[i]

THE BOY SCOUTS
BOOK OF STORIES

[ii]

THE BUTCHER LOOKED DOWN AT THE FUNNY FACE AND SAW THE KINDLY MOTIVE UNDER THE EXAGGERATED BLUFFNESS
[PAGE 12]

[iii]

THE BOY SCOUTS
BOOK OF STORIES

BY

FRANKLIN K. MATHIEWS

CHIEF SCOUT LIBRARIAN
BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA

[iv]

[v]

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

So much of my time is given to reading boys’ books
that, when I read books for grown-ups, now and again
I find myself saying, “What a bully story for boys to
read!” Latterly, I have been putting down the titles
of such stories. When the list began to lengthen, it
occurred to me, why not make a book for boys containing
stories like that: stories written for grown-ups but
also of interest to boys in their early teens.

Such a collection of stories could not be made, however,
without the consent of the authors and publishers,
but since everybody loves a boy, I didn’t have much
trouble in convincing them they ought to grant permission
to use their stories for such a purpose and, as
a result, I am pleased to present to the boy readers of
our country the Boy Scouts Book of Stories.

Looking over the list, I find it covers pretty well the
reading interests of boys. There are stories about boy
scouts, school stories, stories of the sea and “wild
west” stories, detective and mystery stories; most of
all, though, a goodly number of humorous stories, and
I am willing to hazard the guess there will be no regrets
on the part of readers because the selections happen
to abound in stories of the latter sort.

How about it, boys?[vii]

CONTENTS

[ix]

ILLUSTRATIONS

[1]

I.—The Great Big Man[A]

By Owen Johnson

Inside Memorial Hall the impatient classes stirred
nervously, counting off the minutes, sitting gingerly
on the seat-edges for fear of wrinkling the carefully
pressed suits or shifting solicitously the sharpened
trousers in peril of a bagging at the knees. Heavens!
how interminable the hour was, sitting there in
a planked shirt and a fashion-high collar—and what
a recitation! Would Easter ever begin, that long-coveted[2]
vacation when the growing boy, according
to theory, goes home to rest from the fatiguing draining
of his brain, but in reality returns exhausted by
dinners, dances, and theaters, with perhaps a little
touch of the measles to exchange with his neighbors.
Even the masters droned through the perfunctory
exercises, flunking the boys by twos and threes, by
groups, by long rows, but without malice or emotion.

Outside, in the roadway, by the steps, waited a
long, incongruous line of vehicles, scraped together
from every stable in the countryside, forty-odd. A
few buggies for nabobs in the Upper House, two-seated
rigs (holding eight), country buckboards, excursion
wagons to be filled according to capacity at
twenty-five cents the trip, hacks from Trenton, and
the regulation stage-coach—all piled high with bags
and suitcases, waiting for the bell that would start
them on the scramble for the Trenton station, five
miles away. At the horses’ heads the lazy negroes
lolled, drawing languid puffs from their cigarettes,
unconcerned.

Suddenly the bell rang out, and the supine teamsters,
galvanizing into life, jumped to their seats.
The next moment, down the steps, pell-mell, scrambling
and scuffling, swarming over the carriages, with
joyful clamor, the school arrived. In an instant the
first buggies were off, with whips frantically plied,
disputing at a gallop the race to Trenton.

Then the air was filled with shouts.[3]

“Where’s Butsey?”

“Oh, you, Red Dog!”

“Where’s my bag?”

“Jump in!”

“Oh, we’ll never get there!”

“Drive on!”

“Don’t wait!”

“Where’s Jack?”

“Hurry up, you loafer!”

“Hurry up, you butter-fingers!”

“Get in!”

“Pile in!”

“Haul him in!”

“We’re off!”

“Hurrah!”

Wagon after wagon, crammed with joyful boyhood,
disappeared in a cloud of dust, while back
returned a confused uproar of broken cheers, snatches
of songs, with whoops and shrieks for more speed
dominating the whole. The last load rollicked away
to join the mad race, where far ahead a dozen buggies,
with foam-flecked horses, vied with one another,
their youthful jockeys waving their hats,
hurling defiance back and forth, or shrieking with
delight as each antagonist was caught and left behind.

The sounds of striving died away, the campus
grew still once more. The few who had elected to
wait until after luncheon scattered hurriedly about[4]
the circle and disappeared in the houses, to fling
last armfuls into the already bursting trunks.

On top of Memorial steps the Great Big Man remained,
solitary and marooned, gazing over the fields,
down the road to Trenton, where still the rising dust-clouds
showed the struggle toward vacation. He
stood like a monument, gazing fixedly, struggling with
all the might of his twelve years to conquer the awful
feeling of homesickness that came to him. Homesickness—the
very word was an anomaly: what home
had he to go to? An orphan without ever having
known his father, scarcely remembering his mother
in the hazy reflections of years, little Joshua Tibbets
had arrived at the school at the beginning of the
winter term, to enter the shell,[B] and gradually pass
through the forms in six or seven years.

The boys of the Dickinson, after a glance at his
funny little body and his plaintive, doglike face, had
baptized him the “Great Big Man” (Big Man for
short), and had elected him the child of the house.

He had never known what homesickness was before.
He had had a premonition of it, perhaps, from
time to time during the last week, wondering a little
in the classroom as each day Snorky Green, beside
him, calculated the days until Easter, then the hours,
then the minutes. He had watched him with an
amused, uncomprehending interest. Why was he so
anxious to be off? After all, he, the Big Man, found[5]
it a pleasant place, after the wearisome life from
hotel to hotel. He liked the boys; they were kind
to him, and looked after his moral and spiritual welfare
with bluff but affectionate solicitude. It is true,
one was always hungry, and only ten and a half
hours’ sleep was a refinement of cruelty unworthy of
a great institution. But it was pleasant running over
to the jigger-shop and doing errands for giants like
Reiter and Butcher Stevens, with the privileges of
the commission. He liked to be tumbled in the grass
by the great tackle of the football eleven, or thrown
gently from arm to arm like a medicine-ball, quits for
the privileges of pommeling his big friends ad libitum
and without fear of reprisals. And then what a
privilege to be allowed to run out on the field and
fetch the nose-guard or useless bandage, thrown down
haphazard, with the confidence that he, the Big Man,
was there to fetch and guard! Then he was permitted
to share their studies, to read slowly from handy,
literal translations, his head cushioned on the Egghead’s
knee, while the lounging group swore genially
at Pius Æneas or sympathized with Catiline. He
shagged elusive balls and paraded the bats at shoulder-arms.
He opened the mail, and sorted it, fetching
the bag from Farnum’s. He was even allowed
to stand treat to the mighty men of the house whenever
the change in his pocket became too heavy for
comfort.

In return he was taught to box, to wind tennis[6]
rackets, to blacken shoes, to crease trousers, and sew
on the buttons of the house. Nothing was lacking
to his complete happiness.

Then lately he had begun to realize that there was
something else in the school life, outside it, but very
much a part of it—vacation.

At first the idea of quitting such a fascinating life
was quite incomprehensible to him. What gorging
dinner-party could compare with the thrill of feasting
at midnight on crackers and cheese, deviled ham, boned
chicken, mince pie and root beer, by the light of a
solitary candle, with the cracks of the doors and windows
smothered with rugs and blankets, listening at
every mouthful for the tread of the master that sometimes
(oh, acme of delight!) actually passed unsuspectingly
by the door?

Still, there was a joy in leaving all this. He began
to notice it distinctly when the trunks were hauled
from the cellar and the packing began. The packing—what
a lark that had been! He had folded so many
coats and trousers, carefully, in their creases, under
Macnooder’s generous instructions, and, perched on
the edge of the banisters like a queer little marmoset,
he had watched Wash Simmons throw great armfuls
of assorted clothing into the trays and churn them
into place with a baseball bat, while the Triumphant
Egghead carefully built up his structure with nicety
and tenderness. Only he, the Big Man, sworn to
secrecy, knew what Hickey had surreptitiously inserted[7]
in the bottom of Egghead’s trunk, and also
what, from the depths of Wash’s muddled clothing,
would greet the fond mother or sister who did the
unpacking; and every time he thought of it he
laughed one of those laughs that pain. Then gleefully
he had watched Macnooder stretching a strap
until it burst with consequences dire, to the complete
satisfaction of Hickey, Turkey, Wash, and the Egghead,
who, embracing fondly on the top of another
trunk, were assisting Butcher Stevens to close an impossible
gap.

