"Weel, Miss Celie, I can see that ye are no gaun to do muckle guid amang us boys, if I dinna tell ye. An' I want ye no to believe ony lees, like what are telled to the ministers an' folk like them. There's mair ill in the Sooth Back than can be pitten richt wi' a track. I canna bide them tracks——" The distribution of tracts was an old grievance of Cleg's. But Celie earnestly and instantly put him on the plain way again, for if he once began upon "tracks," there was no telling if ever she would get any nearer to her promised lesson on the good and evil of the boys' unions. Celie found herself as eager as ever was her first mother Eve, to eat of the tree of the forbidden knowledge. "Gie us your han', Miss Celie, I'll no hurt ye," said Cleg. Celie drew off her dainty glove, and instantly extended a hand that was white and small beyond all the boy's imagining. Cleg took it reverently in his dirty, work-broadened paw. He touched the slender fingers as if they were made of thistle-down and might blow away accidentally. So he held his breath. Then he took out his knife, one with a point like a needle, which had been used in a shoe factory. Perhaps Celie winced a little as he opened the blade, but, if it were so, it was very little indeed. Yet it was enough to be perceptible to her very sincere admirer. Cleg let her hand drop, and without a pause thrust the sharp point into the ball of his own thumb, squeezing therefrom a single drop of blood. "It's no juist exactly richt, no to hae your ain blood, ye ken!" he explained gravely; "but as ye dinna tell so mony lees as the boys, maybe mine will do as weel this time to take the oath with." With a clean new pen from Celie's desk, Cleg made on her palm the sign of a cross, and for her life the initiated dared not so much as let her hand quiver or her eyelid droop. She knew that the occasion was an entirely critical one. But in a moment it was over, and Celie Tennant was admitted a _bonâ fide_ acting member of the Sooth Back Gang, with full right in its secrets and to the disposal of one full and undivided share of its profits. No questions to be asked as to how these profits were come by. Indeed, from that moment there is little doubt that Celie Tennant might have been indicted for reset, conspiracy, and crimes infinitely various. That night at Miss Tennant's class there was a full attendance, and the opening was delayed owing to necessity arising for the expulsion of a boy, apparently in no way offending against discipline. Celie looked the question she dared not speak. "_He's no yin o' us!_" explained Cleg in a whisper. "He belongs to the Potter-raw gang—a low lot." Celie felt morally raised by the consciousness of belonging to a gang of the most high-toned "nickums" in the whole city.