"Not if I know it."
"What then shall you do?"
"Oh, I can find employment enough on shore."
"Would you like to go into the country and work on a farm?"
"No; work don't suit my constitution," replied the boy, with an ugly leer at his companions.
"I would be your friend, young man," continued the captain, "but you will not allow me. But let me warn you that idleness leads to vice, and that if you do not seek honest employment you will sink deeper and deeper in sin."
He turned away sick at heart, saying to himself, "I will not tell Frank that I saw him, he would grieve so over the poor God-forsaken fellow."
But this precaution proved useless. A few weeks after this, Mr. Greyson and his son were walking on the wharves, when they saw just before them a police officer arrest a company of drunken men for fighting in the streets. Frank gazed at them with great compassion, when suddenly he recognized Alfred. With a start of surprise he left his father, ran and seized the hand of the poor degraded fellow.
"O, Amos!" he cried, the only name by which he had known him; "don't go with those wicked men; come with me, father will find you something to do."
"He has been arrested for engaging in a drunken brawl," said the police officer, "and must come with me to prison."