Yet into all this amusement a little strain of melancholy
had stolen. Here was a sensation of which he
was not part, an emotion he did not know. Still, his
imagination did not seize it; he could not think of
the halls quiet, with no familiar figures lolling out of
the windows, or a campus unbrokenly green.

Now from his lonely eerie on Memorial steps, looking
down the road to vacation, the Great Big Man
suddenly understood—understood and felt. It was
he who had gone away, not they. The school he
loved was not with him, but roaring down to Trenton.
No one had thought to invite him for a visit;
but then, why should any one?

“I’m only a runt, after all,” he said, angrily, to
himself. He stuck his fists deep in his pockets, and
went down the steps like a soldier and across the
campus chanting valorously the football slogan:[8]

He arrived resolutely at the Dickinson, and started
up the deserted stairs for his room. There was only
one thing he feared; he did not want Mrs. Rogers,
wife of the housemaster, to “mother” him. Anything
but that! He was glad that after luncheon he
would have to take his meals at the Lodge. That
would avert embarrassing situations, for whatever his
friends might think, he, the Great Big Man, was a
runt in stature only.

To express fully the excessive gayety he enjoyed, he
tramped to his room, bawling out:

[9]

All at once a gruff voice spoke:

“My what a lot of noise for a Great Big Man!”

The Big Man stopped thunderstruck. The voice
came from Butcher Stevens’ room. Cautiously he
tiptoed down the hall and paused, with his funny little
nose and eyes peering around the door-jamb. Sure
enough, there was Butcher, and there were the Butcher’s
trunks and bags. What could it mean?

“I say,” he began, according to etiquette, “is that
you, Butcher?”

“Very much so, Big Man.”

“What are you doing here?”

“The faculty, Big Man, desire my presence,” said
the Butcher, sarcastically. “They would like my expert
advice on a few problems that are perplexing
them.”

“Ah,” said the Great Big Man, slowly. Then he
understood. The Butcher had been caught two nights
before returning by Sawtelle’s window at a very late
hour. He did not know exactly the facts because he
had been told not to be too inquisitive, and he was
accustomed to obeying instructions. Supposing the
faculty should expel him! To the Big Man such a
sentence meant the end of all things, something too
horrible to contemplate. So he said, “Oh, Butcher, is
it serious?”

“Rather, youngster; rather, I should say.”

“What will the baseball team do?” said the Big
Man, overwhelmed.[10]

“That’s what’s worrying me,” replied the crack
first-baseman, gloomily. He rose and went to the
window, where he stood beating a tattoo.

“You don’t suppose Crazy Opdyke could cover the
bag, do you?” said the Big Man.

“Not in a lifetime.”

“How about Stubby?”

“Too short.”

“They might do something with the Waladoo.”

“Not for first; he can’t stop anything below his
knees.”

“Then I don’t see how we’re going to beat Andover,
Butcher.”

“It does look bad.”

“Do you think the faculty will—will——”

“Fire me? Pretty certain, youngster.”

“Oh, Butcher!”

“Trouble is, they’ve got the goods on me—dead to
rights.”

“But does the Doctor know how it’ll break up the
nine?”

Butcher laughed loudly.

“He doesn’t ap-preciate that, youngster.”

“No,” said the Big Man, reflectively. “They
never do, do they?”

The luncheon bell rang, and they hurried down.
The Big Man was overwhelmed by the discovery. If
Butcher didn’t cover first, how could they ever beat
Andover and the Princeton freshmen? Even Hill[11]
School and Pennington might trounce them. He fell
into a brown melancholy, until suddenly he caught
the sympathetic glance of Mrs. Rogers on him, and
for fear that she would think it was due to his own
weakness, he began to chat volubly.

He had always been a little in awe of the Butcher.
Not that the Butcher had not been friendly; but he
was so blunt and rough and unbending that he rather
repelled intimacy. He watched him covertly, admiring
the bravado with which he pretended unconcern.
It must be awful to be threatened with expulsion and
actually to be expelled, to have your whole life ruined,
once and forever. The Big Man’s heart was stirred.
He said to himself that he had not been sympathetic
enough, and he resolved to repair the error. So,
luncheon over, he said with an appearance of carelessness:

“I say, old man, come on over to the jigger-shop.
I’ll set ’em up. I’m pretty flush, you know.”

The Butcher looked down at the funny face and
saw the kindly motive under the exaggerated bluffness.
Being touched by it, he said gruffly:

“Well; come on, then, you old billionaire!”

The Big Man felt a great movement of sympathy
in him for his big comrade. He would have liked to
slip his little fist in the great brown hand and say
something appropriate, only he could think of nothing
appropriate. Then he remembered that among men
there should be no letting down, no sentimentality. So[12]
he lounged along, squinting up at the Butcher and trying
to copy his rolling gait.

At the jigger-shop, Al lifted his eyebrows in well-informed
disapproval, saying curtly:

“What are you doing here, you Butcher, you?”

“Building up my constitution,” said Stevens, with
a frown. “I’m staying because I like it, of course.
Lawrenceville is just lovely at Easter: spring birds
and violets, and that sort of thing.”

“You’re a nice one,” said Al, a baseball enthusiast.
“Why couldn’t you behave until after the Andover
game?”

“Of course; but you needn’t rub it in,” replied the
Butcher, staring at the floor. “Give me a double
strawberry, and heave it over.”

Al, seeing him not insensible, relented. He added
another dab to the double jigger already delivered,
and said, shoving over the glass:

“It’s pretty hard luck on the team, Butcher.
There’s no one hereabouts can hold down the bag like
you. Heard anything definite?”

“No.”

“What do you think?”

“I’d hate to say.”

“Is any one doing anything?”

“Cap Kiefer is to see the Doctor to-night.”

“I say, Butcher,” said the Big Man, in sudden fear,
“you won’t go up to Andover and play against us,
will you?”[13]

“Against the school! Well, rather not!” said the
Butcher, indignantly. Then he added: “No; if they
fire me, I know what I’ll do.”

The Big Man wondered if he contemplated suicide;
that must be the natural thing to do when one is expelled.
He felt that he must keep near Butcher, close
all the day. So he made bold to wander about with
him, watching him with solicitude.

They stopped at Lalo’s for a hot dog, and lingered
at Bill Appleby’s, where the Butcher mournfully tried
the new mits and swung the bats with critical consideration.
Then feeling hungry, they trudged up to
Conover’s for pancakes and syrup. Everywhere was
the same feeling of dismay; what would become of
the baseball nine? Then it suddenly dawned upon
the Big Man that no one seemed to be sorry on the
Butcher’s account. He stopped with a pancake poised
on his fork, looked about to make sure no one could
hear him, and blurted out:

“I say, Butcher, it’s not only on account of first base,
you know; I’m darn sorry for you, honest!”

“Why, you profane little cuss,” said the Butcher,
frowning, “who told you to swear?”

“Don’t make fun of me, Butcher,” said the Great
Big Man, feeling very little; “I meant it.”

“Conover,” said the Butcher, loudly, “more pancakes,
and brown ’em!”

He, too, had been struck by the fact that in the general
mourning there had been scant attention paid to[14]
his personal fortunes. He had prided himself on the
fact that he was not susceptible to “feelings,” that
he neither gave nor asked for sympathy. He was
older than his associates, but years had never reconciled
him to Latin or Greek or, for that matter, to
mathematics in simple or aggravated form. He had
been the bully of his village out in northern Iowa,
and when a stranger came, he trounced him first, and
cemented the friendship afterward. He liked hard
knocks, give and take. He liked the school because
there was the long football season in the autumn, with
the joy of battling, with every sinew of the body
alert and the humming of cheers indistinctly heard, as
he rammed through the yielding line. Then the spring
meant long hours of romping over the smooth diamond,
cutting down impossible hits, guarding first
base like a bull-dog, pulling down the high ones,
smothering the wild throws that came ripping along
the ground, threatening to jump up against his eyes,
throws that other fellows dodged. He was in the
company of equals, of good fighters, like Charley De
Soto, Hickey, Flash Condit, and Turkey, fellows it
was a joy to fight beside. Also, it was good to feel
that four hundred-odd wearers of the red and black
put their trust in him, and that trust became very
sacred to him. He played hard—very hard, but
cleanly, because combat was the joy of life to
him. He broke other rules, not as a lark, but out of
the same fierce desire for battle, to seek out danger[15]
wherever he could find it. He had been caught fair
and square, and he knew that for that particular offense
there was only one punishment. Yet he hoped
against hope, suddenly realizing what it would cost
him to give up the great school where, however, he
had never sought friendships or anything beyond the
admiration of his mates.

