The night was dark, the darkest he ever knew, Sydney Bremmer thought as he went his rounds to see if the place was in order. When first he came to live with Mrs. Schmitz he had to take a lantern; but now he was so accustomed to the narrow, soft lanes that led up and down the nursery between close rows of shrubs and flowers, and to the passages in the greenhouses, that he could “feel his way,” as he could in the same way tell when the temperature was right.

As for the little furnace, its own cheerful light, when he opened the doors to fill the fire box and bank the fire, not only showed the way to the coal bin, but sent long streamers of genial light into the black night, and flooded the boy’s face with a weird color that made him look like a fire spirit.

Once between noises he thought he heard something under one of the plant shelves, and called to see if it was the dog, Blitzen. No dog appeared, and everything seemed to be in place. Thinking he had been mistaken, Sydney closed the furnace, fastened the greenhouse door, and ran through the nursery gate to the porch, where he put out the milk bottles and patted Blitzen, saying good night in the silent, boyish fashion that the dog well understood.

As he entered the kitchen, very quietly he thought, a woman’s voice called from above, “That you, Seedney? How late you sit up.”

“Yes. Had trouble with my geometry. Everything’s all right.”

“So? Good! Sleep forty miles the hour till breakfast. I’ll call you. Think of nothing but rest. Good night.”

Sydney returned her good night, mounted the wide stairs, and passed through the long hall, dark as Erebus but for a faint gleam under a door, the one leading to Mrs. Schmitz’s room. Always her tiny night light sent its friendly beacon to Sydney through the window as he came round the house from his rounds in the nursery.

His room was warm from the comfortable stove; and light from the student lamp lent an air of refinement to the chamber not in keeping with the cheap furnishings.

But Sydney did not mind the cheapness of things. The pine bureau and bedstead painted gaudily, the table with pitcher and bowl that served for a lavatory, the cheap chairs and cotton carpet, chromos on the wall and nails in the closet—these makeshifts were luxury to the lad who had known continuous hardship in his newsboy days after the great fire in his native city, San Francisco.

This warm nest was a haven of peace and comfort. Towels and sheets were soft and clean, the blankets fleecy and warm, and the pillows the very home of sleep for a head that had long pillowed on a roll of papers.

And on those nails in the tiny closet was the luxury of a best and a second best suit; on the table books and papers, with permission to study or read as late as he pleased. When he entered his den, set the stove roaring, and settled at ease in his old cane “rocker,” a peace and satisfaction filled him that could well be the envy of the richest millionaire living.

This night, chilled from his errand in the cold, he looked around with renewed appreciation. He wound his nickel clock and turned off the alarm. At first he had disregarded Mrs. Schmitz’s injunction to sleep on Sunday morning, believing it his duty to be on hand for the early work that knows no holiday. But she was a woman of authority, and Sydney had long ago found it as necessary to obey her orders for his comfort as for those concerning his work. As he became better acquainted with the lonely, eccentric woman, he was more than willing to heed her wishes.

One of these was that he should sleep with windows wide open. To-night the inrush of cold air drenched from the salt Sound took the sleep from his eyes and sent the quick blood to his brain; and with it a hundred ideas that came tumbling over one another for notice.

The most important matter was a growing puzzle to him: why the girls at school would not treat Ida Jones, who worked for her board, as well as the boys treated him, who worked for his board.

Of course she was a junior; yet when he had been a junior he had found no such battle to fight. Suddenly he remembered his friends, Reginald Steele, Hec Price, “Sis” Jones, and Billy To-morrow—good old Billy, who had always been his friend since the day on the coast steamer when Billy interceded for the stowaway, Sydney. A word from any of these was as good as a proclamation from the whole of an under class.

Yet for Ida it was not the same; she had something quite different from a boy’s troubles to fight, wholly feminine and mysterious.

A bright idea came—he would ask Bess Carter about it; she was sure to set “something doing” for Ida; and if she did the other girls would promptly fall in line.

