David obeyed, and landed a chest blow that sent Tom to his back. David dropped to his knees beside him, alarmed, for the boy's face was white and dazed. But Tom rose to an elbow and pushed David away. His lips moved silently, then with sound: "Seven, eight, nine, ten." At "ten" he sprang to his feet and rushed at David again. But David threw up his hands. "That's enough for to-day. And finish fights are against the New York law." Tom grumblingly drew off the gloves. After their breakfast of bread and coffee David asked him what he was going to do that day. "Look for odd jobs." "Where will you stay to-night?" "Dunno." "How did you like the floor?" "Bully!" "Well, suppose you come back and try it again to-night. Be here at six. Will you?" "Will I!" gasped the boy. "You can just bet your gran'mudder's suspenders dat I will!" When David returned at six, after another day of hopeless search, he found Tom sitting in the doorway of the tenement. The boy's face lighted up with his lop-sided smile; David felt a quick glow at having someone to give him a welcoming look--even though that someone were only a ragged, stunted boy in an old slouch hat that from time to time slipped down and eclipsed the sharp face. They had dinner, and after it they set forth on a walk. David left the guidance to Tom, and the boy led the way down the Bowery, where, to the hellish music of elevated trains, and by the garish light that streamed from restaurants, pawnshops, music-halls and saloons, moved the all-night procession of thieves and thugs, cheap sports and cheap confidence men, gutter-rags of men and women, girls whose bold, roving eyes sought markets for their charms--all those whom we of sheltered morals are wont to consider the devil's irretrievable share, without thinking much, or caring much, as to why they should be his. Tom's tongue maintained a constant commentary on everything they passed; to talk was clearly one of his delights. What he said was interesting, and was given a grotesque vivacity by his snappy diction of the streets; but David shivered again and again at the knowledge he had where he should have had ignorance. The boy was erudite in the wickedness of this part of the city. That innocent-looking second-hand store, which was run by the fat old woman in the doorway, was in reality a "fence;" that laundry was an opium den; in the back of that brilliantly-lighted club-room, whose windows were labelled "The Three Friends' Association," there was a gambling joint; that saloon was the hang-out of a gang of men and women thieves; in that music hall, through whose open door they glimpsed a dancer in a red knee-skirt doing the high kick, the girls got their brief admirers drunk and picked their pockets;--and so on, and on, missing nothing that he should not have known.