The sympathy of the Big Man startled him, then
made him uncomfortable. He had no intention of
crying out, and he did not like or understand the
new emotion that rose in him as he wondered when his
sentence would come.

“Well, youngster,” he said, gruffly, “had enough?
Have another round?”

“I’ve had enough,” said the Big Man, heaving a
sigh. “Let me treat, Butcher.”

“Not to-day, youngster.”

“Butcher, I—I’d like to. I’m awfully flush.”

“Not to-day.”

“Let’s match for it.”

“What!” said the Butcher, fiercely. “Don’t let me
hear any more of that talk. You’ve got to grow up
first.”

The Big Man, thus rebuked, acquiesced meekly.
The two strolled back to the campus in silence.

“Suppose we have a catch,” said the Big Man, tentatively.

“All right,” said the Butcher, smiling.

Intrenched behind a gigantic mit, the Big Man[16]
strove valorously to hold the difficult balls. After a
long period of this mitigated pleasure they sat down
to rest. Then Cap Kiefer’s stocky figure appeared
around the Dickinson, and the Butcher went off for
a long, solemn consultation.

The Big Man, thus relieved of responsibility, felt
terribly alone. He went to his room and took down
volume two of “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and
stretched out on the window-seat. Somehow the stupendous
adventures failed to enthrall him. It was
still throughout the house. He caught himself listening
for the patter of Hickey’s shoes above, dancing
a breakdown, or the rumble of Egghead’s laugh
down the hall, or a voice calling, “Who can lend me
a pair of suspenders?”

And the window was empty. It seemed so strange
to look up from the printed page and find no one in
the Woodhull opposite, shaving painfully at the window,
or lolling like himself over a novel, all the time
keeping an eye on the life below. He could not jeer
at Two Inches Brown and Crazy Opdyke practicing
curves, nor assure them that the Dickinson nine would
just fatten on those easy ones. No one halloed from
house to house, no voice below drawled out:

“Oh, you Great Big Man! Stick your head out of
the window!”

There was no one to call across for the time o’ day,
or for just a nickel to buy stamps, or for the loan of
a baseball glove, or a sweater, or a collar button, scissors,[17]
button-hook, or fifty and one articles that are
never bought but borrowed.

The Great Big Man let “The Count of Monte
Cristo” tumble unheeded on the floor, seized a tennis
ball, and went across the campus to the esplanade of
the Upper House, where for half an hour he bounced
the ball against the rim of the ledge, a privilege that
only a fourth former may enjoy. Tiring of this, he
wandered down to the pond, where he skimmed innumerable
flat stones until he had exhausted the attractions
of this limited amusement.

“I—I’m getting homesick,” he admitted finally. “I
wish I had a dog—something living—around.”

At supper-time he saw the Butcher again, and forgot
his own loneliness in the concern he felt for his
big friend. He remembered that the Butcher had said
that if he were expelled he knew what he would do.
What had he meant by that? Something terrible.
He glanced up at the Butcher, and, being very apprehensive,
made bold to ask:

“Butcher, I say, what does Cap think?”

“He hasn’t seen the Doctor yet,” said the Butcher.
“He’ll see him to-night. I guess I’ll go over myself,
just to leave a calling-card accordin’ to et-iquette!”

The Big Man kept his own counsel, but when the
Butcher, after dinner, disappeared through the awful
portal of Foundation House, he sat down in the dark
under a distant tree to watch. In a short five minutes
the Butcher reappeared, stood a moment undecided on[18]
the steps, stooped, picked up a handful of gravel, flung
it into the air with a laugh, and started along the
circle.

“Butcher!”

“Hello, who’s that!”

“It’s me, Butcher,” said the Big Man, slipping his
hand into the other’s; “I—I wanted to know.”

“You aren’t going to get sentimental, are you,
youngster?” said Stevens, disapprovingly.

“Please, Butcher,” said the Great Big Man, pleadingly,
“don’t be cross with me! Is there any hope?”

“The Doctor won’t see me, young one,” said the
Butcher, “but the at-mosphere was not encouraging.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

They went hand in hand over to the chapel, where
they chose the back steps and settled down with the
great walls at their back and plenty of gravel at their
feet to fling aimlessly into the dusky night.

“Butcher?”

“Well, Big Man!”

“What will you do if—if they fire you?”

“Oh, lots of things. I’ll go hunting for gold somewhere,
or strike out for South America or Africa.”

“Oh!” The Big Man was immensely relieved; but
he added incredulously, “Then you’ll give up football
and baseball?”

“Looks that way.”[19]

“You won’t mind?”

“Yes,” said the Butcher, suddenly, “I will mind.
I’ll hate to leave the old school. I’d like to have one
chance more.”

“Why don’t you tell the Doctor that?”

“Never! I don’t cry out when I’m caught, youngster.
I take my punishment.”

“Yes,” said the Big Man, reflecting. “That’s right,
I suppose; but, then, there’s the team to think of, you
know.”

They sat for a long time in silence, broken suddenly
by the Butcher’s voice, not so gruff as usual.

“Say, Big Man—feeling sort of homesick?”

No answer.

“Just a bit?”

Still no answer. The Butcher looked down, and
saw the Big Man struggling desperately to hold in the
sobs.

“Here, none of that, youngster!” he exclaimed in
alarm. “Brace up, old man!”

“I—I’m all right,” said the Great Big Man with
difficulty. “It’s nothing.”

The Butcher patted him on the shoulder, and then
drew his arm around the little body. The Big Man
put his head down and blubbered, just as though he
had been a little fellow, while his companion sat perplexed,
wondering what to do or say in the strange
situation.

“So he’s a little homesick, is he?” he said lamely.[20]

“N-o-o,” said the Great Big Man, “not just that;
it’s—it’s all the fellows I miss.”

The Butcher was silent. He, too, began to understand
that feeling; only he, in his battling pride, resisted
fiercely the weakness.

“You’ve got an uncle somewhere, haven’t you,
youngster?” he said gently. “Doesn’t he look after
you in vacation-time?”

“I don’t miss him,” replied the Big Man, shaking
his head. Then he pulled himself together and said
apologetically: “It’s just being left behind that makes
me such a damned cry-baby.”

“Youngster,” said the Butcher, sternly, “your language
is at-rocious. Such words do not sound well in
the mouth of a suckling of your size.”

“I didn’t mean to,” said the Big Man, blushing.

“You must leave something to grow up for, young
man,” said the Butcher, profoundly. “Now tell me
about that uncle of yours. I don’t fancy his silhouette.”

The Great Big Man, thus encouraged, poured out
his lonely starved little heart, while the Butcher listened
sympathetically, feeling a certain comfort in
sitting with his arm around a little fellow-being. Not
that he was sensible of giving much comfort; his comments,
he felt, were certainly inadequate; nor did he
measure in any way up to the situation.

“Now it’s better, eh, Big Man?” he said at last[21]
when the little fellow had stopped. “Does you sort
of good to talk things out.”

“Oh, yes; thank you, Butcher.”

“All right, then, youngster.”

“All right. I say, you—you don’t ever feel that
way, do you—homesick, I mean?”

“Not much.”

“You’ve got a home, haven’t you?”

“Quite too much, young one. If they fire me, I’ll
keep away from there. Strike out for myself.”

“Of course, then, it’s different.”

“Young one,” said the Butcher, suddenly, “that’s
not quite honest. If I have to clear out of here, it
will cut me up con-siderable.”

“Honest?”

“A fact. I didn’t know it before; but it will cut
me up to strike out and leave all this behind. I want
another chance; and do you know why?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to make friends. Oh, I haven’t got any
real friends, youngster; you needn’t shake your head.
It’s my fault. I know it. You’re the first mortal
soul who cared what became of me. All the rest are
thinking of the team.”

“Now, Butcher——”

“Don’t think I’m crying out!” said the Butcher, in
instant alarm. “It’s all been up to me. Truth is, I’ve
been too darned proud. But I’d like to get another
whack at it.”[22]

“Perhaps you will, Butcher.”

“No, no, there’s no reason why I should.” The
Butcher sat solemnly a moment, flinging pebbles down
into the dark tennis courts. Suddenly he said: “Look
here, Big Man, I’m going to give you some good advice.”

