“I ’ve—­well, I ’ve been down in the Pit,” Joe succeeded in blurting out.

“I must confess that you look like it—­very much like it indeed.”  Mr. Bronson spoke severely, but if ever by great effort he conquered a smile, that was the time.  “I presume,” he went on, “that you do not refer to the abiding-place of sinners, but rather to some definite locality in San Francisco.  Am I right?”

Joe swept his arm in a descending gesture toward Union Street, and said:  “Down there, sir.”

“And who gave it that name?”

“I did,” Joe answered, as though confessing to a specified crime.

“It ’s most appropriate, I ’m sure, and denotes imagination.  It could n’t really be bettered.  You must do well at school, sir, with your English.”

This did not increase Joe’s happiness, for English was the only study of which he did not have to feel ashamed.

And, while he stood thus a silent picture of misery and disgrace, Mr. Bronson looked upon him through the eyes of his own boyhood with an understanding which Joe could not have believed possible.

“However, what you need just now is not a discourse, but a bath and court-plaster and witch-hazel and cold-water bandages,” Mr. Bronson said; “so to bed with you.  You ’ll need all the sleep you can get, and you ’ll feel stiff and sore to-morrow morning, I promise you.”

The clock struck one as Joe pulled the bedclothes around him; and the next he knew he was being worried by a soft, insistent rapping, which seemed to continue through several centuries, until at last, unable to endure it longer, he opened his eyes and sat up.

The day was streaming in through the window—­bright and sunshiny day.  He stretched his arms to yawn; but a shooting pain darted through all the muscles, and his arms came down more rapidly than they had gone up.  He looked at them with a bewildered stare, till suddenly the events of the night rushed in upon him, and he groaned.

The rapping still persisted, and he cried:  “Yes, I hear.  What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock,” Bessie’s voice came to him through the door.  “Eight o’clock, and you ’ll have to hurry if you don’t want to be late for school.”

“Goodness!” He sprang out of bed precipitately, groaned with the pain from all his stiff muscles, and collapsed slowly and carefully on a chair.  “Why did n’t you call me sooner?” he growled.

“Father said to let you sleep.”

Joe groaned again, in another fashion Then his history-book caught his eye, and he groaned yet again and in still another fashion.

“All right,” he called.  “Go on.  I ’ll be down in a jiffy.”

He did come down in fairly brief order; but if Bessie had watched him descend the stairs she would have been astounded at the remarkable caution he observed and at the twinges of pain that every now and then contorted his face.  As it was, when she came upon him in the dining-room she uttered a frightened cry and ran over to him.