d.
"I'm afraid of being alone to-night, of keeping this matter to myself." He
looked at her apprehensively.

"Very well, my dear," he said.

"This is the trouble," she began. "Down in my school we've a family of
about three thousand children. A few I get to know so well I try to follow
them when they leave. And one of these, an Italian boy--his name is Joe
Bolini--was one of the best I ever had, and one of the most appealing. But
Joe took to drinking and got in with a gang of boys who blackmailed small
shopkeepers. He used to come to me at times in occasional moods of
repentance. He was a splendid physical type and he'd been a leader in our
athletics, so I took him back into the school to manage our teams in
basket-ball. He left the gang and stopped drinking, and we had long talks
together about his great ambition. He wanted to enter the Fire Department
as soon as he was twenty-one. And I promised to use my influence." She
stopped, still frowning slightly.

"What happened?" Roger asked her.

"His girl took up with another man, and Joe has hot Italian blood. He got
drunk one night and--shot them both." There was another silence. "I did
what I could," she said harshly, "but he had a bad record behind him, and
the young assistant district attorney had his own record to think of, too.
So Joe got a death sentence. We appealed the case but it did no good. He
was sent up the river and is in the death house now--and he sent for me to
come to-day. His letter hinted he was scared, he wrote that his priest was
no good to him. So I went up this afternoon. Joe goes to the chair
to-morrow at six."

Deborah went to the sofa and sat down inertly. Roger remained motionless,
and a dull chill crept over him.

"So you see my work is personal," he heard her mutter presently. All at
once she seemed so far away, such a stranger to him in this life of hers.

"By George, it's horrible!" he said. "I'm sorry you went to see the boy!"

"I'm glad," was his daughter's quick retort. "I've been getting much too
sure of myself--of my school, I mean, and what it can do. I needed this to
bring me back to the kind of world we live in!"

"What do you mean?" he roughly asked.

"I mean there are schools and prisons! And gallows and electric chairs! And
I'm for schools! They've tried their jails and gallows for whole black
hideous centuries! What good have they done? If they'd given Joe back to
the school and me, I'd have had him a fireman in a yea