"Hell!" said Hendrik Rutgers between clenched teeth. "I'm not a fly-cop. I've just got a plain business proposition to make to you." "If you'll tell me where yer place is, I'll come aroun'--" began the man, so obviously lying that Rutgers's anger shifted from society and tyranny on to the thing between sandwich-boards--the thing that refused to be his brother. "You damned fool!" he hissed, fraternally. "You come with me--now." The inverted crescent of the man's lips trembled, and presently there issued from it, "Well, I 'ain't done--" Charity, which is not always astute, made H. Rutgers say with a kindly cleverness to his poor brother, "I'll tell you how you are going to make more money than you ever earned before." The prospect of making more money than he ever earned before brought no name of joy into the blear and furtive eyes. Instead, he sidled, crabwise, into the middle of the street. "No, you don't!" said Rutgers so menacingly that the sandwich-man shivered. It was clear that, to feed this starving man, force would be necessary. This never discourages the true philanthropist. Rutgers, however, feeling that Christian forbearance should be used before resorting to the ultimate diplomacy, said, with an earnest amiability: "Say, Bo, d'you want to fill your belly so that if you ate any more you'd bust?" At the hint of a promise of a sufficiency of food the man opened his mouth, stared at Rutgers, and did not speak. He couldn't because he did not close his mouth. "All the grub you can possibly eat, three times a day. Grub, Bo! All you want, any time you want it. Hey? What?" The sandwich-man's open mouth opened wider. In his eyes there was no fear, no hunger, no incredulity, nothing only an abyss deep as the human soul, that returned no answer whatever. "Do you want," pursued the now optimistic Hendrik Rutgers, "to drink all you can hold? The kind that don't hurt you if you drink a gallon! Booze, and grub, and a bed, and money in your pocket, and nobody to go through your duds while you sleep. Hey?" The sandwich-man spasmodically opened and closed his mouth in the unhuman fashion of a ventriloquist's puppet. Rutgers heard the click, but never a word. It filled him with pity. The desire to help such brothers as this grew intense. Next to feeding them there was nothing like talking to them about food and drink in a kindly way. "What do you say, Bo?" he queried, gently, almost tenderly. The man's teeth chattered a minute before he said, huskily, "Wh-what m-must I do?" "Let's go to the Battery," said Rutgers, "and I'll tell you all about it."