After the officer had passed, I again took a seat, but the boy remarked, "You had better not sit down again. He may return any moment, and he'll club you. He clubbed me yesterday and I haven't gotten over it yet." So we got up and walked toward the Employment Office to investigate the work he had spoken of, and as we walked I noticed that my companion limped,--the result of the "clubbing" he had received from the policeman. I could not help thinking of his needs and his situation. Seeking to draw him out, I asked as if I sought to have him treat, "Have you the price of a beer?" "No," he replied, "if I had I would buy something to eat." "Are you hungry?" With a forced laugh he replied, "Yes, I spent my last dime last night for a meal. I held it in my hand so long it had grown rusty but I had to let it go at last." Putting my hand in my pocket and pulling out a silver dollar, I laughingly remarked, "Well, I'm not broke, but I will be when this little lump of sugar is gone. I'll tell you, Jack, I'm a believer in combines, the kind of combine that a hundred cents make, and we'll go shares on this one." I wish all Kansas City could have seen the expression of hope that lit up that starving lad's face. My sharing with him was something more substantial than the sermon or inexpensive advice usually handed to the starving man. "Well," I said, "we're partners now, and we may as well be broke as to have only this, so let's go and eat it." I led him away from the neighborhood of the City Hall and the City Jail, and the Board of Health and the Helping Hand Mission, and out of all that black and heartless region, to where we could get a clean meal without being poisoned by some cheap slum eating house. We talked as we went along, and I asked him where he had spent the previous night. "Down in the yards in a freight car, and it rained nearly all night. The car leaked, and at about two or three o'clock in the morning it grew very cold. I suffered a lot. I was afraid of being arrested, for we're not allowed to sleep in the yards. But the watchman was decent and let me stay until daylight." I had heard of the "Helping Hand" Mission Lodging House, known to those who are forced into it as the "House of Blazes," and I asked him why he had not gone there. "There was no room," he replied. Coming from the chop-house we went to an employment office, where we read upon the blackboard: "Wanted--Fifty men in Oklahoma, $1.35 a day, free shipment." We stepped inside for further information and found that board would be three dollars and a half a week. The boy studied for a moment and then said: "Let's go." "You go," I replied, "you are strong enough for the work, but I'm not. I may meet you down that way when the harvest opens."