.

At the recess hour, when all the other children filed down into the yard, Teacher sent Patrick Brennan with a little note to Mr. Eissler, the teacher of the biggest boys, those nearly ready for graduation. He was an elderly man wearing well in the service to which the noblest of his race have always devoted themselves. He and Miss Bailey were great friends, and much of the understanding of this alien race--its habits, its emotions, and its innate refinement--the understanding which made her reign in Room 18 so peaceful and beneficent, she had acquired from him, and from the books he lent her.

"Dear Mr. Eissler," ran the note. "Will you come to Room 18 when you are at leisure? I have rather an interesting specimen of Child Life which I am keeping for your inspection."

During the short period which had elapsed between the stranger's arrival and the departure of First Readers, the new-comer had undergone an entire change of manner. Not that he had softened toward his little future companions. Rather he grew in hatred and vindictiveness as the busy morning progressed. It was his attitude toward Miss Bailey which changed. In the Principal's office and on the way through the halls he had seemed to waver on the brink of friendliness. But he had sat beside her desk and had seen her moving up and down through the narrow streets of her kingdom, encouraging here, laughing there, explaining with patient care and detail, laying a friendly hand on bent little shoulders and setting hair ribbons more jauntily erect--behaving, in fact, with a freedom and affection most evidently reflected and magnified by her subjects. And as he watched her his little mouth lost all its softness, and the hard, inscrutable look disfigured him again.

When Mr. Eissler, in response to the summons, opened the door, the newcomer's back was toward it. He wheeled at the sound, and clear and quick he lashed out his single phrase.

Miss Bailey chanced to be looking at her old friend, and at the child's voice saw him cringe and shrink as if from a blow.

"There it is again," she cried. "That's all we can get him to say. Tell me, Mr. Eissler, what does it mean?"

She got no answer.

The man, in all the dignity of his cutaway and his white linen, was glaring at the child, and the child, in his ridiculous rags, pitiful, starved, and dirty, was looking the man over from top to toe with contemptuous, careless eyes. They stood so for some space, and it was the man who turned away.

"I will not pretend not to understand," said he to Teacher; "but I must decline to translate those words. They bring back--they bring back! Ah, God! what they bring back!"

"Ah, yes, I know!" said Miss Bailey, in vague but ready sympathy. "I'm very, very sorry."

While this conversation was in progress its object was wandering about Room 18, surveying its pictures, the canary, the gold-fish bowl, and the flowery window-boxes with a blase air. Occasionally he glanced at Miss Bailey with unfriendly disillusionment. And upon one of these occasions Mr. Eissler, at Teacher's request, asked him his name.

The boy answered at greater length than before, but, judging by the man's face, in equally offensive language, and Mr. Eissler turned to Miss Bailey.

"The Principal will have some difficulty," said he, "in finding a teacher who could speak that child's language. It's Russian, pure Court Russian, and not spoken by our people except when they make a special study of it. I know it, a little."

"And do you care to tell me," asked Miss Bailey, "any part of what he said just now?"

"He says," the man replied, "that he will not speak to Jews or to--and by this he means you--a seeming Christian, who makes the Jew her friend, and allows Jewish babies to touch her hands. You've read of the Russian autocratic spirit. Well! there you see it. Even in a little child. It's born in them."

"But how did it get here?" marvelled Miss Bailey. "Here, on the East Side of New York, where he must be just about as popular as a wolf cub?"

"Just about," answered Eissler. "Of course I'm not going to pretend to tell you how this particular specimen got here. We've had one or two cases where the Jews, driven out, kidnapped a Russian child in revenge. And sometimes Nihilism and other Socialistic societies draw Jew and Russian together. Perhaps the boy's mother is in Siberia digging sulphur. Perhaps she's in Petersburg, designing becoming mourning. But from the look of the boy and the Truant Officer's account of him, I feel pretty safe in saying she isn't about here."

"Yes, I think you're safe in that. He hasn't been washed in a month."

"He'll be better after you've had him awhile," said Mr. Eissler gallantly. "I back you against Hagenbeck as a taming influence."

"You flatter me," laughed Miss Bailey. "But I'll try. Of course I'll try." But she had scant opportunity.

At luncheon time the new little boy departed with the others, and at afternoon session he was not among them, as by law prescribed.

