Page:Aladdin O'Brien (1902).pdf/59

 and ran with them down the hill to see what had happened.

Aladdin remembered little of that breathless run, and one thing only stood ever afterward vivid among his recollections. All the people were headed eagerly in one direction, but at the corner of the street in which Aladdin lived, an awkish, half-grown girl, her face contorted with terror, struggled against the tugging of two younger companions and screamed in a terrible voice:

"I don't wahnt to go! I don't wahnt to go!"

But they dragged her along. That girl had no father, and her mother walked the streets. She would never have any beauty nor any grace; she was dirt of the dirt, dirty, but she had a heart of mercy and could not bear to look upon suffering.

"I don't wahnt to go! I don't wahnt to go!" and now the scream was a shudder.

Aladdin's street was crowded to suffocation, and the front of the house where Aladdin lived was blown out, and men