BEN B. LINDSEY Late one afternoon a tired judge was seated at his bench in the city of Denver. The docket showed that the next case to be brought before him was one for stealing. Anxiously he waited for the hardened criminals to be brought in, when lo and behold! three boys hardly in their teens were brought before him. When asked what they had stolen, they replied, "Pigeons." Beside the boys stood the old man whose pigeons had been stolen. To say that he was angry was putting it mildly. As the boys described the pigeon loft and how they came to steal the pigeons, the judge became very absent-minded; for his mind went back to the time when he himself was a boy and had been in a crowd that had stolen pigeons. Odd as it may seem, the judge's old gang had, years before, visited this same pigeon loft and stolen from this same old man. Little wonder then that the judge had a warm place in his heart for the boys who were now in trouble. But the old man had been annoyed for months, had watched hours to catch the boys, and now that he had caught them, surely they should be punished severely. He was sure the boys should be sent to prison. What should the judge do under the circumstances? Certainly he must see that the pigeons were protected, for they were fancy stock and the old man made his living by raising them. [Illustration: BEN B. LINDSEY "The Kids' Judge"] Would sending the three boys to prison protect the old man and his pigeons? No, for no doubt the boys belonged to a gang, and unless the whole gang were caught, the thefts would continue. For a long time the judge studied the matter until finally he told the boys, that if they would go out and bring in the other members of the gang, he would be "white" with them; he would give them a square deal. The boys eyed the judge critically. Did he mean what he was saying? The boys liked his looks, for he was young and not much larger than themselves. Then, too, he did not talk down at them from the bench, but had left his bench, sat among them, and talked like one of them. It wasn't long before the boys were convinced that the judge was their friend. He understood them, and his heart was in the right place, as they put it. Accordingly, they went out and brought in the other members of the gang. In his talk with the gang, the judge was as kind and frank as he had been when talking with the three boys the day before. He told the boys how the old man made his living by raising pigeons, and he asked them whether they thought it was square for them to steal his pigeons. They agreed that it was not.