Day after day passed and brought no sign of him. Teacher reported her bereavement to the authorities, and enjoined the First Readers to produce the boy or tidings of him, and although they failed to procure the boy, the tidings were not wanting. They rarely are in East Side affairs. Morris Mowgelewsky was the first to procure definite information.

"I seen that boy," he announced with pride. "I seen him runnin' down Scannel Street, und I calls und says you likes you should see him in the school, on'y he runs by a cellar und don't says nothings. He puts him on just like he was here, und he had awful cold looks. Teacher, he ain't got no hat, and the snow was coming by his hair. I looks in the cellar und I had a 'fraid over it the whiles nothings stand in it on'y push-carts und boxes."

"But do you think that he lives in the cellar?" queried Teacher.

"He don't lives at all," replied Morris. "He don't boards even. He runs all times."

"Runs?" queried Miss Bailey.

"Teacher, yiss, ma'am, runs. He lays in sleep by barrels; comes somebody, und he runs. He lays in sleep on sidewalks by bak'ry stores where heat and smell comes; comes somebody, und he runs. He lays in sleep by wagons, maybe, maybe by stables where horses is, und straw. All places what he could he lays in sleep, und all places where he lays comes somebody und he runs."

"What's he always running from, Morris?"

"Teacher, I dun'no. He ain't got no 'fraids. I guess maybe he don't likes nobody shall make nothings mit him. I tells him how you says he shall come on the school, und what you think? He hits me a hack in mine face, und runs on the cellar."

"I'd like to see him hit me," said Patrick Brennan, son of the Policeman on the Beat, a noble scion of a noble sire. "Me pop he wouldn't stand fer no funny play," and urged by Miss Bailey's friendly attitude toward Morris, he boasted, "I'll bring him to school if ye want me to; I ain't afraid of him." And one afternoon some days later he did appear with his "new little friend."

It had taken six big boys, Patrick, and the janitor to secure his attendance, and he hardly reaped the benefit which so much effort deserved, for, except that he was thinner and in a wildly blazing passion of indignation, his second attendance at Room 18 was much like his first.

Again his studies were interrupted for several days, and it was the Truant Officer who next restored him to the Halls of Learning. Between these two appearances Morris had procured further intelligence.

"That new boy," he began as always, "that new boy he is in bizzness."

"So that's the reason that he fights against school!" cried Teacher, well accustomed to the interference of the sweat shop. "I'm very glad to know his reason for staying away. I was beginning to fear he was not happy here--that he didn't like us."

"Teacher, he don't," said Morris, with the beautiful candor which adorned all his conversation. "He hates us."

"But why, why?" demanded Miss Bailey.

"He hates the childrens," the still candid Morris explained, "the whiles they is Sheenies. He hates you the whiles you is Krisht."

"Rather an unfriendly attitude altogether," commented Teacher. "And how do you know he hates me because I'm a Christian?"

"My mamma tells me how it is. She says he has mads the whiles you is Krisht und makes all things what is loving mit Sheenies. My mamma says he is Russians; und Russians they don't makes like that mit Sheenies. Teacher, no ma'am, loving ain't what Russians makes mit us. They makes all things what is fierce."

"I know, I know," said Constance Bailey, and then--"What is the little boy's business?"

"Teacher, he's a fire-lighter."

"A fire-lighter," echoed Miss Bailey, with visions of arson before her eyes. "A fire-lighter, did you say?"

"Teacher, yiss, ma'am, he is a fire-lighter, but sooner he wants he could to come on the school the whiles he ain't got no bizzness on'y Saturdays."

And then Miss Bailey understood. She had heard of certain stranded waifs left high and dry when the ebb of Christianity receded before the flood of Judaism, and New York's great East Side, once a fashionable district, then claimed by a thrifty Irish element, became a Ghetto. It was the Jewish Sabbatical Law which gave the derelicts an opportunity to earn a few pennies every Saturday, for no orthodox Jew may kindle fire on the Sabbath. And no frugal Jew, even in the impossible circumstance of being able to afford it, will keep the stove alight all through Friday night. Hence he employs a Christian to do the work he would not stoop to.

And this was the occupation of that amazing new boy! Miss Bailey clearly saw the path of her duty, and it led her, the lighter of fires in tow, straight to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. For some days, however, this path was closed to her conscientious feet. The boy was lost again, and Miss Bailey, who took the welfare of her charges very much to heart, was seriously distressed and uneasy. The First Readers were enlisted as a corps of detectives, but though they prowled in likely and unlikely spots, they brought no news of the stranger.

