JOE GETS INTO TROUBLE

“How lucky I have been,” thought Joe, in the best of spirits.  “There wasn’t one chance in ten of my succeeding, and yet I have succeeded.  Everything has turned out right.  If I hadn’t met this man, I couldn’t have got a ticket at half price.”

Joe found that after paying his hotel expenses, he should have a dollar left over.  This would be rather a small sum to start with in California, but Joe didn’t trouble himself much about that.

In the course of the day Joe found himself in the upper part of the Bowery.  It seemed to him a very lively street, and he was much interested in looking in at the shop windows as he passed.

He was standing before a window, when a stone from some quarter struck the pane and shivered it in pieces.

Joe was startled, and was gazing at the scene of havoc in bewilderment, when a stout German, the proprietor, rushed out and seized him by the collar.

“Aha!  I have you, you young rascal!” he exclaimed furiously.  “I’ll make you pay for this!”

By this time Joe had recovered his senses.

“Let me alone!” he exclaimed.

“I let you know!” exclaimed the angry man.  “You break my window!  You pay me five dollar pretty quick, or I send you to prison!”

“I didn’t break your window!  It’s a lie!”

“You tell me I lie?” shouted the angry German.  “First you break my window, then you tell me I lie!  You, one bad boy—­you one loafer!”

“I don’t know who broke your window,” said Joe, “but I tell you I didn’t.  I was standing here, looking in, when, all at once, I heard a crash.”

“You take me for one fool, perhaps,” said his captor, puffing with excitement.  “You want to get away, hey?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And get no money for my window?”

By this time a crowd had collected around the chief actors in this scene.  They were divided in opinion.

“Don’t he look wicked, the young scamp?” said a thin-visaged female with a long neck.

“Yes,” said her companion.  “He’s one of them street rowdies that go around doin’ mischief.  They come around and pull my bell, and run away, the villians!”

“What’s the matter, my boy?” asked a tall man with sandy hair, addressing himself to Joe in a friendly tone.

“This man says I broke his window.”

“How was it?  Did you break it?”

“No, sir.  I was standing looking in, when a stone came from somewhere and broke it.”

“Look here, sir,” said the sandy-haired man, addressing himself to the German, “what reason have you for charging this boy with breaking your window?”

“He stood shoost in front of it,” said the German.

“If he had broken it, he would have run away.  Didn’t that occur to you?”

“Some one broke mine window,” said the German.

“Of course; but a boy who threw a stone must do so from a distance, and he wouldn’t be likely to run up at once to the broken window.”