clothes," said Dick. "I don't look much like Ragged Dick now."

"I suppose your face looked familiar."

"All but the dirt," said Dick, laughing. "I don't always have the
chance of washing my face and hands in the Astor House."

"You told me," said Frank, "that there was a place where you could
get lodging for five cents. Where's that?"

"It's the News-boys' Lodgin' House, on Fulton Street," said Dick,
"up over the 'Sun' office. It's a good place. I don't know what us
boys would do without it. They give you supper for six cents, and
a bed for five cents more."

"I suppose some boys don't even have the five cents to pay,--do
they?"

"They'll trust the boys," said Dick. "But I don't like to get
trusted. I'd be ashamed to get trusted for five cents, or ten
either. One night I was comin' down Chatham Street, with fifty
cents in my pocket. I was goin' to get a good oyster-stew, and then
go to the lodgin' house; but somehow it slipped through a hole in
my trowses-pocket, and I hadn't a cent left. If it had been summer
I shouldn't have cared, but it's rather tough stayin' out winter
nights."

Frank, who had always possessed a good home of his own, found
it hard to realize that the boy who was walking at his side had
actually walked the streets in the cold without a home, or money
to procure the common comfort of a bed.

"What did you do?" he asked, his voice full of sympathy.

"I went to the 'Times' office. I knowed one of the pressmen, and he
let me set down in a corner, where I was warm, and I soon got fast
asleep."

"Why don't you get a room somewhere, and so always have a home to
go to?"

"I dunno," said Dick. "I never thought of it. P'rhaps I may hire a
furnished house on Madison Square."

"That's where Flora McFlimsey lived."

"I don't know her," said Dick, who had never read the popular poem
of which she is the heroine.

While this conversation was going on, they had turned into
Twenty-fifth Street, and had by this time reached Third Avenue.

Just before entering it, their attention was drawn to the rather
singular conduct of an individual in front of them. Stopping
suddenly, he appeared to pick up something from the sidewalk,
and then looked about him in rather a confused way.

"I know his game," whispered Dick. "Come along and you'll see what
it is."

He hurried Frank forward until they overtook the man, who had come
to a stand-still.

"Have you found anything?" asked Dick.

"Yes," said th