There was a knock at the door, but no one thought of answering it until it was repeated—more faintly, a second time—then one of the young men opened it, saying to the newcomer, “It is never locked, my boy.”

In stepped a lad some seventeen years of age, and inquired in a voice hardly audible if he could stay all night.

The young men sent the new arrival to me for an answer to his request. It was readily to be seen that the boy was in a state of great excitement. He acted so strangely that, contrary to custom, I asked him why he had come.

“The police are after me,” he stammered, as he turned and looked nervously at the door.

“What have you done?” I questioned the boy.

"I stole a bicycle and the owner just saw me walking along the street and started to chase me, calling after me, ‘Stop, thief!’ A crowd began to gather and I had all I could do to get away. I ran around a building and joined the crowd in the search; then, after a little, I dropped out of sight again and decided that I would go out to you for advice."

"Where is the bicycle now?" I questioned.

“I sold it,” he said.

“Where is the money you got for it?”

“I spent it.” He began to cry.

“And now your conscience starts to trouble you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“My lad,” I told him, “this is no hiding place for boys who steal, and for whom the police are searching.”

The boy did not reply; he turned aside and brushed away the tears with his cap. Then he started slowly towards the door.

“So I can’t stay?” he said finally.

“I am afraid not,” I replied.

He went to the window and peered out into the night.

“They’ll get me,” he said, hopelessly, “and when they do it means a long term in prison for me.”

“Wait a moment,” I said. “Have you been arrested before.”

“Yes, another boy and myself took some fancy postal cards from a stationery stand. They were funny pictures that we wanted for our collection. We were sent to Jamesburg that time. Then since I came from that institution I was arrested again for something else I did and I am now out on probation. Next time the judge said he would give me a long sentence in the Rahway Reformatory.”

“You should have thought of all this sooner,” I said, with a sternness that I did not feel, for I knew how easily one can drift from an evil thought into an evil act.

“I heard you helped boys when they needed it,” ventured the young rascal. “I surely need it now.”

“I may help them when I can,” I replied, “but I never intentionally make myself a partner in their wrong doing.”

“The judge ought not to give me more than three years,” said the boy thoughtfully, "even that is a long time.... The bicycle wasn’t worth more than five dollars any way. The owner said he would sell it to me for that amount."

At that moment there was a noise in the next room.

“What was that?” asked the lad, trembling with fear.

“Your conscience is quite wakeful, my boy. That was one of the men closing the windows for the night.”

The boy came over close to me so he could look into my face, and there was a depth of seriousness in his voice when he said, “So you think I ought to give myself up and take the consequences?”

“Three years in prison?” I asked, looking straight at the boy. “Three years in prison!”

The words of Jacob Riis flashed through my mind—“When a boy goes to prison, a citizen dies.”

“If you were in my place you would give yourself up?” he asked me pointedly.

I passed my hand across my eyes. Unlike the boy I had no cap with which to brush away the tears.

“My boy,” I said, “I will be honest with you—I would not give myself up.”

“What would you do?”

“First, I would make up my mind not to steal any more, then I would earn money and pay the man for the bicycle.”

A new light came into the boy’s eyes.

“I did not used to be a thief,” he said, “but they made me mad. Ever since I came from Jamesburg every one watches me. My old boy friends, my father and mother, the police; someone’s eye is always on me. Their suspicions madden me. Sometimes it seems to me as if they dared me to take another risk. One day on the ferryboat from New York I met a detective who had once arrested me. Wherever I went he followed me. I was afraid, so I left the other boys who were with me and went to the stern of the boat. I didn’t tell anyone, but when I was all alone I put my hands down into my own pockets so he would know that I didn’t have them in anyone else’s.... I’m not very old, but I know that that isn’t the way to make a bad boy into a good one.”

After a moment I said to him: “if I can arrange with the owner of the bicycle so that you can pay for it in small weekly payments, will you join the Colony and out of the little money you earn settle with the man you have wronged?”

“If you will help me,” returned the lad hopefully, “I will make good to the man and to you.”

The next morning I talked the boy’s case over with an elderly attorney who lives with us, and who knows of his own knowledge the ruin one can bring upon himself if he does not follow proper methods. The old man gladly undertook to settle with the owner of the stolen bicycle, and save the boy from the consequences of his wrongdoing.

The boy worked industriously about the place and in a few weeks had earned sufficient money to settle satisfactorily for the bicycle. He is now working on a neighbor’s farm and says that he is determined to make something worth while out of his life.

“Do you know,” said the old attorney to me recently, "if anyone ever charges us with having compounded a felony in the case of this boy and his bicycle we can defend ourselves on the technical ground that the bicycle was of such slight value that the stealing of it was only a petty crime."

“In this case—the saving of a boy from prison”—I answered him, “if a technicality saves us from a criminal charge which might be brought against us, I for one am perfectly satisfied with such a defense.”