“All right, Butcher.”

“And I want you to tuck it away in your thinker—savez?
You’re a nice kid now, a good sort, but
you’ve got a lot of chances for being spoiled. Don’t
get fresh. Don’t get a swelled head just because a
lot of the older fellows let you play around. There’s
nothing so hateful in the sight of God or man as a
fresh kid.”

“You don’t think——” began the Big Man in dismay.

“No; you’re all right now. You’re quiet, and don’t
tag around, and you’re a good sort, darned if you
aren’t, and that’s why I don’t want to see you spoiled.
Now a straight question: Do you smoke?”

“Why, that is—well, Butcher, I did try once a puff
on Snookers’ cigarette.”

“You ought to be spanked!” said the Butcher, angrily.
“And when I get hold of Snookers, I’ll tan
him. The idea of his letting you! Don’t you monkey
around tobacco yet a while. First of all, it’s fresh, and
second, you’ve got to grow. You want to make a team,
don’t you, while you’re here?”[23]

“O-o-h!” said the Great Big Man with a long
sigh.

“Then just stick to growing, ‘Cause you’ve got
work cut out for you there. Now I’m not preachin’;
I’m saying that you want to fill out and grow up and
do something. Harkee.”

“All right.”

“Cut out Snookers and that gang. Pick out the
fellows that count, as you go along, and just remember
this, if you forget the rest: if you want to put
ducks in Tabby’s bed or nail down his desk, do it
because you want to do it, not because some other
fellow wants you to do it. D’ye hear?”

“Yes, Butcher.”

“Remember that, youngster; if I’d stuck to it, I’d
kept out of a peck of trouble.” He reflected a moment
and added: “Then I’d study a little. It’s not a bad
thing, I guess, in the long run, and it gets the masters
on your side. And now jump up, and we’ll trot
home.”

The following night the Big Man, again under his
tree, waited for the result of the conference that was
going on inside Foundation House between the Doctor
and the Butcher and Cap Kiefer. It was long,
very long. The minutes went slowly, and it was very
dark there, with hardly a light showing in the circle
of houses that ordinarily seemed like a procession of
lighted ferry-boats. After an interminable hour, the
Butcher and Cap came out. He needed no word to tell[24]
what their attitudes showed only too plainly: the
Butcher was expelled!

The Big Man waited until the two had passed into
the night, and then, with a sudden resolve, went
bravely to the doorbell and rang. Before he quite appreciated
the audacity of his act, he found himself in
the sanctum facing a much-perplexed head master.

“Doctor, I—I——” The Big Man stopped, overwhelmed
by the awful majesty of the Doctor, on
whose face still sat the grimness of the past conference.

“Well, Joshua, what’s the matter?” said the head
master, relaxing a bit before one of his favorites.

“Please, sir, I’m a little—a little embarrassed, I’m
afraid,” said the Great Big Man, desperately.

“Am I so terrible as all that?” said the Doctor, smiling.

“Yes, sir—you are,” the Big Man replied frankly.
Then he said, plunging in, “Doctor, is the Butcher—is
Stevens—are you going to—expel him?”

“That is my painful duty, Joshua,” said the Doctor,
frowning.

“Oh, Doctor,” said the Big Man all in a breath,
“you don’t know—you’re making a mistake.”

“I am? Why, Joshua?”

“Because—you don’t know. Because the Butcher
won’t tell you, he’s too proud, sir; because he doesn’t
want to cry out, sir.”[25]

“What do you mean exactly?” said the Doctor in
surprise. “Does Stevens know you’re here?”

“Oh, Heavens, no, sir!” said the Big Man in horror.
“And you must never tell him, sir; that would
be too terrible.”

“Joshua,” said the Doctor, impressively, “I am expelling
Stevens because he is just the influence I don’t
want boys of your age to come under.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” said the Big Man, “I know you think
that, sir; but really, Doctor, that’s where you are
wrong; really you are, sir.”

The Doctor saw there was something under the
surface, and he encouraged the little fellow to talk.
The Big Man, forgetting all fear in the seriousness of
the situation, told the listening head master all the
Butcher’s conversation with him on the chapel steps
the night before—told it simply and eloquently, with
an ardor that bespoke absolute faith. Then suddenly
he stopped.

“That’s all, sir,” he said, frightened.

The Doctor rose and walked back and forth,
troubled and perplexed. There was no doubting the
sincerity of the recital: it was a side of Stevens he
had not guessed. Finally he turned and rested his
hand on the Big Man’s shoulders.

“Thank you,” he said; “it does put another light
on the question. I’ll think it over.”

When, ten days later, the school came trickling
home along the road from vacation, they saw, against[26]
all hope, the Butcher holding down first base, frolicking
over the diamond in the old familiar way, and a
great shout of joy and relief went up. But how it
had happened no one ever knew, least of all Cap and
the Butcher, who had gone from Foundation House
that night in settled despair.

To add to Butcher’s mystification, the Doctor, in
announcing his reprieve, had added:

“I’ve decided to make a change, Stevens. I’m going
to put Tibbetts in to room with you. I place him
in your charge. I’m going to try a little responsibility
on you.”

[27]

II.—A Twilight Adventure[C]

By Melville Davisson Post

“Ride on!” he said.

But my Uncle Abner did not ride on. He pulled up
his big chestnut and looked calmly at the man.

[28]

“You speak like one having authority,” he said.

The man answered with an oath.

“Ride on, or you’ll get into trouble!”

Abner’s eyes traveled over the speaker with a deliberate
scrutiny; then he answered: “Are the roads
of Virginia held by arms?”

“This one is,” replied the man.

“I think not,” replied my Uncle Abner, and, touching
his horse with his heel, he turned into the crossroad.

The man seized his weapon, and I heard the hammer
click under his thumb. Abner must have heard it,
too, but he did not turn his broad back. He only
called to me in his usual matter-of-fact voice:

“Go on, Martin; I will overtake you.”

The man brought his gun up to his middle, but he
did not shoot. He was like all those who undertake
to command obedience without having first determined
precisely what they will do if their orders are
disregarded. He was prepared to threaten with
desperate words, but not to support that threat with a
desperate act, and he hung there uncertain, cursing
under his breath.

I would have gone on as my uncle had told me to
do, but now the man came to a decision.

“No!” he said; “if he goes in, you go in, too!”

And he seized my bridle and turned my horse into
the crossroad; then he followed.

There is a long twilight in these hills. The sun[29]
departs, but the day remains. A sort of weird, dim,
elfin day, that dawns at sunset, and envelops and
possesses the world. The land is full of light, but it
is the light of no heavenly sun. It is a light equal
everywhere, as though the earth strove to illumine
itself, and succeeded with that labor.

The stars are not yet out. Now and then a pale
moon rides in the sky, but it has no power, and the
light is not from it. The wind is usually gone; the
air is soft, and the fragrance of the fields fills it like
a perfume. The noises of the day and of the creatures
that go about by day cease, and the noises of
the night and of the creatures that haunt the night
begin. The bat swoops and circles in the maddest
action, but without a sound. The eye sees him, but
the ear hears nothing. The whippoorwill begins his
plaintive cry, and one hears, but does not see.

It is a world that we do not understand, for we
are creatures of the sun, and we are fearful lest we
come upon things at work here, of which we have
no experience, and that may be able to justify themselves
against our reason. And so a man falls into
silence when he travels in this twilight, and he looks
and listens with his senses out on guard.

It was an old wagon-road that we entered, with
the grass growing between the ruts. The horses
traveled without a sound until we began to enter a
grove of ancient beech trees; then the dead leaves
cracked and rustled. Abner did not look behind him,[30]
and so he did not know that I came. He knew that
some one followed, but he doubtless took it for the
sentinel in the road. And I did not speak.

The man with the cocked gun rode grimly behind
me. I did not know whither we went or to what
end. We might be shot down from behind a tree
or murdered in our saddles. It was not a land where
men took desperate measures upon a triviality. And
I knew that Abner rode into something that little
men, lacking courage, would gladly have stayed out of.

Presently my ear caught a sound, or, rather, a
confused mingling of sounds, as of men digging in
the earth. It was faint, and some distance beyond
us in the heart of the beech woods, but as we traveled
the sound increased and I could distinguish the strokes
of the mattock, and the thrust of the shovel and the
clatter of the earth on the dry leaves.