A week went by. The Principal, the Truant Officer, Patrick Brennan's father, were all informed and enlisted in the quest. But day followed day empty of news. Mr. Eissler could offer no suggestion, though he promised that if the child should reappear he would make further and more patient efforts to elicit some information from him. And then quite casually one afternoon Sergeant Brennan appeared in Room 18, with a bundle of rags under his arm.

"Here he is for you, Miss," he announced, waving away her acknowledgments with a stout blue arm before he removed his helmet and dried his heated brow. "I seen him several times since you spoke about him, but never run him down until now."

Again the child was thinner, and his likeness to a hunted animal was clearer, more heart-breaking. "And how should he be otherwise?" reflected Constance Bailey as she realized that, partly through her bidding, he actually had been persistently hunted throughout the past weeks.

After three o'clock when the First Readers, including the loudly objecting Board of Monitors, had been sent home, Miss Bailey secured every exit save the door into the hall, established the new boy in one of the front row of seats, locked the hall door upon her own retreat, and sought Mr. Eissler.

"The Russian child has turned up again," she told him. "I've had him in the class since lunch time, and I never knew of so disturbing an element. A band in the street, a piano organ, even the passing of a fire engine, would have left those babies calmer than his mere presence did. Did you ever see a poultry yard when a hawk was perched in a neighboring tree? Well, there you have my class as long as that boy is in the room. Brainless! Stupid! Huddled in their seats! I declare I hardly knew them. And he, he hardly looked at one of us."

"He'll look at me," said Mr. Eissler, picking up a brass-bound ruler. "By-laws may be by-laws----"

"No, no," cried Teacher, "not that. I don't think I could bear it. And as for him, he would either kill or die. He's almost spent with rage and starvation. I think you'll find him more amenable than he was before."

Mr. Eissler did not find him at all. Room 18 awaited them, pleasant, orderly, and empty. Empty, too, was the whole great building and all the rooms they searched through, save for the sweeper women who met their queries blankly. They had noticed no boy.

"Again!" exclaimed Miss Bailey, almost tearfully, as they returned. "What shall I ever do about him? I meant, you know, to take him now, this very afternoon, while I had him, up to the Society's rooms in Twenty-third Street."

"How often has he been here altogether?" asked Mr. Eissler. Teacher crossed to her desk, sat down at it, and commenced to turn the pages of the Roll Book with listless hand. Mr. Eissler stood beside her, and behind them both the door of the supply closet in which all class necessities were stored opened gently, noiselessly, inch by inch, until the Fire-lighter stood forth with a sheet of sulphur matches in his hand. The joy of coming vengeance made his little face look very old as he advanced upon the unsuspecting backs of his enemies. He struck one of his matches upon some inner surface of his rags, and as Teacher pointed and Mr. Eissler stopped to examine all the crosses which marked one section of the Roll Book, the Fire-lighter held the match to the hem of Miss Bailey's heavy walking skirt. It burned dully, and the child had shut himself into the closet again before the smell of fire was noticed and located.

Then alarmed and excited was Mr. Eissler, but not reduced to panic. In a moment he had smothered the smoulder, and was beating off the sparks with his ruler.

Miss Bailey just then chanced to turn toward the closet door and saw a curl of smoke making its way stealthily through a crack in one of the panels. Mr. Eissler saw it too, threw the door open, and revealed the lost child--his rags all smoking and smouldering about him. They threw Miss Bailey's heavy ulster about him, and rolled him upon the floor, patting and pressing the bundle until they were quite sure that no fire remained. Then Teacher, kneeling down, turned back the ulster. Very quiet and relaxed lay her problem.

"Dead?" she questioned in terror.

"Oh, hardly. Slip your hand in over his heart."

Teacher did so and breathed again. "Beating," said she, and withdrew her hand, and in her cuff-link was entangled a thin string.

"Gold," exclaimed Eissler instantly; "dirty, but gold."

Miss Bailey drew the chain out further and disclosed a flat locket.

