ieves,
who luckily happened to be away from home when the police commenced the
raid of the flat.

[Illustration: Her emotions got the better of her and she placed her
arms around the sobbing lad's neck and kissed him.]

"Come, Joe," she whispered, "I want to speak to you." He followed the
girl and both walked to the nearby shore of Lake Michigan, where he
repeated to her word for word everything that had occurred since he last
saw her at the flat, and when he remarked that both of them should thank
a kind Providence that had kept them out of the hands of the police,
tears trickled down their cheeks, while they gazed out over the restless
waters of the lake.

It was "Babe" who broke the silence by remarking: "We are indeed lucky,
Joe. Just think of what would have been our fate had we been arrested
with the others. You would have been sent to a penal institution to
emerge years later an ex-convict, a marked man forever afterwards, while
I would have been sent to a home where I would have been forced to
associate with the most degraded wretches. I was only seventeen last
month and was sent from a faraway western city to a boarding school in
the east, where the "blue stocking" matrons made the unfettered life
that I had learned to love at home such a misery for me, that I ran away
and came to Chicago to seek employment. I fell in with evil company,
but, thank God, I have yet enough common sense left to know when to
quit, and that is right now. For obvious reasons, I am not going to tell
you my address, but," here she turned and out of a hiding place in her
dress pulled a fair-sized roll of greenbacks, and then she continued, "I
have managed to look out for a day just like this one and have saved a
few dollars so I could get back home in the west, and" now she peeled a
hundred dollar bill from the roll she held in her hand, "I want you to
accept this sum and forget that you ever met me." Here her emotions got
the best of her and she put her arms around Joe's neck, who was sobbing,
being unable to express in any other manner his appreciation of the
girl's generosity, and after she had kissed the boy she whispered: "Joe,
for the sake of your mother I want you to swear that you will never
again become a companion of criminals." Joe repeated to her the same
solemn oath he had pledged to the dying Slippery, and promised that he
would faithfully adhere to it as long as he lived. When he finished, for
the want of something bett