regretfully. 

 “Perhaps Uncle Walter wanted to reform you,” suggested Martha. 

 “Are there, then, no bandits in Chicago?” asked Victor. 

 “Well,” replied the girl, blushing in her turn, “we do not call them bandits.” 

 “Then what shall we do for a living?” inquired Beni, despairingly. 

 “A great deal can be done in a big American city,” said the child. “My father is a lawyer” (the bandits shuddered), “and my mother’s cousin is a police inspector.” 

 “Ah,” said Victor, “that is a good employment. The police need to be inspected, especially in Italy.” 

 “Everywhere!” added Beni. 

 “Then you could do other things,” continued Martha, encouragingly. “You could be motor men on trolley cars, or clerks in a department store. Some people even become aldermen to earn a living.” 

 The bandits shook their heads sadly. 

 “We are not fitted for such work,” said Victor. “Our business is to rob.” 

 Martha tried to think. 

 “It is rather hard to get positions in the gas office,” she said, “but you might become politicians.” 

 “No!” cried Beni, with sudden fierceness; “we must not abandon our high calling. Bandits we have always been, and bandits we must remain!” 

 “’Tis so!” agreed the fat man. 

 “Even in Chicago there must be people to rob,” remarked Victor, with cheerfulness. 

 Martha was distressed. 

 “I think they have all been robbed,” she objected. 

 “Then we can rob the robbers, for we have experience and talent beyond the ordinary,” said Beni. 

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