"Cut it off and keep it for him," Eissler advised. "I'm going to ring for the ambulance, and I know that there would be precious little gold left on him by the time he reached the ward. I'll send one of the women to you as I go." And so Miss Bailey sat on the floor and regarded this bitter fruit of her striving. A child--a little child, hunted, wounded, as far as she could see even unto death. And for the thousandth time she let despair roll over her. What was the use? What was the use?

Some time later up in the dressing-room she was removing as best she could the marks of her experience, when it occurred to her to examine the locket. It was a thin gold affair with a smudge of dirt upon each side of it, and she devoted her efforts to one of these smudges. She rubbed it with a towel, and stood incredulous, carried back to the Mystery Stories of her own youth, for a monogram in diamonds winked and twinkled at her. She tried the other side and unearthed a coronet. After much careful search she managed to open the locket. And the Mystery held. On one side a beautiful woman, on the other a coil of baby hair. All was as it should be.

As she finished the transition from white linen to street attire, she pondered and marvelled, and by the time her veil was adjusted she had decided upon her course. This was a case for some one more learned in Russian ways than Mr. Eissler, and after consulting the nearest directory she set out for the Russian Consulate. There her demand for speech with the Consul General was met by the Vice-Consul's bland regrets that his principal was invisible. "Closeted," he reported, dropping his voice and nodding toward the closed door behind him, "with His Excellency, Prince Epifanoff."

"Then," said Miss Bailey, "perhaps you can tell me something of your Russian charities. I want you to direct me to an institution where a sick little boy can find attention and understanding. He has sadly lacked both these many weeks, I fear."

The Vice-Consul, a man of heart, listened with kindly but restrained attention until Miss Bailey produced the locket on its severed chain. Then even that practised diplomat allowed amazement to overspread him.

"May I ask you to wait here for a moment?" said he, and it took him little more than the moment he appointed to disappear through the door of the inner room, and to reappear.

"And may I ask you now," said he, "to tell these very interesting facts to Prince Epifanoff and the Consul?"

Constance Bailey was slightly disconcerted by this sudden plunge into diplomatic waters, and by the extremely thorough, though always courteous, cross-examination to which she was promptly subjected.

"May I ask," she demanded on her own part when she was growing weary of always answering, "whether you have identified the miniature?"

"We have indeed," answered the Ambassador, a large but otherwise unalarming personage, with stiff hair arranged a la door-mat. "And not only so: we have been searching for the miniature for almost a year. Almost a year ago a boy was stolen from a castle in the northern part of Russia. He was five years old, and the owner--since the assassination of his father--of what would make a whole state in this country of yours. The Nihilists were suspected, this time with some reason, as it transpired that one of their important members--a woman--had obtained employment in the castle. She and the child vanished together. There was little hope that the young Prince would escape his father's fate, but in the absence of any proof of his death the whole Russian secret service and the Consular Service were notified. It was just possible, you see, that his captors would try to use him as a hostage or as the price of some concession. The woman was stopped at the frontier. Unfortunately she was--accidentally, you understand--killed before she had accounted for the boy, who was not then with her. As I have said, all this occurred a year ago, and nothing has been heard of the child. You can imagine the distracted grief of this fair lady, his mother, touching the miniature."

"And you think," cried Miss Bailey, "that my little Fire-lighter----"

"Is the owner of one of the most exalted titles in Russia, and one of the richest estates. He wore this locket when he was abducted. But we are letting time pass. May I ask you"--this to the Consul--"to order my car? His Highness must be removed at once into suitable surroundings."

"Then my mission is accomplished," said Miss Bailey, and rose to take her leave. But never had she encountered cordiality so insistent as these courteous gentlemen then exhibited. She must, she really must, go to the hospital with them and see the end of the affair. In vain she pleaded other engagements, and promised to telephone later in the evening to hear whether the Prince's interview with the waif had corroborated the evidence of the locket. She was offered the use of the official telephone for the breaking of her engagements, and when her hosts left her alone to achieve this purpose, they quite calmly locked her in.

She telephoned some trivial sounding excuse to her long-suffering friend. Every one who knew her well was accustomed to interruptions by her school interests. And as she listened to that friend's wailing remonstrance she was tempted to tell the truth. "Locked up in the Russian Consulate! Prisoner! Involved in Court mystery. Obliged to produce a Prince of the blood royal or take the consequences." Truly, she told herself as she hung the receiver on its hook, things were getting rather uncommon and going rather quickly. And in that moment of apprehension she strangely drew comfort from the undeniable fit and texture of her new tailor-made suit, as shown forth in a large mirror between the window and the door. The contemplation of these encouragements fortified her until the return of her jailors, and during the ordeal of being swept through congested traffic by the side of a Nicolai Sergieevitch Epifanoff, in a bright red motor car.

