er dormitories such a cheerful look.
Looney and Clem slept side by side. Before midnight the dormitory was
full of suffocating smoke. The alarm was raised. For a time it was
thought that all the boys had escaped down an iron staircase lately
erected outside the building. But when the flames had been put out in
the store-room below, the bodies of Looney and Clem were found clasped
together on Clem's bed. Looney's arms were twisted very tightly around
Clem's neck, and people said he had perished in trying to save his
friend. Next Sunday the chaplain preached on the text, "And in death
they were not divided." Their names were inscribed side by side on a
little monument set up to commemorate the event, and underneath was
carved a passage from the Psalms: "Except the Lord keep the city, the
watchman waketh but in vain."

EPILOGUE

At last Alfred's discharge paper came from the workhouse, and he trudged
down the road to the station, carrying a wooden box with his outfit,
valued at L7. He had been in charge of the State for six years, and had
quite forgotten the outside world. His nurture and education had cost
the ratepayers L180. He was now going to a home provided by benevolent
persons as a kind of featherbed to catch the falling workhouse boy. Here
the manager found him a situation with a shoemaker, since shoemaking was
his trade, but after a week's trial his master called one evening at the
home.

"Look 'ere, Mr. Waterton," he said to the manager. "I took on that there
boy Reeve to do yer a kindness, but it ain't no manner of good. I
suppose the boy 'ad parents of some sort, most likely bad, but 'e seems
to me kind of machine-made, same as a Leicester boot. I can't make out
whether you'd best call 'im a sucklin' duck or a dummercyle. And as for
bootmakin'--I only wish 'e knowed nothing at all."

So now Alfred is pushing a truck for an oilman in the Isle of Dogs at a
shilling a day. But the oilman thinks him "kind of dormant," and it is
possible that he may be sent back to the school for a time. Next year he
will be sixteen, and entitled to the privileges of a "pauper in his own
right."

Meanwhile little Lizzie is slowly getting her outfit ready for her
departure also. A society of thoughtful and energetic ladies will spend
much time and money in placing her out in service at L6 a year. And, as
the pious lady said to herself when she wrote out a good character for
her servant, God help the poor mistress who gets he