But how could he accomplish it? To speak to a girl, even bluff, common-sense Bess, had come to be a pain during the past year. He could not understand it; hated himself for it, and spent long silent hours when he should have slept, composing brilliant dialogues between himself and some girl, only to slink by the first time he met her. Even a word from lonely Ida, whom accident had thrown in his way, set him in a panic.

How long he lay living over his vivid school life, building youth’s air castles, he did not know. He thought he had not slept, yet started suddenly at the sound of soft footsteps at the other end of the hall, and quickly rose and looked out of his door.

Mrs. Schmitz with a lighted taper was standing at the head of the stairs, listening. Her hair hung in a long braid, and the straight lines of her heavy kimono disguised her large figure and gave her a weird stateliness that made Sydney think of some serpent-bound goddess from old mythology.

He slid into his slippers, pulled around him the spread from the bed, caught up the poker from under the stove, and hurried to her.

“What is it,” he whispered, “a burglar?”

“Nothing, I guess. What you up for? I catch him mine self.”

Both listened intently. The stillness lasted so long that Sydney thought her mistaken, when a sliding sound came from below.

“You stay here,” he whispered; “I’ll go down.”

“No, you don’t! I won’t have you killed all alone. I come too.”

“Blow out the light then. We must see him first,” Sydney ordered. “Got any matches?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Silently they crept down the stairs.

On the stairs Sydney planned. “You stand at one side of the kitchen door and when I call, light the candle so I can see.”

“But he may catch you first, hurt——”

“I know the kitchen and he doesn’t. Do as I say, and we’ll get him.”

The house was large and two closed doors were between them and the burglar. Sydney was wondering if he could open them quietly, when Mrs. Schmitz stepped in front of him and noiselessly threw open one of them while he was thinking about it. From under the pantry door came a thin gleam of light.

“He thinks to find silver. He iss fooled.”

Sydney could hear the laugh in her words although they were whispered. “Stay here,” he ordered, and before she knew his intention, he had turned the key in the pantry door, and was hurrying out of the kitchen to barricade the pantry window from the outside.

But she had come to the end of obedience. She flew after him, heedless of noise, caught and held him back, saying excitedly, “Not for anything shall you go out there. Mebbe more come.”

From pure astonishment rather than obedience he paused an instant, when the light vanished from under the door, and some one ran into the dark room.

Both rushed after him, laid hold of him, and dragged him to the floor.

“Go away! He may have a gun. I’ve got him fast,” Sydney cried.

“Ant if he has a gun we will take it away,” the woman answered pluckily, still keeping her weight on the prostrate figure. “You hunt for it, Seedney.”

The man, trapped, fought fiercely for liberty. It was a silent struggle there in the dark. They knew not what moment a light, or a gun from a confederate, might be flashed upon them, yet thought not of yielding.

Neither of the out-flying hands held a gun, Sydney discovered, and between blows he tried to reach the man’s pockets, but without success; partly because the valiant German woman managed to keep her bulk well over him.

Suddenly all strength left the culprit. In an instant his body grew limp and he resisted no more. “I give up. I haven’t any gun,” came in a hoarse whisper, followed by a cough that shook the woman now calmly sitting on his back.

“Seedney, find the clo’es line; in the storeroom—we’ll tie him; then let him get up.”

Sydney lighted the lamp and quickly brought a rope, with which they bound him as he lay, face downward; and when Mrs. Schmitz with difficulty regained her feet she ordered him to rise.

To their surprise he lay motionless and silent except for the cough he tried to suppress. They waited, Sydney wondering if the man were only feigning; Mrs. Schmitz suspecting his exhaustion.

“Go, quick, and telephone for the police. I’m a match for him now.” Sydney lifted his poker threateningly, though afterward he smiled, remembering how thorough was their work of tying.

