CHAPTER VI.

"SATAN, HE HAS 'EM ALL THE WEEK."


"That Black Dirk is a case," said Policeman Duffer, turning hastily away
from an unusually stupid man, who could not be made to understand
where a certain street was. "He is the worst of the lot, _I_ believe.
Jerry Tompkins is slyer, and Dick Bolton is quicker than lightning at
mischief; Nimble Dick they call him; he's a sort of ringleader; what he
does the rest are apt to; but, to my thinking, Dirk is ahead of them all
for evil. The rest are kind of jolly; fun seems to be about half that
they are after; but Dirk, he's sullen; you never know how to take him,
nor when he may burst out on you. He's dangerous. I am always looking
out for something awful that he will do."

Poor Dirk! Yet he was the boy to whom Mrs. Roberts' desires had gone
out the most anxiously. It was over his image that she had lingered that
morning in her closet. Policeman Duffer would have been greatly
astonished had he known there was that in his words which gave her
courage. "Perhaps," she said to herself, with quickening breath, "oh,
perhaps the poor boy is the most in danger of them all, and the Saviour,
knowing it, sees ways in which I may reach him, and so presses his poor,
sullen face on my memory."

"What does he do for a living?" she hastened to ask.

"Well, to the best of my knowledge, he loafs for a living. That's all
I've ever known him guilty of doing. He's got a drunken father,--one of
the meanest kind of drunkards. If he would go and stay drunk all the