with something like awe. Then the moving village came to a stop and the passengers sallied forth to test their legs, wearied with long sitting.

There was humanity of all shades, from the haughty aristocrat of the Pullman, to the peasant of the immigrant car.

Jim had a sense of pleasure in beholding well-dressed folk again; yet it was merely an æsthetic pleasure, for he found, when he began to speculate on the possibilities of the throng before him, that he was more interested in those whose all was staked on the trip, than in those to whom it was only an excursion.

People of widely differing nationalities occupied the immigrant car. Jim wondered whether they would ever become Americans, according to his ideas of Americans, a people in which he had great pride and delight; and he shook his head doubtfully as he took them in.

Suddenly a small boy darted out of a car; an exceedingly small boy, thin to emaciation, who made his way through the crowd with that sprawling, active, dancing manner peculiar to thin small boys and spiders.

Jim half laughed at the little chap until he saw his face; then he realized at a glance that the matter was no laughing one for the boy.

At the same time he saw the shocking thinness of the little face, made into a wolf’s face by hunger; the mingled horror and desperation of the eyes; the big man would not have believed a child’s face could express emotions of such magnitude. He was wonder-stricken at the sight, and felt an instinctive sympathy for the fugitive.

It is a strange thing how fortune will sometimes guide with certainty, when reason shows no path.

The boy came unerringly toward Jim; Jim had a sort of prophetic insight that he would. Back behind him the urchin ran. “Don’t cher give me away, Mister!” he pleaded. Jim flapped a hand in answer.

At the time he was leaning against a corner of the station; a little back of him was a small lean-to shed where various truck was stored.

Out of the car came a burly brute of a man, who stared about him rapidly.

“Dat’s der ol’ man,” whispered the boy. “If he gits holt of me, there won’t be a hull bone left in me body.”

The man walked up to the conductor and spoke to him.

“Aggh!” said the boy. “Now dey’ll get me sure—der jig is up—dey’ll have der hull gang ertop o’ me!” the voice trailed off into a strangled sob, and then continued in a fierce whisper: “Aggh! If I had me growth, I’d show ’em! I’d show ’em!” and then a burst of hair-raising profanity.

The argument was growing loud between the man, who was urging something, and the conductor, who was declining; others were walking toward the moderate excitement.

Jim wheeled and caught the boy in his arms. “Up you go!” he said, and tossed him on top of the shed. “Lie low behind the wood there, and you are all right.”

Then came the conductor’s voice: “Say, my friend, if you think I’m going to hold my train while you hunt up a lost kid, there’s something in you that don’t work right! Why didn’t you take care of him while you had him? Now you’ve got just four minutes by the watch; either hustle around and hunt, or drop off the train and hunt—what’s that? Now don’t you give me any slack, you black-muzzled tarrier, or I’ll have the fear of God thrown into you too quick. Get out of here now! Get out of my way!”

The man slouched off, and made a hasty search around the station. A woman’s face—scarcely an improvement on the man’s—leaned out of the car window and jeered at the hunter, who cursed her back savagely.

The man walked up to Jim. “Say, did yer see a kid go by here, Mister?”

With a shrug of his shoulders, Jim asked him that question in Mr. Ollendorf’s French method, about the pink-and-green overcoat of the shoemaker’s wife’s sister.

The man showered low abuse on what he supposed was a foreigner, until Jim’s ribs rose with the desire to kill him.

“Ayr, wot are yer wastin’ time wid th’ Dago fur?” called the woman. “Th’ kid’s on the roof!” Jim’s heart almost stopped, so thoroughly had he identified himself with this quarrel. He made up his mind to fight for the boy, right or wrong.

But he was saved the trouble. It was only a jest of the woman’s, for she suddenly called, so earnestly that even Jim was fooled. “No he ain’t neither; I see him! I see him! There he is.” It was the perfection of acting, voice and gesture.

The man ran out to see where she was pointing. “Where is he?” he asked, looking wildly around.

“On top der flag-pole, like er monkey! You’re it!” she cried, with a shriek of laughter at the black brows of her dupe.

“I’ll show yer der joke, when I git in dere!” he threatened.

The woman leaned her chin on her hands and smiled. Jim never forgot the utter undauntedness, impudence and malice of that face. “Yer allus goin’ to do sumpin’, Pete!” she retorted. “Yer’ll be a man yet.”

A more amiable man than “Pete” might have been provoked by such conduct. He strode forward with white-knuckled fists and a very unpleasant expression on his face. Several men started to interfere, but it wasn’t necessary.

The woman quietly looked at her bully, chewing a straw with the utmost nonchalance. “Give us a kiss,” said she. The man’s crest dropped. He said something in an undertone, and got on the car.

Jim needed no further knowledge of this delightful couple to be thoroughly on the boy’s side. It seemed to him that the man was quite capable of keeping a small animal at hand, for the fun of torturing it, and as for the woman—well, if there was her like in hell, Jim determined to be good for the rest of his days.

“All aboard!” cried the conductor, and with a few mighty breaths the iron giant whisked its load out in the open again.

“Stay where you are, son, till I see whether that fellow is playing a trick,” said Jim, and not until he had looked under the platform, up and down the track, and in the waiting rooms, did he give the command, “Come down!”

The passenger agent saw the performance with astonishment. “So you had the boy tucked away all the time?” said he. “Just what kind of a game is this?”

“Dunno,” returned Jim. “Let the boy speak for himself. Now, young man, what’s the matter?”

The urchin stood before them, taking them in thoroughly with his sharp little eyes. More big men strolled up. As a particularly fine foil to the boy’s diminutive form, Benny, the baggage smasher, whose overhanging shoulders testified whence came the power that had reduced many a proud Saratoga to elemental conditions, and “Happy Jack,” the mammoth, soot-black, loose-jointed negro porter, placed themselves on either side of him. They made the boy look more like an insect than ever.

“Wot’s de matter?” he cried in a voice at once hoarse and shrill, with a cursing note in it, and accompanying the words with an extravagant, dramatic gesture of his