She did not go directly across, but in a slanting, southerly course, out of which she was quickly compelled to veer, yet more to starboard, that is, to her right, by a vast blaze of glitter and puff and a warning hoot of a steam whistle which came swiftly up from the southward. The glittering ranges of windows and the two huge, black pipes that towered above them, belonged to one of the largest “Sound Steamers.” She was so large, indeed, that when the tug had passed her and steered into her wake, the swell it was rocked in called out an exclamation of: “O!--Well!--I declare!” from one of two gentlemen who were sitting in the little cabin. The next words he uttered, as he once more squared himself in the seat he had been so suddenly pitched out of, were: “What a swell!--But what I was saying about Jim is this:--He isn’t so bad a boy----” “Not bad at all, I think,” said the other. “But then I can’t get at him. I’ve tried again and again----” “So have I. He’s a complete puzzle.” “And he isn’t sullen, either, and he isn’t exactly rebellious, but you can’t make any impression on him.” “He says he was unjustly convicted and it works on him worse and worse, all the time. We can’t help it, though----” “Of course we can’t, but I’m afraid it’ll hurt him, all his life----” “To be sure it will, but we must do our duty. Some of the boys are turning out splendidly. I’ve been hearing good news from several of mine.” “So have I, but I don’t mean to give up Jim. There’s the making of a man in that boy.” “He is doing well in the school.” “He is the best type-setter in the printing office.” “I wish he was out. There are a dozen more that ought never to have been sent there. I don’t mean that none of them did wrong, but it hurts some boys, worse than others, to be shut up. They feel a sting----” “Here we are----” They had talked pretty steadily all the way, but the tug was now at her wharf on Randall’s Island, and these were two of the managers of the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents. The boys were “in prison and they visited them.” They were men of wealth, education, unusual intelligence. There were others like them who came and worked as they did, and it was curious how strong a hold the youngsters seemed to have upon them. Of course the boys liked their friendly, sympathizing visitors, but probably none of them ever knew, at least while on the Island, what a study and worry they were to such men as these, as well as to the exceedingly capable and faithful officers who were all the while in charge of them. Many learned more after going out into the world and finding that even then these friends of theirs did not let go of them but followed them with help and hope and sympathy.