sitor into it. He seated
himself on the table, with one trim leg swinging to and fro, and lit a
cigar.

'Now,' he said, rolling a cloud of smoke from his lips, 'what have you
run away from?'

'I haven't run away from anything,' said Paul.

'Ah, well! we shall see about that. When I saw you on Saturday night
you were flush of money. Now--so my man tells me--you call yourself
a starving vagabond, and you run errands for a shilling. You are wet
through, and you are mud all over. You have no hat, my young friend. You
may just as well make a clean breast of it.'

'I've nothing to make a clean breast of,' Paul answered sullenly.

'Oh yes, you have,' said Herr Pauer. 'You were very tipsy on Saturday
night. Were you ever tipsy before?'

'No,'said Paul.

'You had money,' said Herr Pauer. 'Was it your own?'

'Yes.'

The answer was defiant and angry.

'To do as you liked with? Didn't you owe any of it?

'I owed something.'

'Got tipsy. Got cleared out. Hadn't the pluck to go home. That about the
size of it?'

'Yes,' said Paul, 'that's about the size of it.'

'No hat,' Herr Pauer went on comfortably. 'Out all night. Sunday
morning. Empty pockets. Religious landlady.'

'How do you know?' Paul asked.

'You told me about the landlady. The rest is easy enough. What are you
going to do?'

'I don't know. I haven't thought about it.'

'You are a shiftless young devil, I must say. Doesn't it occur to you to
think you _are_ a shiftless young devil--eh?'

'I think it does,' said Paul with extreme inward bitterness, 'now that
you come to mention it.'

'Come now,' said Herr Pauer, shifting his seat on the table and turning
to face the lad, 'you shall not take that tone. I tell you you shall not
take it, because it is a wrong and dangerous tone. You have done things
that you are ashamed of. You shall have the goodness to be ashamed of
them like a man, and not like a fool. Now, what are you going to do?'

'I can earn a living,' Paul answered. 'I've got a trade between my
fingers.'

'What is it?'

'I'm a compositor. I can do a man's work, if I can only earn two-thirds
of a man's wages.'

'That is all very well. But it's not quite what I mean. You have a
home?'

Paul laid his face in his hands and groaned. He was so ashamed at this
that he had no courage to undo his own act. He sat with his face still
hidden.

'You will go straight home to-morrow,' said Herr Pauer, rising from the
table. The culprit shook his