That night the weather changed and it turned off cold. I remember it from a small circumstance. The wind appeared to me to have shifted when Miss Leigh's carriage drove out of sight with Peck in it. I went home and had bad dreams. What was Peck doing with the Leighs? Could I have been mistaken in thinking he and McSheen had been talking of Mr. Leigh in their conference? For some time there had been trouble on the street-car lines of the city and a number of small strikes had taken place on a system of lines running across the city and to some extent in competition with the West Line, which Mr. Leigh had an interest in. According to the press the West Line, which ran out into a new section, was growing steadily while the other line was falling back. Could it be that McSheen was endeavoring to secure possession of the West Line? This, too, had been intimated, and Canter, one of the richest men of the town, was said to be behind him. What should I do under the circumstances? Would Peck tell Miss Leigh any lies about me? All these suggestions pestered me and, with the loss of Dix, kept me awake, so that next morning I was in rather a bad humor. In my walk through the poorer quarter on my way to my office I used to see a great deal of the children, and it struck me that one of the saddest effects of poverty--the dire poverty of the slum--was the debasement of the children. Cruelty appears to be the natural instinct of the young as they begin to gain in strength. But among the well-to-do and the well-brought-up of all classes it is kept in abeyance and is trained out. But in the class I speak of at a certain age it appears to flower out into absolute brutality. It was the chief drawback to my sojourn in this quarter, for I am very fond of children, and the effect of poverty on the children was the saddest part of my surroundings. To avoid the ruder element, I used to walk of a morning through the little back street where I had discovered that morning the little school for very small children, and I made the acquaintance of a number of the children who attended the school. One little girl in particular interested me. She was the poorest clad of any, but her cheeks were like apples and her chubby wrists were the worst chapped of all; and with her sometimes was a little crippled girl, who walked with a crutch, whom she generally led by the hand in the most motherly way, so small that it was a wonder how she could walk, much more study. My little girls and I got to that point of intimacy where they would talk to me, and Dix had made friends with them and used to walk beside them as we went along.