e information with full gravity,
and spoke reflectively:

"Officer McGuire tells me that there are about a dozen members in your
gang. It looks like a feller that can boss a crew of that size ought to
have something in him. Look here, kid, let's talk this over."

After five minutes of low-toned confidences the man on the bench found
himself looking into eyes of abated sullenness and listening to a voice
that was simply small boy.

"You see it's a sucker play for you to travel the route that ends in the
pen."

The Judge made it seem that Apache Bill himself had arrived at this sane
conclusion in which his Honour merely concurred.

"And since you realize that yourself, I'm not going to send you to the
Reform School this trip. You are going to give me your promise to run
that gang differently." He looked up, and his glance fell on a young
woman sitting among several others at the back of the room. There was
much in her appearance to arrest the attention and challenge interest,
but what one noticed most were eyes that held an inner light and a
starry brightness. "I'm going to have you report to one of our probation
officers every week," continued the Judge to Willie alias "Apache Bill,"
"and come to see me myself occasionally."

Usually for a case of this sort he would have selected a man from that
group of volunteers who made effective the machinery of the children's
court but this young terrorist would take a bit of understanding in his
reclamation, and among the men and women who aided and abetted his
efforts no other seemed to see into the intricacies of the boy mind
quite so unerringly as that young woman with the starry eyes, who had
been a famous belle and before that a tom-boy.

So the Judge nodded to her and said, "Miss Masters, I'm going to have
'Apache Bill' report to you. You two might talk over a boy-scout
organization down there in his district."

As the girl rose from her chair, the Judge's face suddenly developed
stern lines and his brows knit closely as he turned his attention to the
principal complainant.

"John Vaster," he announced, this time with no softening of tone, "a
probation officer is coming to your house, too. If those boys of yours
go to Mike's place after this with a bucket, or if you don't find a way
to keep them off the streets at night, you're coming back here, not as a
prosecuting witness but as a defendant."

Anne Masters had turned to this work of volunteer probation officer