his pals away," and they sent him up. Some half-orphan asylum had taken
the children. One thing Bowser knew and he would "give it to me
straight," and he didn't care who heard it, and that was that there was
"a good many gospil sharps running church-mills that warn't half as
white as Dick Mulford--not by a d---- sight."

One morning I was trying to cross Broadway, dodging the trolleys that
swirled around the curves, when a man laid his hand on my arm with a
grip that hurt me.

It was Muffles!

Not a tramp; not a ragged, blear-eyed vagabond--older, more serious, the
laugh gone out of his eyes, the cheeks pale as if from long confinement.
Dressed in dark clothes, his face cleanshaven; linen neat, a plain black
tie--the hat worn straight, not slouched over his eyes with a rakish
cant as in the old days.

"My God! but I'm glad to see ye," he cried. "Come over in the Square and
let's sit down."

He was too excited to let me ask him any questions. It all poured out of
him in a torrent, his hand on my knee most of the time.

"Oh, but I had it tough! Been up for a year. You remember about it, the
time Pipes went bail. I didn't git none o' the swag; it warn't my job,
but I seed 'em through. But that warn't nothin'. It was de Missus what
killed me. Hadn't been for de kids I'd been off the dock many a time.
Fust month or two I didn't draw a sober breath. I couldn't stand it.
Soon's I'd come to I'd git to thinkin' agin and then it was all up wid