“Whatcher cryin’ about, little girl?” said a red-haired, freckled-face, ragged boy, with a bundle of papers under his arm as he looked sympathetically at a well-dressed little girl who was wiping away with her handkerchief THE TEARS THAT HAD ESCAPED from her eyes despite a brave effort to keep them where they belonged. “Whatcher cryin’ about, is yer lost?” “No, I’m not, but my mamma is. A bad man lost her, and I’m trying to find her for my papa and me, ’cause we’re homesick without her.” “Where do yer live?” “Away, way off. I took my money from my little savings bank, and Mary bought a ticket to bring me to Toronto. She said everybody came here, and she guessed my mamma was here. I’ve just got five cents left.” “Bully,” said the boy, “that’s just enough. If you want anything you can get it by advertising in THE NEWS for five cents.” “Where’s that?” “You just go down that street there until you come to the winder where all the picters is, and that’s THE NEWS.” * * * * * “How many papers do you want, little girl?” said a clerk in the business office of THE NEWS, as he put his head through a wicket to take a five-cent piece which a child was holding up. “I don’t want any papers. I want my mamma,” said the child. “Your mamma isn’t here, little girl. What is your name?” “Millie Switchell, and I come to Toronto to find my mamma, but it’s so big I’m almost lost myself.” “So you want to put an ad in THE NEWS, do you?” “Will that find her?” “Perhaps so.” The news editor had entered the room while this dialogue was going on and he RECOGNIZED THE CHILD. A dispatch was sent to her father, and before he arrived Millie was persuaded that the better way would be to allow some one well acquainted with the city to continue the search. The father on his arrival said: “It may be asking too much, but I wish you would suppress the names. If you must tell the story call me Switchell and the village Switchellville. The people in my neighborhood will understand the case just as well with those names, and very few of your other readers will know that the names are incorrect. I am sensitive enough myself, but would ask no favors were it not that the publication of names might have a bad effect on the child’s future.” Sympathy got the better of journalistic instinct, and the real names do not appear. CHAPTER XXVII. THE JAIL. The jail is a place towards which the night-hawk gravitates as naturally and as irresistibly as Newton’s apple to the ground. They disappear for a season, and when they resume their operations in the haunts of men they will tell you that they have “just put in a month,” or more, as the case may be. The corrective influences of jails is a much debated point, but there can be no doubt that men are admitted to the jails or other penal institutions who learn such a lesson thereby that they determine that their first taste of such a thing shall also be their last.