" TIM."

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 335, 9 May 1885, Page 9

" TIM."

They said the train was an hour behind time, and that information made xis all feel put out and annoyed; Therefore, when a "boy of about 14, poorly dressed and having a trampish look, came along the platform asking for financial aid to get him down to 3J on the train we were waiting for, it was but natural that one and all replied : * If you want to go to E, take the dirt road ! You look as if you were used to tramping ! ' He had no saucy word in reply. When he TW^flat and stood in the light of the window, and I saw how he shivered in the cold wind, and how worried and anxious he seemed to be, I grew ashamed of my gruff words. Isaw two or three others look him over as I had done, and I had no doubt that they felt as I did. I ought to have walked up to the boy and said : — 'Here, my lad, if you really want to go down to lit , I'm willing to help you. Take this half-dollar. How happens it that a lad; of your age is cold, ragged, hungry, and away from home and friends ?' But I didn't. I edged towards him, ashamed, and yet not quite ready to acknowledge it to him, and all of a sudden he disappeared. I reasoned that he had gone up the hill to the village, and that his pretending to want to go to B was all a trick to beat honest men. "When, you reason that way the heart grows hard pretty fast, and you feel a bit revengeful. We talked the matter over— four or five of us— and the conclusion was that the boy would die on the. gallows. Well, the train came along after awhile, and It was moving away, after a brief stop, when a piercing shriek, followed by shouts and calls, brought us to a stop. 'Somebody's been run over!' called a voice, and in a moment the coaches were emptied. . Yes, somebody had been run over— had a leg cut off above the knee by one of the cruel wheels. Who was it V How did it happen ? It was our boy, the lad who was to end his days on the gallows. He had crept under the coach to steal a ride on the trucks. There he was, having only a few minutes to live, his face as white as the snow-banks, his eyes roving from face to face, his lips quivering as twenty men bent down and spoke words of sympathy. ' "Who are you ?' asked the conductor. 'JSiinV /You shouldn't have tried.' ' But I waated to get to E so bad ! I was up here to find work, but nobody would have me, and yesterday I heard that mother was dead !' ' But anybody Avould have given you sixty cents to pay your fare.' ' Oh, no they wouldn't ! I asked lots and lots of men and they said I ought to be in jail. I — I — wanted ! ' There we were — the half dozen of us who had repelled him with insult — wrung his young heart still more — sent him to. his horrible death under the wheels ! We dared not look into his face — we even shunned each other. If it coiild only come to pass again — if Heaven would but send him back to earth and let him stand before us as he did that winter's night — but it is too late !