Clarence Brown smiled slightly to himself, for he anticipated fun. He produced the cigar, lighted it by his own, and gave Sam directions how to smoke. Sam proved an apt pupil, and was soon puffing away with conscious pride. He felt himself several years older. But all at once he turned pale, and drew the cigar from his mouth. "What's the matter?" asked Brown, demurely. "I--don't--know," gasped Sam, his eyes rolling; "I--feel--sick." "Do you? Don't mind it; it'll pass off." "I think I'm going to die," said Sam, in a hollow voice. "Does smoking ever kill people?" "Not often," said Brown, soothingly. "I think it's goin' to kill me," said Sam, mournfully. "Lie down on the bench. You'll feel better soon." Sam lay down on his back, and again he wished himself safely back at the deacon's. New York seemed to him a very dreadful place. His head ached; his stomach was out of tune, and he felt very unhappy. "Lie here a little while, and you'll feel better," said his companion. "I'll be back soon." He walked away to indulge in a laugh at his victim's expense, and Sam was left alone. CHAPTER XVII. TIM BRADY. An hour passed, and Clarence Brown did not reappear. He had intended to do so, but reflecting that there was no more to be got out of Sam changed his mind. Sam lay down on the bench for some time, then raised himself to a sitting posture. He did not feel so sick as at first, but his head ached unpleasantly. "I won't smoke any more," he said to himself. "I didn't think it would make me feel so bad." I am sorry to say that Sam did not keep the resolution he then made; but at the time when he is first introduced to the reader, in the first chapter, had become a confirmed smoker. "Why don't Mr. Brown come back?" he thought, after the lapse of an hour. He waited half an hour longer, when he was brought to the conviction that Brown had played him false, and was not coming back at all. With this conviction his original suspicion revived, and he made up his mind that Brown had robbed him after all. "I'd like to punch his head," thought Sam, angrily. It did not occur to him that the deacon, from whom the money was originally taken, had the same right to punch his head. As I have said, Sam's conscience was not sensitive, and self-interest blinded him to the character of his own conduct. His experience in smoking had given him a distaste for the Park, for this afternoon at least, and he made his way to the horse-cars determined to return. It did make him feel a little forlorn to reflect that he had no place to return to; no home but the streets. He had not yet contracted that vagabond feeling which makes even them seem homelike to the hundreds of homeless children who wander about in them by day and by night.