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Nobody for Billington," answered the gatekeeper.

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Where does your mother live ?" demanded the clerk.

In a cellar in Hold Street, please, sir," was the reply of the boy, with a smile on his lip, and utterly unaffected, of course, by what had been

said to him.

"B'y's been here offen afore," the chief warder said aside to Uncle Ben. "He's bad boy 'deed, sir!"

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'Henry Norris" was the next lad called for. "How long ha' you been here, Norris ?" the clerk began with this one.

"Six weeks," the boy said, doggedly.

"How offen afore ?" the other went on. "Three times here, and twice in jail up in the country," was the cool and frank rejoinder.

"Ha! we're getting it out of you a little," added the clerk. "Nobody for Norris, I s'pose?" he said, again thrusting his head out of the window. "No, sir," exclaimed the gate-keeper.

"Thomas Wilson" was then called.

"What time ha' you been here, Wilson ?" interrogated the clerk, as a fresh boy came up to the window, but who was so short that the man in the office had to thrust his head out in order to see him.

"Ten days, please, sir," answered the brat, in a whining tone.

"And how offen afore ?" demanded the other. "Six time, please, sir," the boy went on, whining.

Now that's very pretty for a child of your age, ain't it?" continued the moral man in office. "How came you to break sixty panes of glass?— for that's what you were charged with, you know -eh ?"

"I did it all along with other boys, please, sir -'eaving stones," the child again whined out.

"A set of mischeevous young ragamuffins," the moralist persisted. "Was the house empty, eh?" "No, please, sir, it wer'n't no house, sir; it were a hold factory, please, sir, and there was about a hundred panes broke afore we begunned; so us boys was a trying to smash the rest on 'em, sir, when I got took." Such was the childish explanation of the felonious offense.

"Any body for boy of the name of Thomas Wilson ?" shouted out the clerk.

"No, sir, nobody for Wilson," the gate-keeper made answer once more.

"Well, then," continued the clerk, "that's all the 'scharges for to-day, so you can let 'em all go, Bennett."

"Come along, Ben," said the uncle, hurriedly, as he heard the last words; "I want to see the end of all this. Good-day, warder, good-day;" and the moment afterward the officer in charge of the gate opened the outer door, and the wretched young thieves and vagabonds were once more at large in the world.

Uncle Ben passed with his nephew through the prison portal at the same time, and stood close against the gate, watching the proceedings of the liberated boys.

The lad whose "brother" had come to take charge of him had two other youths of rather questionable appearance waiting to welcome him outside the prison gates.

The other little creatures looked round about to see if they could spy any friend of theirs loitering in the neighborhood.

None was to be seen.

Of all the young creatures discharged from the boys' prison that morning, not a father, nor a

mother, nor even a grown and decent friend was there to receive them.*

Uncle Ben stood and watched the wretched little friendless outcasts turn the corner of the roadway, and saw the whole of them go off in a gang, in company with the suspicious-looking youths who had come to welcome the boy whose "brother" alone had thought him worth the fetching.

Then turning to his little nephew, he cried aloud, "If ever you forget this lesson, Ben, you've a heart of stone, lad—a heart of stone!"

CHAPTER XXII.

UNCLE BEN AT HOME.

IT has been said that it is impossible to stand up under an archway during an April shower with a man of really great mind without being impressed that we have been conversing with some superior person.

But no matter, let it pass.

Nevertheless, it is certain that we have but to enter the ordinary sitting-room (not the "showroom," mark!) of any person, great or small, in order to read in every little article of furniture or knick-knackery, or even in the odds and ends that we find scattered about, some slight illustration of the pursuits, the habits, the tastes, the affections, ay, and even the aspirations of the individual to whom the chamber belongs.

Uncle Ben's" own room" was not a "receptionroom," but a "retiring-room;" a small chamber on the two-pair front," that served him at once for study and dormitory too.

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*The bare fact.