But the woman’s keen eyes had seen something that arrested her. Though the man made no attempt to obey, she saw him tremble, saw his shoulders lift; heard his indrawn, convulsive breath, and knew what it meant. Much quicker than she had risen she dropped on her knees beside him, a mother’s tenderness in her rich voice.

“Look at me! You are sorry! Almost you could cry. No bad man does that when he iss robbing—when he iss caught. He fights, or mebbe he says damn. You are no bad man.”

She laid her hand tenderly on his head and tried to see his face; but he still held it to the floor, fighting his cough. He wore a thin suit much too large for him, and his shoes were broken, showing his bare feet.

“Get up, man. Whatever robbing you have done you find not much money, I guess.”

Before he could move, a violent spasm of coughing shook him pitifully. She turned, caught up the spread Sydney had dropped, and threw it over him. “Watch him till I come back,” she called, and ran out through the dining room, surprisingly fast for a heavy woman. “Tie him in a chair, and make a fire, Seedney,” she added in a high voice from the hall; and in a moment they heard the stairs creaking under her.

“Get into this chair,” Sydney ordered, pushing the kitchen “rocker” toward the other.

Painfully the man obeyed, disclosing a face gaunt from hunger but as youthful as Sydney’s own, and a slender, emaciated frame.

“Gee! You’re just a kid, too. What’re you up against?” he questioned as he put the kitchen door key in his pocket and locked the window. “You don’t look the housebreaker part one little bit,” he continued, and began to build a fire.

“I’m certainly an amateur; this is my first appearance,” the youth returned in a husky voice.

“You’ve queered yourself with this audience; why did you try it?”

“No home, no work, no money, and everybody afraid of me—tuberculosis they think I have.”

“Have you?”

“I think not; but I soon shall have it if I don’t find work and enough to eat. I haven’t slept in a bed for a week; no money for ten days.”

“Gee! That’s hard luck. I know how it is myself.”

“What? You? She’s too good a mother for you to be talking of hard luck.” In spite of weariness he smiled his incredulity.

“Mother, nothing! Mine is dead. She’s a good one though. And I’m in out of the wet now all right. But it was different when I was a San Francisco newsy, sleeping over bakery gratings.”

The other boy stared at Sydney enviously. “How did you come through so—so to the good? Chicken fixings and a gentleman’s sleeping outfit?” He eyed Sydney’s neat pajamas and slippered feet. “Gee! I’d be glad of as good as that for the day time.”

Sydney had set the lamp on a table near the other boy, and his pale face was sharply revealed. When Mrs. Schmitz, hastily dressed, entered, he looked up appealingly, but said nothing and dropped his head again on his breast.

“Mine goodness! You’re only a boy!” she exclaimed.

“Did you call the police?” Sydney asked.

“No policeman yet. I want to talk mit him first.” The captive stirred uneasily. “When have you something to eat?”

“Night before last. That’s what—what I came for—I couldn’t stand it any longer.”

“Ant also you freeze.”

“No. Three nights I have slept in your greenhouse. It’s warm there and——”

“Yes, yes! Too warm and too wet for coughing. No longer you will sleep so. Seedney, get him that one coat you don’t wear any more, and other warm clo’es you have. I buy you more. Ant yourself dress; pretty soon you also will be coughing.”

Sydney added some light wood to his fire and hurried to do her bidding, coming again in no time, it seemed to him; yet in those few minutes Mrs. Schmitz had hot milk ready and savory food steaming on the stove.

Still obeying her, Sydney untied the boy’s hands and then puttered about the room, bringing the kitchen dishes to the table, keeping busy that the other chap might not feel himself watched. Yet Sydney did not let his eyes wander far; his street training had made him wary.

“Put on more dishes, ant also the good ones with knifes from the dining room. We also shall eat mit the company. It iss now already past two o’clock ant I myself am hungry.”

Neither Sydney nor Mrs. Schmitz appeared to think it strange that they should be calmly supping with one they had just caught and thrown—one who still sat tied to his chair.

