"I used to creep around to the side winder to see what kind of a drunk he had. If it was a mean one, I'd run home and sneak Aggie out and hide. He had a spite agin us two, and when he had a mean drunk he used to beat us. He was skeered to fetch Fanny Maud. She had the wild-cattest temper you ever saw. He tried to pull her out of bed by her hair one night, and she jumped on him and scratched his face like a map. Ma had to drag her off, and if he hadn't run, Fanny would 'a' got him again. After that he would brag what a fine girl she was. One night Aggie and me hid in a straw stack all night." Bill looked sorrowfully upon his friend. "I thought I was the most forsakenest boy in the world," he said. "But my father never beat me, and he never touches no kind of licker. He just don't like me around. You know my mother died when I was born, and somehow he seems to blame it on me. I don't know how to figger it, for he married in a year, and when that one died it didn't take him no time to start lookin' out again. He hardly ever speaks to me, 'cept to cuss me or tell me what a nuisance I am. Allus makes me feel like a cabbage worm." "Cabbage worm?" queried Jap. "Yes, they turn green when they eat, and I feel like I am green, every bite I take. He looks at me so mean, like he thought I hadn't any right to eat. That's why I eat at Flossy's, every time she asks me. The only nice thing my pappy ever done for me was to put me in here with Ellis. Jap," he broke off suddenly, "I'm durn glad you licked me, that day. But your hair _was_ red!" Ellis had come quietly in at the rear door and had listened, half consciously, to the sacred confession. His face saddened for a moment. Then he squared his shoulders and his dark eyes flashed. "I am going to make men of those boys yet," he promised himself. "Who knows----" He interrupted the spasm of painful speculation, the dark foreboding that had for days hovered over him. The heat of summer and his anxiety over Flossy were beginning to tell on his nerves. He tiptoed softly out of the back door, across the weed-grown yard and out through the alley gate. A moment later he came in at the front door, whistling blithely. The summer was intensely hot. As the dog-days waxed, Ellis grew ever more and more morose. His sharp bursts of temper were made tolerable only by the swift justice of the amend. Late in September he came down to the office one morning, pale and shaken. The boys had been sticking type for an hour when his sudden entrance startled them. "Flossy is very sick," he said with lips that quivered, "and I will have to trust you boys." Jap followed him to the door. His face was downcast.