"You are quite sure you boys weren't to blame?" asked Mr. Clarke.

"Now, Father!" protested his wife, "how can you? When Mac has just told
us he was helping the janitor?"

"It is no new thing, Mr. Clarke," said the bishop, solemnly shaking his
head. "We have had to contend with that disreputable element back of us
for years. On two occasions I have had to complain to the city
authorities. A very bad neighborhood, I am told, very bad indeed."

"But, Mac dearest," pursued his mother anxiously as she tried to brush
the dried mud out of his hair. "Were you the only boy who stayed to help
Mason keep them out?"

Mac jerked his head away irritably.

"Oh! It wasn't that way, Mother. You see--"

"That's Mac all over," cried Mrs. Clarke. "He wouldn't claim any credit
for the world. But look at the poor child's hands! Look at his eye! We
must take some action at once. Can't we swear out a warrant or something
against those hoodlums, and have them locked up?"

"But, Elise," suggested Mr. Clarke, quizzically, "haven't you and the
bishop just been arguing that the State ought not to interfere with a
child? That the family ties, the mother's guidance--"

"My dear Mr. Clarke," interrupted the bishop, "this, I assure you, is an
exceptional case. These young desperados are destroying property; they
are lawbreakers, many of them doubtless, incipient criminals. Mrs. Clarke