w was a boy with hat and coat covered
with dirt, his whole face smeared with the stains of conflict, and,
in particular, a badly swollen nose, a bruised eyebrow, a cut and
swollen lip, a scratched cheek, knuckles still bleeding, and a shirt
torn open from throat to waist.

"What does this mean, sir?" Mr. Bronson finally managed to articulate.

Joe stood speechless. How could he tell, in one brief sentence, all
the whole night's happenings?--for all that must be included in the
explanation of what his luckless disarray meant.

"Have you lost your tongue?" Mr. Bronson demanded with an appearance
of impatience.

"I 've--I 've--"

"Yes, yes," his father encouraged.

"I 've--well, I 've been down in the Pit," Joe succeeded in blurting out.

"I must confess that you look like it--very much like it indeed."
Mr. Bronson spoke severely, but if ever by great effort he conquered
a smile, that was the time. "I presume," he went on, "that you do not
refer to the abiding-place of sinners, but rather to some definite
locality in San Francisco. Am I right?"

Joe swept his arm in a descending gesture toward Union Street, and said:
"Down there, sir."

"And who gave it that name?"

"I did," Joe answered, as though confessing to a specified crime.

"It 's most appropriate, I 'm sure, and denotes imagination. It could n't
really be bettered. You must do well at school, sir, with your English."

This did not increase Joe's happiness, for English was the only study of
which he did not have to feel ashamed.

And, while he stood thus a silent picture of misery and disgrace,
Mr. Bronson looked upon him through the eyes of his own boyhood with
an understanding which Joe could not have believed possible.

"However, what you need just now is not a discourse, but a bath and
court-plaster and witch-hazel and cold-water bandages," Mr. Bronson
said; "so to bed with you. You 'll need all the sleep you can get,
and you 'll feel stiff and sore to-morrow morning, I promise you."

The clock struck one as Joe pulled the bedclothes around him; and the
next he knew he was being worried by a soft, insistent rapping, which
seemed to continue through several centuries, until at last, unable to
endure it longer, he opened his eyes and sat up.

The day was streaming in through the window--bright and sunshiny day.
He stretched his arms to yawn; but a shooting pain darted through all
the muscles, and his arms came down more rapidly than they had go