But Joe took to drinking and got in with a gang of boys who blackmailed small shopkeepers.

He used to come to me at times in occasional moods of repentance.

He was a splendid physical type and he'd been a leader in our athletics, so I took him back into the school to manage our teams in basket-ball.

He left the gang and stopped drinking, and we had long talks together about his great ambition.

He wanted to enter the Fire Department as soon as he was twenty-one.