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Show THE NOBLE REVENGE. The coffin was a plain one a poor, miserable pine coffin. No Sowers on the top; no lining of white satin for tlie pale brow; no smooth ribbons about the coarse shroud. The brown hair was laid decently back, but there was no crimped cap with neat tie beneath the chin. The sufferer from cruel poverty smiled in her sleep; she had found bread, rest and health. "I want to see my mother," sobbed a poor little child, as tlie undertaker screwed down the top. "You cannot, get out of tho way, boy why don't somebody take the brat?" "Only let mc seo her ouo minute!" cried the helpless orphan, clutching the sido of the charity box, and as he gazed upon the rough bos agonized tears streamed down the cheeks on which no childish bloom ever lingered. Ohl it was painful to hear him cry Lhe words: "Only once, Jot mo see mothor, only once!" Quickly and brutally the heartless monster struck the boy away, so that he reeled with the blow. 1'or a moment mo-ment the boy stood pantinrr with grief and rage his blue eyes distended, his lips sprang apart, fire glittered through his eyes as he raised his little arm with a most UQchildish laugh and screamed: "When lama man I'll kill you for thatl" There was a coffin and a heap of earth between tho mother and the poor forsaken child a monument1 much stronger than granite built in the boy's heart tho memory of the heartless dead. Tho court-liouso was crowded to suflocation. 'Does any man appear as this man's counsel'?" asked the judge. Thero was a silence when ho had finished until, with lips tightly pressed together, a look of strange intelligence, blended with a haughty reserve upon his handsomo features, a young man stepped forward with a firm tread and kindly eye, to plead for the erring friendless. He was a stranger, but at the first sentence there was silence, The splendor of bis genius entranced convinced. The man who could not lind a friend was acquitted. "May God bless you, sir: lcaonot," ho said. "I want no thanks," replied Lhe stranger. "I I I believe you arc unknown "Man, 1 will refresh your memory. Twenty years ago this day you struck a broken-hearted littlo boy away from his dear mother's coffin. 1 was that boy," Tho man turned livid. "Have you rescued mc, then, to take my lil'e'i"' "No, I have awecter revenge. I have saved the life of a man who.-e brutal conduct has rankled in my breast for the last twenty years, (jo, then, and remember the teais of a friendless child." Tho man bowed his head in shame, and wont from tho presence of magnanimity magna-nimity as grand to him ns incomprehensible. incompre-hensible. Missouri Rejiitb. |