The little newsboy found life so pleasant during the autumnal weather on the shore of Lake Ontario that he began to think seriously of settling down to an agricultural life. The air was fine and bracing, the food plentiful and nutritious and the farmer and his wife treated him with great kindness and did not ask him to do more than a boy’s amount of work. Skinny’s life had been a hard one, and never in his recollection had he had as much to eat or enjoyed himself more than he had since his arrival in the little country place on the shore of the great lake. Good treatment was something that was more of a novelty to him than kicks and curses, and when his naturally suspicious mind grasped the fact that the farmer and his wife were kind to him, not because they expected to get the better of him in any way, but because it was their nature to be kind to all living things, and that they trusted him implicitly and seemed inclined to trust him so long as he proved worthy, it occurred to him for almost the first time in his life that there were some people in the world who did not go about with their hands lifted against such Arabs as himself, and he determined to repay their confidence with absolute fidelity to their interests. He had remained with them nearly a month, and, as has been said already was beginning to think favorably of an agricultural life when something occurred which drove all ideas of rural felicity out of his mind and sent him adrift in the world once more. The something which served to alter his intentions was a letter which came to him one morning in the mail. It was from Bruce Decker who wanted to know how much longer he intended to stay in the country, and whether he could be induced to make a little trip to the city for the purpose of rendering him (Bruce) an important service. As the newsboy finished spelling out his friend’s epistle, a gleam of delight came into his freckled face. Here was another friend who treated him like a human being and came to him as to some one whom he could trust to render him a service. Thrusting the letter into the inside pocket of his jacket he buttoned that faded and rather rusty garment tightly about him and went at once to his employer. “Say, boss, I gotter go ter de city ter night,” was the way in which Skinny announced his intended departure. “To-night!” exclaimed the farmer, who was accustomed to slow country ways rather than to Skinny’s metropolitan swiftness of action, “What’s the matter? Don’t we use you right?” “Use me right? Why, boss, der aint nobody never used me no whiter den you an’ de missus, but I’ve gotter go on important bizness an’ if yer’ll lemme come back when de biz is done, I’ll stop wid yer till I’m a reg’lar haymaker.”