with
months of torture.

Yonder poor fellow, braving the odds of the city, had left his country
town, sought labor vainly, until he was found starving rather than beg.

As a policeman, Burke had seen many miseries in his short experience on
the force; as an invalid he had been initiated into the second degree
in this hospital ward. He wondered if there could be anything more
bitter. There was--his third and final degree in the ritual of life:
but that comes later on in our story.

After chatting here and there with a sufferer, passing a friendly word
of encouragement, or spinning some droll old yarn to cheer up another,
Bobbie had enough.

"Say, it's warm looking outside. Could I get some fresh air on one of
the sun-porches?" he asked his steersman.

"Sure thing, cap. I'll blanket you up a bit, and put you through your
paces on the south porch."

Bobbie was rolled out on the glass protected porch into the blessed
rays of the sun. He found another traveler using the same mode of
conveyance, an elderly man, whose pallid face, seamed with lines of
suffering, still showed the jolly, unconquerable spirit which keeps
some men young no matter how old they grow.

"Well, it's about the finest sunlight I've seen for many a day. How do
you like it, young man?"

"It's the first I've had for so many weeks that I didn't believe there
was any left in the world," responded Burke. "If we could only get out
for a walk instead of this Atlantic City boardwalk business it would be
better, wouldn't it?"

His companion nodded, but his genial smile vanished.

"Yes, but that's something I'll never get again."

"What, never again? Why, surely you're getting along to have them
bring you out here?"

"No, my boy. I've a broken hip, and a broken thigh. Crushed in an
elevator accident, back in the factory, and I'm too old a dog to learn
to do such tricks as flying. I'll have to content myself with one of
these chairs for the rest of my worthless old years."

The old man sighed, and such a sigh!

Bobbie's heart went out to him, and he tried to cheer him up.

"Well, sir, there could be worse things in life--you are not blind, nor
deaf--you have your hands and they look like hands that can do a lot."

His neighbor looked down at his nervous, delicate hands and smiled, for
his was a valiant spirit.

"Yes, they've done a lot. They'll do a lot more, for I've been lying
on my back with nothing to do for a month but think u