At Chatham Square they turned into the Jewish quarter and shouldered homeward through narrow streets that from wall to wall were a distracting entanglement of playing children, baby carriages, families on door-steps, promenading lovers, hurrying men, arguing groups, flambeau-lighted pushcarts whose bent and bearded proprietors offered the chaotic crowd every commodity from cucumbers to clothes. The latter part of their walk took them by St. Christopher's, through the glowing colours of the Morton memorial window; and the Mission came in for a few of Tom's sentences. It was a great place to steal women's pocketbooks. "A lot o' swell ladies from Fift' Avenoo comes down dere to monkey wid de kids--hell knows what for. Dere easy fruit. I pinched two or t'ree fat leathers dere meself." David marvelled at the boy's intimacy with wickedness, yet he understood it. Evil was the one thing Tom had had a chance to become acquainted with; it had for him the familiar face that virtue has for children raised amid happier circumstances. The conditions of its childhood, whether good or bad, are the normal conditions of life to the child. So to Tom wickedness was normal; he talked of stealing, of gambling, of women, with the natural vivacity that another boy might have talked of his marbles. David saw, as definitely as the calendar sees to-morrow, the future of this boy if there were no influence counter to the influence that was now sweeping him toward his fate. He saw arrest (Tom had boasted that he had been arrested once)--prison--a hardening of the boy's nature--a life of crime. He heard little of the rest of the boy's chatter, and presently he came to a decision--a very unpretentious decision, for he was poorer than poverty, and what confidence he once had in his personal influence had slipped away. But the little he could do for the boy, that he would do. "How would you like to stay with me for awhile, Tom?" he asked when they were back in his room. "I can't offer you anything but the floor for a bed--and perhaps not that after a few weeks." "D'you mean I can stay wid you?" Tom cried, springing up, his eyes a-gleam. "Say, dat'll be great! We'll divide on de price! An' we'll have a little go wid de mitts ev'ry day!" "Very well. But I want to place one condition on your staying. You're to be strictly honest with me, and you're not to steal. You understand?" The boy made a grimace. "All right--since you ask me. But say, you're queer!" The next morning David bought Tom a red cotton sweater and advanced him a quarter with which to buy a stock of papers. Two weeks passed, every day very much like the one before it. David found no work, and Tom made but little. During the two weeks the rent fell due, and most of David's library went to a second-hand book dealer and the proceeds went to the landlady. Then, two or three at a time, the rest of the books were carried to the second-hand store.