ases, there began an elbowing and scuffling contest for places,
in which Fred was quite conspicuous. At last a big boy presumed on his
superior size to edge in front of our hero, and cut off his prospect;
and Fred, without more ado, sent him smashing through the shop window.
There was a general scrabble, every one ran for himself, and Fred, never
having been used to the business, was not very skilful in escaping, and
of course was caught, and committed to an officer, who, with small
ceremony, carried him off and locked him up in the watch house, from
which he was the next morning taken before the mayor, and after
examination sent to jail.

This sobered Fred. He came to himself as out of a dream, and he was
overwhelmed with an agony of shame and self-reproach. He had broken his
promise to his dead mother--he had been drinking! and his heart failed
him when he thought of the horrors that his mother had always associated
with that word. And then he was in jail--that place that his mother had
always represented as an almost impossible horror, the climax of shame
and disgrace. The next night the poor boy stretched himself on his hard,
lonely bed, and laid under his head his little bundle, containing his
few clothes and his mother's Bible, and then sobbed himself to sleep.

Cold and gray dawned the following morning on little Fred, as he slowly
and heavily awoke, and with a bitter chill of despair recalled the
events of the last two nights, and looked up at the iron-grated window,
and round on the cheerless walls; and, as if in bitter contrast, arose
before him an image of his lost home--the neat, quiet room, the white
curtains and snowy floor, his mother's bed, with his own little cot
beside it, and his mother's mild blue eyes, as they looked upon him only
six months ago. Mechanically he untied the check handkerchief which
contained his few clothes, and worldly possessions, and relics of home.

There was the small, clean-printed Bible his mother had given him with
so many tears on their first parting; there was a lock of her soft brown
hair; there, too, were a pair of little worn shoes and stockings, a
baby's rattle, and a curl of golden hair, which he had laid up in memory
of his lost little pet. Fred laid his head down over all these, his
forlorn treasures, and sobbed as if his heart would break.

After a while the jailer came in, and really seemed affected by the
distress of the child, and said what he could to console