So this great school, with its high, stone walls and its rigid discipline and its likeness to a prison, was after all a splendid token of the love that goes out after even the very bad boys whom some people are willing to give up and to throw away. The other name of that Love is very sacred and beautiful. Jim was not a bad boy, but he felt like one, that night. He felt bad, all over, and angry, and rebellious, and almost hopeless, for he was all the while thinking of the wall and of how high it was, and of all the great world of life and liberty that lay beyond it. So far as he could see, there were to be long years of House of Refuge life, during which he was to know little and see nothing at all of that wide, bright world, and the thought was very terrible. He thought a great deal and imagined a great deal, but not among any of his imaginings did there come any idea that he had an interest in another boy, over in New York City,--a boy whose house and garden had been walled in by new streets. Jim knew nothing of Rodney; nor of his mother; nor of Billy the goat; nor of Millie Kirby. He could not have guessed that they were ever to be of any importance to him, over on the Island, listening and waiting for the rap of the drum that was shortly to tell him and all the rest that it was bedtime. IV BEHIND BOLTS AND BARS Bedtime at the House of Refuge was quite an affair. Wherever there might be a squad of boys, in any part of the buildings or grounds, at the tap of the drum, they were expected to “fall in,” like soldiers, and march toward the dormitory. Each detachment was sure to have its own officer, a boy promoted, for good behavior and trustworthiness, to be corporal, sergeant, or lieutenant. The dormitory itself was a remarkable sleeping place. It contained a separate room for each boy, but the rooms were not arranged like those of a hotel or a dwelling. There was one immense room, with plenty of windows for daylight and plenty of burners for gaslight. All around the sides of this room ran a broad, empty space, or passage-way, and inside of this, up and down the middle, had been constructed two tiers, one above another, of little bedrooms. Each tier was composed of two rows of rooms, set back to back with their faces toward the outer windows. The face or front of each room was made of slender, upright steel bars, not much more than two inches apart, and each room had a door, made in the same way, shutting with a strong, spring lock. Of course, each room was small and the beds were only wide enough for one boy, but they were very clean and comfortable. There was plenty of light when light was needed; plenty of air, always; and then perfect silence to sleep soundly in was secured by the rule which forbade talking or any kind of skylarking in the dormitory.