Unable to give
any account of himself he was arrested as a vagrant
and sentenced to imprisonment in the Infants' Shel-
tering Home--where he was washed.
Jo ran away from the Infants' Sheltering Home
at Whiteville--just took to the woods one day,
and the Home knew him no more for ever.
We find him next, or rather get back to him, stand-
ing forlorn in the cold autumn rain at a suburban
street corner in Blackburg; and it seems right to
explain now that the raindrops falling upon him
there were really not dark and gummy; they only
failed to make his face and hands less so. Jo was
indeed fearfully and wonderfully besmirched, as by
the hand of an artist. And the forlorn little tramp
had no shoes; his feet were bare, red, and swollen,
and when he walked he limped with both legs. As
to clothing--ah, you would hardly have had the
skill to name any single garment that he wore, or
say by what magic he kept it upon him. That he
was cold all over and all through did not admit of a
doubt; he knew it himself. Anyone would have been
cold there that evening; but, for that reason, no one
else was there. How Jo came to be there himself, he
could not for the flickering little life of him have
told, even if gifted with a vocabulary exceeding a
hundred words. From the way he stared about him
one could have seen that he had not the faintest no-
tion of where (nor why) he was.
Yet he was not altogether a fool in his day and
generation; being cold and hungry, and still able to
walk a little by bending his knees very much indeed
and putting his feet down toes first, he decided to
enter one of the houses which flanked the street at
long intervals and looked so bright and warm.
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