bout his native town for
work. He found many sympathetic assurances, some promises, and no work
at all. Everybody explained to everybody else that they were sorry for
the poor wretch, but they couldn't afford to have a jail-bird around.

Meanwhile, Sam's stock of money, accumulated by overwork in the State
prison, and augmented by Judge Prency's present, was running low. He
kept his family expenses as low as possible, buying only the plainest
of food-material and hesitating long to break a bill, though it were
only of the denomination of one dollar. Nevertheless the little wad of
paper money in his pocket grew noticeably thinner to his touch.

His efforts to save the little he had in his possession were not
assisted by his family. His wife, thanks and perhaps blame to the
wifely sense of dependence upon her husband, had fallen back upon him
entirely after what he had said about his intention as to the future of
the family, and she not only accepted his assurances as bearing upon
the material requirements of several mouths from day to day, but she
also built some air-castles which he was under the unpleasant necessity
of knocking down. The poor woman was not to blame. She never had seen a
ten-dollar bill since the day of her marriage, when, in a spasm of
drunken enthusiasm, her husband gave a ten-dollar Treasury note to the
clergyman who officiated on that joyous occasion.

One evening Sam took his small change from his pocket to give his son
Tom money enough to buy a half-bushel of corn-meal in the village. As
he held a few pieces of silver in one hand, touching them rapidly with
the forefinger of the other, his son Tom exclaimed,--

"You're just overloaded with money, old man! Say, gi' me a quarter to
go to the ball game with? I'm in trainin', kind o' like, an' I ain't
afeard to say that mebbe I'll turn out a first-class pitcher one of
these days."

"Tom," said his father, trying to straighten his feeble frame, as his
eyes brightened a little, "I wish I could: I'd like you to go into
anything that makes muscle. But I can't afford it. You know I'm not
workin' yet, an' until I do work the only hope of this family is in the
little bit of money I've got in my pocket."

"Well," said Tom, thrusting out his lower lip, slouching across the
room, and returning again, "I don't think a quarter's enough to trouble
anybody's mind about what'll happen to his family afterwards. I've
heard a good deal from the mother about you b