These sounds seemed at first to be before us, and
then, a little later, off on our right-hand. And finally,
through the gray boles of the beech trees in the lowland,
I saw two men at work digging a pit. They had
just begun their work, for there was little earth thrown
out. But there was a great heap of leaves that they
had cleared away, and heavy cakes of the baked crust
that the mattocks had pried up. The length of the
pit lay at right angles to the road, and the men were
working with their backs towards us. They were in
their shirts and trousers, and the heavy mottled shadows
thrown by the beech limbs hovered on their backs[31]
and shoulders like a flock of night birds. The earth
was baked and hard; the mattock rang on it, and among
the noises of their work they did not hear us.

I saw Abner look off at this strange labor, his head
half turned, but he did not stop and we went on.
The old wagon-road made a turn into the low ground.
I heard the sound of horses, and a moment later we
came upon a dozen men.

I shall not easily forget that scene. The beech
trees had been deadened by some settler who had
chopped a ring around them, and they stood gaunt
with a few tattered leaves, letting the weird twilight
in. Some of the men stood about, others sat on the
fallen trees, and others in their saddles. But upon
every man of that grim company there was the air
and aspect of one who waits for something to be
finished.

An old man with a heavy iron-gray beard smoked
a pipe, puffing out great mouthfuls of smoke with
a sort of deliberate energy; another whittled a stick,
cutting a bull with horns, and shaping his work with
the nicest care; and still another traced letters on the
pommel of his saddle with his thumb-nail.

A little to one side a great pronged beech thrust
out a gray arm, and under it two men sat on their
horses, their elbows strapped to their bodies and
their mouths gagged with a saddle-cloth. And behind
them a man in his saddle was working with a
colt halter, unraveling the twine that bound the head-piece[32]
and seeking thereby to get a greater length of
rope.

“SOME OF THE MEN STOOD ABOUT. BEHIND THEM TWO MEN SAT ON THEIR HORSES, THEIR ELBOWS STRAPPED TO THEIR BODIES”

This was the scene when I caught it first. But a
moment later, when my uncle rode into it, the thing
burst into furious life. Men sprang up, caught his
horse by the bit and covered him with weapons.
Some one called for the sentinel who rode behind
me, and he galloped up. For a moment there was
confusion. Then the big man who had smoked with
such deliberation called out my uncle’s name, others
repeated it, and the panic was gone. But a ring of
stern, determined faces were around him and before
his horse, and with the passing of the flash of action
there passed no whit of the grim purpose upon which
these men were set.

My uncle looked about him.

“Lemuel Arnold,” he said; “Nicholas Vance, Hiram
Ward, you here!”

As my uncle named these men I knew them. They
were cattle grazers. Ward was the big man with
the pipe. The men with them were their renters and
drovers.

Their lands lay nearest to the mountains. The
geographical position made for feudal customs and
a certain independence of action. They were on the
border, they were accustomed to say, and had to take
care of themselves. And it ought to be written that
they did take care of themselves, with courage and[33]
decision, and on occasion they also took care of Virginia.

Their fathers had pushed the frontier of the dominion
northward and westward and had held the
land. They had fought the savage single-handed and
desperately, by his own methods and with his own
weapons. Ruthless and merciless, eye for eye and
tooth for tooth, they returned what they were given.

They did not send to Virginia for militia when
the savage came; they fought him at their doors,
and followed him through the forest, and took their
toll of death. They were hardier than he was, and
their hands were heavier and bloodier, until the old
men in the tribes of the Ohio Valley forbade these
raids because they cost too much, and turned the
war parties south into Kentucky.

Certain historians have written severely of these
men and their ruthless methods, and prattled of humane
warfare; but they wrote nursing their soft
spines in the security of a civilization which these
men’s hands had builded, and their words are hollow.

“Abner,” said Ward, “let me speak plainly. We
have got an account to settle with a couple of cattle
thieves and we are not going to be interfered with.
Cattle stealing and murder have got to stop in these
hills. We’ve had enough of it.”

“Well,” replied my uncle, “I am the last man in
Virginia to interfere with that. We have all had[34]
enough of it, and we are all determined that it must
cease. But how do you propose to end it?”

“With a rope,” said Ward.

“It is a good way,” replied Abner, “when it is
done the right way.”

“What do you mean by the right way?” said Ward.

“I mean,” answered my uncle, “that we have all
agreed to a way and we ought to stick to our agreement.
Now, I want to help you to put down cattle
stealing and murder, but I want also to keep my
word.”

“And how have you given your word?”

“In the same way that you have given yours,”
said Abner, “and as every man here has given his.
Our fathers found out that they could not manage
the assassin and the thief when every man undertook
to act for himself, so they got together and
agreed upon a certain way to do these things. Now,
we have indorsed what they agreed to, and promised
to obey it, and I for one would like to keep my
promise.”

The big man’s face was puzzled. Now it cleared.

“You mean the law?”

“Call it what you like,” replied Abner; “it is merely
the agreement of everybody to do certain things in a
certain way.”

The man made a decisive gesture with a jerk of
his head.[35]

“Well,” he said, “we’re going to do this thing our
own way.”

My uncle’s face became thoughtful.

“Then,” he said, “you will injure some innocent
people.”

“You mean these two blacklegs?”

And Ward indicated the prisoners with a gesture
of his thumb.

My uncle lifted his face and looked at the two
men some distance away beneath the great beech,
as though he had but now observed them.

“I was not thinking of them,” he answered. “I
was thinking that if men like you and Lemuel Arnold
and Nicholas Vance violate the law, lesser men
will follow your example, and as you justify your
act for security, they will justify theirs for revenge
and plunder. And so the law will go to pieces and
a lot of weak and innocent people who depend upon
it for security will be left unprotected.”

These were words that I have remembered, because
they put the danger of lynch law in a light I
had not thought of. But I saw that they would
not move these determined men. Their blood was
up and they received them coldly.

“Abner,” said Ward, “we are not going to argue
this thing with you. There are times when men
have to take the law into their own hands. We live
here at the foot of the mountain. Our cattle are[36]
stolen and run across the border into Maryland. We
are tired of it and we intend to stop it.

“Our lives and our property are menaced by a
set of reckless desperate devils that we have determined
to hunt down and hang to the first tree in
sight. We did not send for you. You pushed your
way in here; and now, if you are afraid of breaking
the law, you can ride on, because we are going to
break it—if to hang a pair of murderous devils is
to break it.”

I was astonished at my uncle’s decision.

“Well,” he said, “if the law must be broken, I will
stay and help you break it!”

“Very well,” replied Ward; “but don’t get a wrong
notion in your head, Abner. If you choose to stay,
you put yourself on a footing with everybody else.”

“And that is precisely what I want to do,” replied
Abner, “but as matters stand now, every man here
has an advantage over me.”

“What advantage, Abner?” said Ward.

“The advantage,” answered my uncle, “that he
has heard all the evidence against your prisoners and
is convinced that they are guilty.”

“If that is all the advantage, Abner,” replied Ward,
“you shall not be denied it. There has been so much
cattle stealing here of late that our people living on
the border finally got together and determined to
stop every drove going up into the mountains that
wasn’t accompanied by somebody that we knew was[37]
all right. This afternoon one of my men reported a
little bunch of about a hundred steers on the road,
and I stopped it. These two men were driving the
cattle. I inquired if the cattle belonged to them
and they replied that they were not the owners, but
that they had been hired to take the drove over into
Maryland. I did not know the men, and as they met
my inquiries with oaths and imprecations, I was suspicious
of them. I demanded the name of the owner
who had hired them to drive the cattle. They said
it was none of my damned business and went on. I
raised the county. We overtook them, turned their
cattle into a field, and brought them back until we
could find out who the drove belonged to. On the
road we met Bowers.”

He turned and indicated the man who was working
with the rope halter.

I knew the man. He was a cattle shipper, somewhat
involved in debt, but who managed to buy and
sell and somehow keep his head above water.

“He told us the truth. Yesterday evening he had
gone over on the Stone-Coal to look at Daniel Coopman’s
cattle. He had heard that some grazer from
your county, Abner, was on the way up to buy the
cattle for stockers. He wanted to get in ahead of
your man, so he left home that evening and got to
Coopman’s place about sundown. He took a short
cut on foot over the hill, and when he came out he
saw a man on the opposite ridge where the road[38]
runs, ride away. The man seemed to have been
sitting on his horse looking down into the little valley
where Coopman’s house stands. Bowers went
down to the house, but Coopman was not there. The
door was open, and Bowers says the house looked
as though Coopman had just gone out of it and
might come back any moment. There was no one
about, because Coopman’s wife had gone on a visit to
her daughter, over the mountains, and the old man
was alone.