Arriving at Gouverneur Hospital, she left her companions in consultation with the Matron and the House Surgeon, while she went up to the Children's Ward to prepare the mind of her friend and sometime co-laborer, Miss McCarthy, the Nurse-in-Charge. There was generally a First Reader or so under Miss McCarthy's care, and the two young women were great friends.

"I was going to send for you," Miss McCarthy began when they had moved a little away from the door. "You've sent us a good many queer cases, but what do you call your latest?"

"That's a Russian Prince of high degree," said Teacher.

"Yes, he looked like one," laughed the nurse. "But you should see him now that he's washed. He's really not burned at all," she amplified. "Shock, a little; hunger, more; dirt, most."

"But do you realize what I tell you? He's a Russian Prince. An Ambassador and a Consul or two have come to fetch him. They're down in the reception room, and I came up to make sure that you had him. I don't know what they would have done to me if I had lost him again."

"Oh! we have him," Miss McCarthy assured her when she had heard a few more details of Miss Bailey's story, and had been properly impressed thereby. "He's there in the third bed on the left. You go right on in. I'll go down-stairs. They'll want me if he's going to be transferred."

Upon the smooth pillow of the third bed there lay a mass of bright gold hair, gleaming even in the faint light of the shaded electric lamp. And the hair surrounded a little face whose every line and contour was beautified, exalted. Teacher turned, incredulous, to make sure that she was right, but the neighboring beds were empty. Only up at the far end of the ward were there other shaded lights and a gently watchful nurse.

Teacher sat upon the chair by the bedside and watched the sleeping Fire-lighter. He moaned a little moan. Such a tired little moan! Ah, this everlasting barrier of speech! Oh, to have been able, now at the very last, to explain that she was not a demon actuated by cruelty! But she did not dare to wake him. She knew the effect which the mere sight of her would produce. And so the little Prince slept on until the big Prince came softly to his bedside.

Miss Bailey rose and relinquished her chair. The big man noiselessly took her place, and she stood at the bed's foot. The man looked long and earnestly at the little sleeping face, then laid his hand on the soft hair and uttered a short name.

Still asleep, the child answered. And very gently the man asked a question. Then the baby turned and opened his eyes. The man spoke again. The little voice answered him, and Miss Bailey left them alone together.

She waited in the hall, and presently Prince Nicolai Sergieevitch Epifanoff joined her there.

"You have been instrumental, under God," said he, "in preserving the succession of one of our noblest houses. That is the boy. From what he tells me I judge that the woman who stole him was of the Jewish race. That she intrusted him to the care of a friend who, with children of her own, was coming to America. I suppose she was to have reclaimed him here. We know why she did not. And we can only surmise that the other woman, not knowing the value of her hostage, either lost or deserted him. Of course he spent all his time and his baby ingenuity in trying to get away from her. We shall never know quite definitely. However, my dear young lady, we have him! And in the name of the great country for which I am authorized to speak, I thank you. Russia will remember your name and your great service when other gratitude which now protests itself to you more vehemently has quite died away."

"But," said Constance Bailey, "I have not yet heard the true name of my little Fire-lighter."

"Ah! that," said suave Prince Sergieevitch, "is a thing of which even I am not authorized to speak. Your service was to the Nation."

Some months later Miss Bailey visited the Russian Consulate again. Her presence had been formally requested, and the Consul was formally awaiting her. The friendly Vice-Consul was in attendance, and Madame Consul lent her genial presence to the occasion.

They purred congratulations; the whole staff was summoned, and the Consul made a short address, which produced great enthusiasm in the audience. He then pinned a scrap of red ribbon into the button-hole of Miss Bailey's jacket, and handed her a small white leather box. Inside was a gem-encircled miniature--gorgeous and blazing as the sunshine broke upon it. The gentle-faced Empress of all the Russias smiled sadly out at Constance Bailey, and on the reverse, still in diamonds, was the inscription: "For Service."

[The end]
Myra Kelly's short story: "A Brand From The Burning"

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