he moment when I had resolved to henceforth lead a clean life he has
sent you so I could beg your pardon for the greatest wrong a human being
could inflict upon a harmless boy, that is, to wantonly spoil his
future. James McDonald, I recognized your white hair streak when you
lowered your head to pray for the salvation of the very man whom you had
far better reason to curse. Will you not now forgive me, whom you have
known as Kansas Shorty, and who will seek in the morning the first
honest job he has ever done in his whole life?" Joe, dumfounded at
meeting the fellow whom, although aged and disfigured by the unnatural
life he had been leading, he now recognized as the tramp for whom he had
searched for so many years, held his peace, for he recalled how he had
at Chicago spoiled by undue haste his chance to discover the fate of his
missing brother, who had resembled him so much that Kansas Shorty for a
second time made the same error in their identity.

[Illustration: A drunken, shaggy bearded and poorly dressed man pushed
himself through the crowd, which listened to the Salvation Army's leader
plea for penitents to come forward.]

He told the wretch that he forgave him, and then drew back and became
lost in the crowd, but while he stood well out of Kansas Shorty's view,
he never took his eyes off the form of the new recruit of that immense
army of human wrecks which the Salvationists have dragged out of
saloons, gutters, penal institutions and back from suicide to convert
and transform them into useful members of society.

When the Salvation Army's street service had been concluded, led by
flying flags and keeping step to the beating of a drum they marched to
their prayer hall. Kansas Shorty, supported in his unsteady gait by two
brethren of the Army, walked in the midst of the procession, while Joe
kept some distance in the rear, never permitting his eyes to stray off
the shambling form of the man who held the key to the riddle that had so
effectively spoiled Joe's joy of life.

After the army had entered the meeting hall, Joe called on the leader
and gave him a brief outline of his past and asked him to assist him to
cause Kansas Shorty to make a complete confession. The leader called his
latest convert into his private office and explained to him that it was
not James but his twin brother Joe of whom he had begged forgiveness,
and he spoke so earnestly to the penitent outcast that the latter made a
clean breast of