“Bowers thought Coopman was out showing the
cattle to the man whom he had just seen ride off,
so he went out to the pasture field to look for him.
He could not find him and he could not find the
cattle. He came back to the house to wait until Coopman
should come in. He sat down on the porch. As
he sat there he noticed that the porch had been
scrubbed and was still wet. He looked at it and saw
that it had been scrubbed only at one place before
the door. This seemed to him a little peculiar, and
he wondered why Coopman had scrubbed his porch
only in one place. He got up and as he went toward
the door he saw that the jamb of the door was splintered
at a point about half-way up. He examined this
splintered place and presently discovered that it was a
bullet hole.

“This alarmed him, and he went out into the yard.
There he saw a wagon track leading away from the
house toward the road. In the weeds he found Coopman’s[39]
watch. He picked it up and put it into his
pocket. It was a big silver watch, with Coopman’s
name on it, and attached to it was a buckskin string.
He followed the track to the gate, where it entered
the road. He discovered then that the cattle had also
passed through this gate. It was now night. Bowers
went back, got Coopman’s saddle horse out of the
stable, rode him home, and followed the track of the
cattle this morning, but he saw no trace of the drove
until we met him.”

“What did Shifflet and Twiggs say to this story?”
inquired Abner.

“They did not hear it,” answered Ward; “Bowers
did not talk before them. He rode aside with us
when we met him.”

“Did Shifflet and Twiggs know Bowers?” said
Abner.

“I don’t know,” replied Ward; “their talk was so
foul when we stopped the drove that we had to tie
their mouths up.”

“Is that all?” said Abner.

Ward swore a great oath.

“No!” he said. “Do you think we would hang
men on that? From what Bowers told us, we thought
Shifflet and Twiggs had killed Daniel Coopman and
driven off his cattle; but we wanted to be certain of
it, so we set out to discover what they had done with
Coopman’s body after they had killed him and what
they had done with the wagon. We followed the trail[40]
of the drove down to the Valley River. No wagon
had crossed, but on the other side we found that a
wagon and a drove of cattle had turned out of the road
and gone along the basin of the river for about a mile
through the woods. And there in a bend of the river
we found where these devils had camped.

“There had been a great fire of logs very near to
the river, but none of the ashes of this fire remained.
From a circular space some twelve feet in diameter
the ashes had all been shoveled off, the marks of the
shovel being distinct. In the center of the place
where this fire had burned the ground had been scraped
clean, but near the edges there were some traces of
cinders and the ground was blackened. In the river
at this point, just opposite the remains of the fire,
was a natural washout or hole. We made a raft of
logs, cut a pole with a fork on the end and dragged
the river. We found most of the wagon iron, all
showing the effect of fire. Then we fastened a tin
bucket to a pole and fished the washout. We brought
up cinders, buttons, buckles and pieces of bone.”

Ward paused.

“That settled it, and we came back here to swing
the devils up.”

My uncle had listened very carefully, and now he
spoke.

“What did the man pay Twiggs and Shifflet?”
said my uncle. “Did they tell you that when you
stopped the drove?”[41]

“Now that,” answered Ward, “was another piece
of damning evidence. When we searched the men
we found a pocketbook on Shifflet with a hundred
and fifteen dollars and some odd cents. It was Daniel
Coopman’s pocketbook, because there was an old tax
receipt in it that had slipped down between the leather
and the lining.

“We asked Shifflet where he got it, and he said that
the fifteen dollars and the change was his own money
and that the hundred had been paid to him by the
man who had hired them to drive the cattle. He explained
his possession of the pocketbook by saying
that this man had the money in it, and when he went
to pay them he said that they might just as well take
it, too.”

“Who was this man?” said Abner.

“They will not tell who he was.”

“Why not?”

“Now, Abner,” cried Ward, “why not, indeed!
Because there never was any such man. The story
is a lie out of the whole cloth. The proof is all dead
against them.”

“Well,” replied my uncle, “what circumstantial
evidence proves, depends a good deal on how you
get started. It is a somewhat dangerous road to
the truth, because all the sign-boards have a curious
trick of pointing in the direction that you are going.
Now a man will never realize this unless he turns
around and starts back, then he will see, to his amazement,[42]
that the signboards have also turned. But as
long as his face is set one certain way, it is of no use
to talk to him, he won’t listen to you; and if he sees
you going the other way, he will call you a fool!”

“There is only one way in this case,” said Ward.

“There are always two ways in every case,” replied
Abner, “that the suspected person is either guilty or
innocent. You have started upon the theory that
Shifflet and Twiggs are guilty. Now, suppose you
had started the other way, what then?”

“Well,” said Ward, “what then?”

“This, then,” continued Abner. “You stop Shifflet
and Twiggs on the road with Daniel Coopman’s
cattle, and they tell you that a man has hired them
to drive this drove into Maryland. You believe that
and start out to find the man. You find Bowers!”

Bowers went deadly white.

“For God’s sake, Abner!” he said.

But my uncle was merciless and he drove in the
conclusion.

“What then?”

There was no answer, but the faces of the men
about my uncle turned toward the man whose trembling
hands fingered the rope that he was preparing
for another.

“But the things we found, Abner?” said Ward.

“What do they prove,” continued my uncle, “now
that the signboards are turned? That somebody
killed Daniel Coopman and drove off his cattle,[43]
and afterward destroyed the body and the wagon in
which it was hauled away. . . . But who did that? . . . The
men who were driving Daniel Coopman’s
cattle, or the man who was riding Daniel Coopman’s
horse, and carrying Daniel Coopman’s watch in his
pocket?”

Ward’s face was a study in expression.

“Ah!” cried Abner. “Remember that the signboards
have turned about. And what do they point
to if we read them on the way we are going now?
The man who killed Coopman was afraid to be found
with the cattle, so he hired Twiggs and Shifflet to
drive them into Maryland for him and follows on
another road.”

“But his story, Abner?” said Ward.

“And what of it?” replied my uncle. “He is taken
and he must explain how he comes by the horse that
he rides, and the watch that he carries, and he must
find the criminal. Well, he tells you a tale to fit the
facts that you will find when you go back to look,
and he gives you Shifflet and Twiggs to hang.”

I never saw a man in more mortal terror than
Jacob Bowers. He sat in his saddle like a man bewildered.

“My God!” he said, and again he repeated it, and
again.

And he had cause for that terror on him. My
uncle was stern and ruthless. The pendulum had
swung the other way, and the lawless monster that[44]
Bowers had allied was now turning on himself. He
saw it and his joints were unhinged with fear.

A voice crashed out of the ring of desperate men,
uttering the changed opinion.

“By God!” it cried, “we’ve got the right man now!”

And one caught the rope out of Bowers’ hand.

But my Uncle Abner rode in on them.

“Are you sure about that?” he said.

“Sure!” they echoed. “You have shown it yourself,
Abner.”

“No,” replied my uncle, “I have not shown it. I
have shown merely whither circumstantial evidence
leads us when we go hotfoot after a theory. Bowers
says that there was a man on the hill above Daniel
Coopman’s house, and this man will know that he
did not kill Daniel Coopman and that his story is
the truth.”

They laughed in my uncle’s face.

“Do you believe that there was any such person?”

My uncle seemed to increase in stature, and his
voice became big and dominant.

“I do,” he said, “because I am the man!”

They had got their lesson, and we rode out with
Shifflet and Twiggs to a legal trial.

[45]

III.—Tad Sheldon, Second-Class Scout[D]

By John Fleming Wilson

“‘Ye have spoiled me fun!’ says he, lookin’ at me
very fierce.

“‘Do yez dig yer fun out of the ground like coal?’
I demands.

“‘I’m investigating the habits of squirrels,’ says he.
‘I must find out how a squirrel turns round in his hole.
Does he turn a summersault or stick his tail between
his ears and go over backward?’

“‘He turns inside out, like an ould sock,’ I informs
him, and he scorns me natural history. On the
strength of mutual language we get acquainted. He
is Tad Sheldon, the eldest son of Surfman No. 1 of
the life-saving crew. He is fourteen years ould. Me
bould Tad has troubles of his own, consisting of five
other youngsters who are his gang. ‘We are preparing
to inter the ranks of the Bhoy Scouts,’ he tells
me, settin’ be the side of the squirrel-hole. ‘We are
all tenderfeet and we can’t get enlisted with the rest
of the bhoys in the United States because each scout
must have a dollar in the bank and between the six of
us we have only one dollar and six bits and that’s in
me mother’s apron pocket and in no bank at all.’[47]

“‘Explain,’ says I.

