ist might have smiled at the major premise--and laughed
at the ingenuous conclusion. Yet if brass buttons, a cork hat and a
"billy" are the emblems of guardianship and probity, the country boy
has the right argument on his side, and the casuist none at all.

It never occurred to Isaac that the policeman could either make a
mistake of judgment, or meditate one. Therefore he approached the
guardian of the peace confidently.

This gentleman, who had noticed the traveller as soon as he had
emerged from the depot, awaited his approach with becoming dignity.
The patronage and disdain that the metropolis feels for the hamlet
were in his air.

"Excuse me, sir--I want to ask you--" began Isaac, after a proper
obeisance.

"Move on, will yer!"

"But I wanted to ask you--"

"Phwat are ye blockin' up the road fur, young man?"

"I want you to help me!"

"The ---- you do!" He looked about ferociously. "Look here, sonny, if
ye don't move along, an' have plenty of shtyle about it, I'll help ye
to the lock-up--so help me--!"

Isaac looked down upon the man, whom he could have crushed with
one swoop of his hands. The consternation of his first broken ideal
possessed his heart. With a deadly pallor upon his face, he hurried up
the clanging street, and the coarse laughter of brutes tingled in his
ears. He swallowed this rough inhospitality, which is the hemlock that
poisons country faith. Take from the pavement enough dust to cover
the point of a penknife, and insert it in the arm of a child, and in a
week it will be dead with tetanus. After this first encounter with the
protectors of the people, Isaac felt as if his soul had been bedaubed
with mud. He experienced a contracting tetanus of the heart. Had he
not planned all the lonesome day to cast himself upon the kindness
of the first policeman whom he saw? What other guide or protector
was there left for him in the strange city? The rebuff which he had
received half annihilated his intelligence.

[Illustration: "AM--I--IMPRISONED BECAUSE I AM FRIENDLESS AND POOR? IS
THIS YOUR LAW?"]

Isaac could no more put up at the great hotel he saw on his right than
the majority of us can take a trip to Japan. Isaac hurried on. Why
did he leave home? The fear of a great city is more teasing than the
terror of a wilderness or of a desert. There the trees or the rocks or
the sand befriends you. But in the city the penniless stranger has no
part in people or home or doorsteps. Every one's h