re and he saw the boys. They all went off together."

"Joe"--fear and worry leaped to the lovely corn-flower eyes,
"Joe--not--surely they didn't go--they aren't down _there_?"

"That's just where they are. I was just going after them."

For still seconds this father and mother of boys looked at each other
in misery. Both were thinking the same thing, both shrank from what
was before them, but even as Joe squared his shoulders Mrs. Dustin
straightened hers.

"I'm going with you, Joe."

So down the autumn street went these two. Joe, because he had promised
Hattie when she was sick unto death that he would always watch over the
boys, would love and cherish and guard them.

Mrs. Dustin was going because Peter was her baby, her strange, weird
duckling, full of whimsical fancies and fantastic longings. He was a
sort of dream child for whom she alone felt wholly responsible. All
the others were good, understandable children. But Peter was odd and
nobody but his blue-eyed mother knew how to handle him.

"Rosalie, I've never whipped those boys of mine. Some way I couldn't
with Hattie gone and them having no one but me. But maybe it was a
mistake."

"No, it wasn't, Joe. The Greatest Teacher that ever lived used only
truth and gentleness and look at the size of His school now. No--this
trouble isn't in the children exactly. It must be in us. We're stupid
and don't know how to do for the children. People say that young folks
must be young folks. And we let our boys and even our girls flounder
through a lot of cheap foolishness before we expect them to settle down.

"But it's my opinion, Joe, that letting them flounder all alone through
these raw years of their life is plain wickedness. Peter has a good
home and he's loved and he knows it. Yet he's got to the place now
where he wants something that I and the home can't seem to give him. I
don't know just what it is. But this place, Joe, bad as it is, must
have the thing that our half-grown children want and that's what brings
them here even against our will. And I'm going to-night to find out
what it is."

"It can't be good for them, Rosalie, when it drives them into lying and
stealing. Why only to-day Josie Landis sent Eddie to me with fifty
cents for the shoes I mended for her. And he gambled that fifty cents
away in the slot machine and came and told me a lie!"

"Little Eddie Landis! Why--Joe, he's just a baby."

"Well--that's what the place i