“”Tis this way,’ says me young sprig. ‘All the
bhoys in the country of America have joined the
scouts, which is an army of felleys that know the
woods and about animals and how to light a fire, and
know the law.’

“‘Stop!’ I orders. ‘No one knows the law without
gold in one hand and a book in the other. If ye knew
the law ye would have yer dollar.’

“”Tis the scouts’ law,’ says he. ‘It tells ye to
obey yer superiors and be fair to animals and kind to
people ye care little for. Ye must know how to take
care of yourself anywhere and be ready whin the
country needs ye.’

“‘And ye need a dollar?’ I asks. ‘Thin, why not
work for it and stop pokin’ yer nose down squirrel-holes,
where there is neither profit nor wages?’

“‘Because I’m to be the patrol-leader and I must
know more than me men,’ he retorts.

“Now, ye remimber I had in me pocket three pay
checks, besides the money of Mr. Lof, the second
engineer, which I had got for him and was carryin’
about to send to him by the first friend I saw. So
I took off me cap and pulled out one of the checks
and said: ‘Me bould boy, go down to the town and get
the cash for this. Bring it back to me and I’ll give
ye a dollar; and thin ye can become a scout.’

“The lad looked at me and then at the governmint
check. He shook his head till the dirt rolled into his[48]
ears, for he was still full of the clods he had rubbed
into himself in the hole. ‘I can’t take a dollar from
a man in the service,’ he says. ‘I must earn it.’

“‘The Governmint’s money is clane,’ I rebukes
him. ‘I’m ould and me legs ends just above me feet,
so that I walk with difficulty. ‘Tis worth a dollar
to get the coin without trampin’.’

“‘I will earn it from somebody not in the service,’
says me bould boy, with great firmness.

“‘I’m no surfman, thank Hivin!’ I remarks. ‘I’m
in the establishmint and look down on ye.’

“‘If I’d known ye were a lighthouse man I’d have
taken all ye had at first,’ he retorts. ‘But ye have
made me a fair offer and I forgive ye. My father
works for his living.’

“‘Well,’ says I seein’ that it was poor fortune to
be quarrelin’ with a slip of a kid, ‘do yez want the
dollar or not?’

“And at that we got down to fact and he explained
that this scout business was most important. It appeared
that the other five bhoys depinded on him to
extricate thim from their difficulties and set them all
up as scouts, with uniforms and knives and a knowledge
of wild animals and how to build a fire in a
bucket of watther. We debated the thing back and
forth till the sun dropped behind the trees and the
could air came up from the ground and stuck me
with needles of rheumatism.

“The lad was a good lad, and he made plain to me[49]
why his dollar was har-rd to get. He had thought
of savin’ the life of a summer visitor, but the law
read that he must save life anyhow, without lookin’
for pay. ‘And we can’t all save lives,’ he mourns;
‘for some of the kids is too young.’

“‘But ye must earn money, ye scut,’ I says. ‘Ye’re
fourteen and whin I was that age I was me mother’s
support and joy. I made four shillin’s a wake mixin’
plaster for a tile-layer.’

“‘I work,’ he responds dolefully. ‘But it goes to
me mother to put with the savings in the bank against
the time me father will be drowned, and leave us
without support, for ye must know that we life-savers
get no pensions.’

“‘I niver hear-ed of a life-saver bein’ drowned,’
I remarks. ‘But it may be, for I see ye are of an
exthra-ordinary family and anything may come to
such. How many are there of yez?’

“‘There are six of us childher, all gur-rls but mesilf,’
says he, with rage in his voice. ‘And Carson—he
was No. 4—broke his hip in a wreck last year and
died of the bruise and left five, which the crew is
lookin’ after. Young Carson is one of me gang and
makes a dollar and four bits a week deliverin’ clams to
the summer folks. Ye see he can’t save a dollar for
the bank.’ And we got up and discussed the matther
going down the hill toward the town. Before we
parted Tad tould me where he lived.

“‘I’d call on yer father and mother,’ says I, ‘if I[50]
cud be sure they would appreciate the honor. ‘Tis a
comedown for an officer in the lighthouse establishmint
to inter the door of a surfman.’

“‘Me father has a kind heart and is good to the
ould,’ he answers me. ‘We live beyond the station,
on the bluff.’

“With that we went our ways and I ate an imminse
meal in the hotel with the dishes all spread out before
me—and a pretty gur-rl behind me shoulder to point
out the best of thim. Thin I walked out and started
for the house of me bould Tad.

“I found thim all seated in the parlor excipt the
missus, who was mixin’ bread in the kitchen. I introduced
mesilf, and Sheldon, who had No. 1 on his
sleeve, offered me a pipe, which I took. I came down
to business, houldin’ me cap full of checks and money
on me lap. ‘Yer bould bhoy wants to be a scout and
lacks a dollar,’ I says. ‘I like his looks, though I discovered
him in a hole under a tree. He won’t take me
money and scorns me and the establishmint.’

“‘He must earn it,’ he answers, scowlin’ over his
pipe.

“‘But I’ll spind it,’ I insists, peerin’ at the bhoy out
of the tail of me eye. ‘If yer town weren’t dhry I’d
have given it to the saloon man for the good of the
family he hasn’t got. So why bilge at a single
dollar?’

“”Tis the scouts’ law,’ puts in me bould Tad. ‘I
must make it honestly.’ And he settled his head between[51]
his hands and gazed reproachfully at the clane
floor. So I saved me money and sat till eight o’clock
exchangin’ complimints with Misther Sheldon. Thin
the bell rang on the hill beyond the station and he
pulled his cap off the dresser, kissed his wife and the
five gur-rls and wint out to his watch and a good
sleep. While he was gone I stood in the doorway and
Missus Sheldon tould me of the little Carsons and
how Missus Carson had sworn niver to marry again
excipt in the life-saving service. ‘She says the Governmint
took away her husband and her support,’ says
the good lady, ‘and she’ll touch no money excipt
Governmint checks, being used to thim and Uncle
Sam owin’ her the livin’ he took away.’

“‘With five childher she shud look up and marry
one of the men in the establishment,’ I informs her.
‘They are good husbands and make money.’

“‘Though a widow, she has pride,’ she responds
sharply; and I left, with young Tad follerin’ at me
heels till I let him overtake me and whisper: ‘If ye’d
buy some clams off of young Carson it wud help the
widow.’

“‘I am starved for clams,’ I whispers back like a
base conspirator for the hand of the lovely gur-rl in
the castle. ‘Show me the house of me bould Carson.’
He pointed to a light through the thin woods.

“They thought I was crazy whin I returned to the
hotel with a hundred pounds of clams dripping down
me back. ‘I dug thim with me own hands this night,’[52]
I tould the man in the office. ‘Cook thim all for me
breakfast.’

“‘Ye’re a miracle of strength and endurance under
watther,’ says he; ‘for ’tis now high tide and the surf
is heavy.’

“‘I found their tracks in the road and followed thim
to their lair,’ I retorts. ‘Do I get thim for breakfast?’

“And in the mor-rin’, whin I was that full of clams
that I needed a shell instead of a weskit, I walked
on the beach with the admirin’ crowds of summer tourists
and lovely women. It was fine weather and the
little ones were barefooted and the old ones bareheaded,
and the wind was gentle, and the life-savers
were polishin’ their boat in full view of the wondherin’
throng; and I thought of this ould tub out here on
the ind of a chain and pitied thim all. Thin I sthrolled
around the point to the bay and found me bould Tad
dhrillin’ his gang in an ould skiff, with home-made
oars in their little fists and Tad sthandin’ in the
stern-sheets, with a huge steerin’ sweep between his
arms and much loud language in his mouth. When I
appeared they looked at me and Tad swung his boat
up to the beach and invited me in. ‘We will show
you a dhrill ye will remimber,’ says he, very polite.
And with my steppin’ in he thrust the skiff off and the
bhoys rowed with tremenjous strength. We wint
along a full three knots an hour, till he yelled another
ordher and the bhoys dropped their oars and jumped[53]
over to one side; and I found mesilf undher the boat,
with me mouth full of salt watther and ropes. Whin
I saw the sun again me bould Tad says to me with
disapprobation: ‘Ye aren’t experienced in capsize
dhrill.’

