e in the store which he said he had bought from my father,
and to live up in the little room on the third floor where the cook
used to sleep, in the house where I was born, which he said he had
bought from the estate. It was a queer game. My father left no
records of a lot of things, and so there you know why I ran away to
listen to that picture bugle. I re-enlisted, and at the end of my
second service I got sick of it. I was a sergeant and was going to
take the examination for second lieutenant when I got malaria, and I
decided that the States were good enough for me. The Colonel knew the
Police Commissioner here. He sent me a rattling good letter. I never
expected to use it. But, after I hunted a job for six months and spent
every cent I had, I decided that soldiering was a good training for
sweeping front porches and polishing rifles, but it didn't pay much gas
and rent in the big city. The soldier is a baby who always takes
orders from dad, and dad is the government. I decided I'd use what
training I had, so I took that letter to the Commissioner. I got
through the examinations, and landed on the force. Then a brick with a
nice sharp corner landed on the back of my head, and I landed up here.
And that's all there is to _my_ tale of woe."

The old man looked at him genially.

"Well, you've had your own hard times, my boy. None of us finds it all
as pretty as the picture of the bugler, whether we work in a factory, a
skyscraper or on a drill ground. But, somehow or other, I don't
believe you'll be a policeman so very long."

Bob leaned back in his chair and drank in the invigorating air, as it
whistled in through the open casement of the glass-covered porch.
There was a curious twinkle in his eye, as he replied:

"I'm going to be a policeman long enough to 'get' the gangsters that
'got' me, Mr. Barton. And I believe I'm going to try a little
housecleaning, or white-wings work around that neighborhood, just as a
matter of sport. It doesn't hurt to try."

And Burke's jaw closed with a determined click, as he smiled grimly.

Barton was about to speak when the door from the inner ward opened
behind them.

"Father! Father!" came a fresh young voice, and the old man turned
around in his chair with an exclamation of delight.

"Why, Mary, my child. I'm so pleased. How did you get to see me?
It's not a visiting day."

A pretty girl, whose delicate, oval face was half wreathed with waves
of brown c