She coaxed the stranger to tell his story. It was little different from the many; untrained, without friends, and consequently the first to be set adrift in slack times.

“It is only work I need,” he finished.

“Why have you no work? You have parents, ant home?”

The boy nodded and hung his head. “My father is living, not my mother. But I—I can’t go home. I——” He looked up fearlessly.

“I cannot tell you why, though it is nothing to be ashamed of. Only I—I can’t go home. If I could get work I would not steal. But if you have no work, what can you do?”

“You shall have work, sure!” she exclaimed earnestly. “Pretty soon; when you say good-by to that cough. By me you shall stay till you eat much and get strong. Then I will find work for you.”

He looked up, startled. “You will keep me—Max Ball,—keep me here in your house, when I have—have tried to rob you?”

“Well, why not? You only need to eat. I also must eat; if not from my own dish, then—from some other man’s.”

“You—you trust me?” He could not seem to understand.

“See here, boy. You cannot steal from me. No man takes from me one little thing only it iss something I ought not to have. You already have tried it once. Did you get away mit the goods?” She laughed as if it was a good joke, while the boy still stared.

“You think that iss funny; it iss this way. You come here to rob me, ant you fail because some one—the Great One—iss seeing you. You have tried hard as you can to do right; but you are full of cold, hunger, lonesomeness; you cannot see life iss good any more. So the goot Gott im himmel sends you to one old woman who iss not afraid, ant she has enough for one boy more. You stay by me?”

The warmth, the steaming food that all at once made him faint, the welcome where he had expected, if not rough treatment, certainly arrest, and especially the kindness that recalled the memory of all a loving mother could be,—these were too much for him; he sobbed like a child.

“Get the salt, Seedney!” Mrs. Schmitz cried; “you are stupid to forget!”

Sydney knew well this hardness was only assumed to shield the other boy. Looking from the pantry he saw her go swiftly behind the captive, put her big arm round his shaking shoulders, and smooth back the tangled dark hair. But her words were rough; she knew it was a dangerous time for sympathy.

“Stop this already! By me nobody cries. Everybody laughs. Keep still the shoulders, I tell you! They pump up and down like a windmill in a big wind. Also like old windmills with rust on ’em; I can hear ’em squeak already. Stop the noise mit your mouth and put something in it.”

So she rattled on with rude words, but her hand never ceased its soothing, hypnotic motion above the too white brow; and in a moment it seemed to Sydney the boy was quiet, and she had unbound him.

“Seedney, will you stay hunting salt till to-morrow already? What keeps you, dumkopf?”

Sydney’s face was flushed when he entered. He did not relish being called a blockhead even in German. And back of that resentment was another emotion he did not then recognize—jealousy. This fly-by-night, this sneak thief, was to come right into the family, to share what he, Sydney, had so long enjoyed as all his own.

A little sullenly and noisily he put the salt-cellar on the table. Mrs. Schmitz, looking up, caught the meaning on his face. At the moment she forgot that Sydney’s feeling was natural; forgot that a boy cannot understand the instinct that makes the mother ready to sacrifice the child that is safe for the one that is in danger.

“Go you, Seedney, bring some wood. It iss cold here as north pole.”

Sydney was gone longer than necessary. He knew that she was gaining time for the stranger to recover calmness. The boy outside looked in from the darkness angrily at first, but more kindly as he saw the waif, little by little, melt under kindness, answer questions, and begin to eat. And when he finally entered, chilled by the biting cold into a more generous spirit, it was to hear the end of a compact: the stranger lad was to remain, and, as soon as he was well enough, he was to help in the greenhouses. He looked calm, even happy.

At that instant a soft, clucking noise from the outside arrested them.

The boy’s face went ashen. He started up. His eyes filled with remorse, looked mournfully upon them as if he were taking leave of a dying dear one, and he caught up the freshly cut loaf, and rushed out through the door.

“I’ve been the meanest fellow going!” he cried as he ran. From the door he called back, “Thank you both! Good-by!” and vanished.