He groaned. “Oh, sonny! It’s just—just what I was afeared of.” I turned and looked down into his poor, bleared, suffering old face. “Why?” “Because—because—oncet ye try that they’ll—they’ll never let ye go.” “But suppose you don’t want them to let you go?” He backed away from me. If the dead eyes could waken to expression, they did it then. “Oh, sonny!” He shook as if palsied. “Ye don’t know ’em, my boy. I’ve summered and wintered ’em—by lookin’ on. I’ve had pals of my own—” “And what are they doing now, those pals of your own?” “God knows; I don’t. Yes, I do; some of ’em. I see ’em round, goin’ to work as reg’lar as reg’lar, and no more spunk in ’em than in a goldfish when ye shakes yer finger at their bowl.” Afraid of exciting suspicion by standing still, we began drifting with the crowd. “Is there much that you can call spunk in you and me?” Again he lifted those piteous, drunken eyes. “We’re fellas together, ain’t we? We’re buddies. I ’ear ye say so yerself when you was speakin’ to that Eyetalian.” I have to confess that with his inflection something warm crept into my cold heart. You have to be as I was to know what the merest crumbs of trust and affection mean. A dog as stray and homeless as myself might have been more to me; but since I had no dog.... “Yes, Lovey,” I answered, “we’re buddies, all right. But for that very reason don’t you think we ought to try to help each other up?” He stopped, to turn to me with hands crossed on his breast in a spirit of petition. “But, sonny, you don’t mean—you carn’t mean—on—on the wagon?” “I mean on anything that’ll get us out of this hell of a hole.” “Oh, well, if it’s only that, I’ve—I’ve been in tighter places than this before—and—and look at me now. There’s ways. Ye don’t have to jump at nothink onnat’rel. If ye’d only ’ave listened to me yesterday—but it ain’t too late even now. What about to-night? Just two old ladies—no violence—nothink that’d let you in for nothink dishonorable.” “No, Lovey.” We drifted on again. He spoke in a tone of bitter reproach. “Ye’d rather go to the Down and Out! It’ll be the down, all right, sonny; but there’ll be no out to it. Ye’ll be a prisoner. They’ll keep at ye and at ye till yer soul won’t be yer own. Now all these other places ye can put it over on ’em. They’re mostly ladies and parsons and greenhorns that never ’ad no experience. A little repentance and they’ll fall for it every time. Besides”—he turned to me with another form of appeal—“ye’re a Christian, ain’t ye? A little repentance now and then’ll do ye good. It’s like something laid by for a rainy day. I’ve tried it, so I know. Ye’re young, sonny. Ye don’t understand. And when it’ll tide ye over a time like this—they’ll git ye a job, very likely—and ye can backslide by and by when it’s safe. Why, it’s all as easy as easy.” “It isn’t as easy as easy, Lovey, because you say you don’t like it yourself.”