“Thank you ever so much,” said Rodney to Mrs. Kirby, when she came downstairs, “but we’re going to have a door put in and then we won’t have to climb through the window----” “You can use our hall till then,” said Mrs. Kirby, with a voice and manner precisely like Millie’s, “but I can’t have you bringing any other boys to tramp through. Mr. Kirby’s workmen are bad enough----” Something else called her and she was gone before Rodney could think what to say to her, but she had used one word that fitted closely to all he had been thinking about while he was looking at the walls and the land and the house. “Workmen?” he said. “Tell you what, Millie, don’t I wish I had a trade! I’m afraid I ain’t going to get one. They say there isn’t any chance for boys, nowadays----” “I can set type,” said Millie, “when there’s any to set, but father says it’s awful dull times. I want to do something else.” “I’m going to!” exclaimed Rodney. “You see if I don’t. I won’t let my mother work to support me. I’m going to get out, somehow.” So he too had a feeling that he was somehow penned in. Circumstances were against him and he must climb over them or get around them. Billy the goat had somehow or other circumvented the walls created by the streets and avenues. What a goat could do, a boy could do, but then Rodney did not as yet quite understand how Billy had managed to perform his feat. VI PLANS FOR ACTION Different people have different kinds of difficulties to overcome. Rodney Nelson, over in the city, felt as if he were shut up from doing anything better than the work of changing his mother’s furniture from one room to another. He had no trade; nothing that he could earn money with; no prospects for the future. Jim, setting up type at his case in the printing office of the House of Refuge, felt almost as if he had no hope whatever. He had a new experience before him, however, and it began to come soon after he got out upon the parade-ground. It was not yet time for the afternoon drill and all the boys were at liberty to do as they pleased. Some of them were playing ball; some were at leap-frog; some were simply skylarking, as they called it, and that meant all sorts of rough fun. It was Jim’s time for selecting the boys to whom he could tell his secret and get them to join him in whatever he was going to do. He was just going to speak to one boy, when something came into his mind that made him stop. “No, I guess I won’t tell him,” he said to himself. “I don’t belong here, but he does. I couldn’t look the Superintendent in the face if I should let that fellow out. It’s the best place for him. He didn’t know a thing when he came here. Now he can read and write and make shoes----”