“Hay, boss, wot place is dis?” said a piping voice close beside him, and as Bruce turned his head, he saw in the cot next to his a face that seemed familiar, and was connected in his mind in some way with the fire and smoke and excitement of the day before. It was the face of a boy, and a very homely little boy at that. It was a boy with a freckled face, turned up nose, and a pair of sharp, small, blue eyes, which looked at him from under a thick mat of coarse red hair which hung down over his forehead in rebellious locks, and added measurably to the foxy expression of his face. “Who are you, anyhow?” demanded Bruce. “I’m Skinny de Swiper, an’ I’d like ter know wot dey brung me here fer.” “I’m sure I don’t know,” said the other, and then he added with a smile “I don’t even know what I’m doing here myself, but where do you come from? Where do you live when you’re home?” “Sometimes one place, and sometimes anudder; last week I got a job in a factory over in 18th Street, but dere was a fire dere, an’ I guess I muster got burned up. I kin just remember a bloke collarin’ me an’ and trowin’ me down a ladder; he muster been a fireman.” The boy’s simple explanation cleared some of the cobwebs out of Bruce’s mind, and he suddenly recalled his entrance, with the hose under his arm, into the burning building and the boy whom he had dragged through the window and down the ladder to the street. “I guess,” he remarked, “that I’m the bloke that carried you out.” “Come off!” said the boy in a tone of mingled scorn and incredulity, “dere ain’t no kids like you in de fire department, an’ I guess I’d oughter know.” “Very well then,” replied Bruce, annoyed at the other’s contemptuous words, “maybe I’m not in the department, but I helped to put that fire out all the same. If I hadn’t I wouldn’t be here now.”