“‘In the establishment we use boats to keep us out
of the watther,’ I responds, hunting for the papers out
of me cap. ‘The newspapers are full of rebukes for
thim that rock boats to their own peril.’

“With that they all felt ashamed and picked up me
papers and grunted at each other, tryin’ to blame somebody
else. And when I had me checks and me papers
all safe again I smiled on thim and me bould Tad
took heart. ”Tis not to tip the boat over,’ says he,
‘but to get it back on an even keel after a sea’s capsized
her—that is the point of the dhrill.’ And we
pulled ashore to dhry.

“Whiles we were sittin’ on the sand drainin’ the
watther out of our shoes a small, brassy launch came
down the bay, with many men and women on her
little decks. Me bould Tad looked at her with half-shut
eyes and snorted. ‘Some day it will be the life-saving
crew that must bring those ninnies back to
their homes,’ he says. ‘The Pacific is nothing to fool
with in a gasoline launch. ‘Tis betther to be safe and
buy your fish.’ And we watched the launch chug by
and out on the bar and to sea. I learned that she was
the Gladys by name and fetched tourists to the fishing
grounds, nine miles down the coast.[54]

“All the bhoys were respictful to me excipt young
Carson, who recognized in me bould Mickey the man
who had asked for a hundredweight of clams. He
stared at me superciliously and refused to have speech
with me, bein’ ashamed, if I can judge of his youthful
thoughts, of bein’ in the same company with a fool.

“But I discovered that the gang was all bent on becomin’
what they called second-class scouts, which
they made plain to me was betther by one than a tenderfoot.
But they niver mintioned the lackings of
the dollar, bein’ gintlemin. They wanted to know of
me whether I thought that boatmanship and knowledge
of sailing would be accipted be the powers instid of
wisdom as to bird-tracks and intimacy with wild
animals and bugs. And the heart of me opened, the
youth of me came back; and I spoke to thim as one
lad to another, with riference to me years in a
steamer and the need of hard hands and a hard head.

“The ind of it was that they rolled across the sand
to me side and we all lay belly down over a chart,
which me bould Tad had procured after the manner
of bhoys, and they explained to me how they knew the
coast for twelve miles each side of Yaquina Bay, with
the tides and currents all plain in their heads. And
I was surprised at what the young scuts knew—God
save thim!

“At noon the visitors suddenly stopped lookin’ at
the scenery and hastened away with hunger in their
eyes. The crew ran the surfboat back into the station[55]
and the bhoys drew their skiff up out of har-rm’s
way; and I wint back to me hotel and more clams.
On the steps I found young Carson, grinning like a
cat.

“‘Ye don’t have to eat thim shell fish,’ says he, lookin’
away. ‘Gimme the sack of thim and I’ll peddle
thim to the tourists and bring ye the money.’

“‘Whisht and away with ye!’ I commanded. ‘Who
are you to be dictatin’ the diet of yer betthers?’ And
he fled, without glancin’ behind him.

“There was some remar-rks passed upon me wet
clothes, but I tould the clerk in the office that me duty
often called me to get drippin’ soaked and went into
the dinin’-room with a stiff neck under me proud chin.
There were but few in the place and the gur-rl stood
by me shoulder to pilot me through the various coorses
infor-rmed me that the most of the guests were out
on the Gladys fishin’. ‘And the most of thim will
have little appetite for their dinners,’ she mused gently,
thereby rebukin’ me for a second helpin’ of the fresh
meat.

“In the afternoon I sthrolled out on the beach again,
but saw little. A heavy fog was rowlin’ from the
nor’ard and the breeze before it was chill and damp
as a widow’s bed. I walked for me health for an hour
and then ran to kape war-rm. At the ind of my spurt
I was amazed to find mesilf exactly at the hotel steps.
I wint in and laid me down be the fire and slept. I
woke to hear a woman wailin’.[56]

“Whin me eyes were properly open, and both pointed
in the same direction, I found mesilf in the midst of
a crowd. The sittin’-room was full of people, all
with misery in their faces. The woman whose cries
had woke me was standin’ be the windey, with one
hand around a handkerchief. ‘My God!’ she was sayin’—’My
God. And me bhoy is on that boat!’ And
I knew that it was throuble and that many people
would have their heads in their hands that night, with
aches in their throats. I got up—shoes in me hand.
At sight of me bright unifor-rm ten men flung themselves
on me. ‘You will help save them?’ they cried
at me.

“‘I will so soon as I get me shoes on,’ I remar-rked,
pushing them off me toes. I put on me boots and
stood up. ‘Now I’ll save thim,’ says I. ‘Where are
they?’

“‘They’re on the Gladys,’ says three at once.
‘Thirty of our people—women and men and childher.’

“‘Why wake me?’ I demanded crosslike. ‘Aren’t
the brave life-savers even now sitting be the fire waitin’
for people to come and be saved? I’m a chief
engineer in the lighthouse establishmint and we save
no lives excipt whin we can’t help it. Get the life-saving
crew.’

“And they explained to me bould Mickey that the
crew was gone twenty miles up the coast to rescue the
men on a steam schooner that was wrecked off the
Siletz, word of it having come down but two hours[57]
since. They looked at me unifor-rm and demanded
their relatives at me hands. I shoved them away
and wint out to think. In the prociss it occurred to
me that the Gladys might not be lost. I wint back
and asked thim how they knew it was time to mourn.
‘If that launch is ashore they are as close to the fire
as they can get,’ I tould thim. ‘And if she has gone
down ’tis too late to dhry their stockings.’

“‘She is lost in the fog,’ I was infor-rmed. She
shud have been back at her wharf at four o’clock.
‘Twas now turned six and the bar was rough and
blanketed in mist. The captain of the harbor tug had
stated, with wise shakes of the head, that the
Gladys cud do no more than lay outside the night
and wait for sunshine and a smooth crossing. I
shoved thim away from me again and wint out to
think.

“It was a mur-rky fog, that sort that slathers over
the watther like thick oil. Beyond the hill I cud hear
the surf pounding like a riveter in a boiler. Overhead
was a sheet of gray cloud, flying in curds before
the wind, and in me mouth was the taste of the deep
sea, blown in upon me with the scent of the storm.

“Two words with the skipper of the tug tould me
the rest. ‘It’s coming on to blow a little from the
south-ard,’ said me bould mariner. ‘It’s so thick the
Gladys can’t find her way back. Her passengers
will be cold and hungry whin they retur-rn in the
mor-rnin’.’[58]

“‘And will ye not go after thim?’

“‘I can’t,’ says he. ‘Me steamer is built for the
bay and one sea on the bar wud destroy the investmint.
The life-saving crew is up north after a wreck.’

“‘Is there no seagoin’ craft in this harbor?’ I demands.

“‘There is not,’ says he. ‘Captain Tyler took his
gas schooner down the coast yesterday.’

“So I sat down and thought, wonderin’ how I cud
sneak off me unifor-rm and have peace. For I knew
me brass buttons wud keep me tongue busy all night
explainin’ that I was not a special providence paid by
the Governmint to save fools from purgat-ry. In me
thoughts I heard a wor-rd in me ear. I looked up.
‘Twas me bould Tad, with a gang clustherin’ at his
heels.

“‘Ye have followed the sea for many years?’ says
he.

“‘I have followed it whin it was fair weather,’ I
responded, ‘but the most of the time the sea has chased
me ahead of it. Me coattail is still wet from the
times it caught me. Speak up! What is it?’

“The bhoy pulled out of his jacket his ould chart
and laid it before me. ‘The Gladys is at anchor
off these rocks,’ says he, layin’ a small finger on a
spot. ‘And in this weather she will have to lie there
as long as she can. Whin it blows she must up anchor
and get out or go ashore here.’ He moved his finger
a mite and it rested on what meant rocks.[59]

“‘Well,’ I remar-rks.

“‘Me father and all the bhoys’ fathers are gone
up north to rescue the crew of a steam schooner that’s
wrecked. Before they get back it will be too late.
I thought——’

“‘What were ye thinkin’, ye scut?’ says I fiercely.

“He dropped one foot on the other and looked me
between the eyes. ‘I was thinkin’ we wud go afther
her and save her,’ says he, very bould.

“I cast me eyes over the bunch of little felleys and
laughed. But me bould Tad didn’t wink. ‘There’s
people out there drownding,’ says he. ‘We’ve
dhrilled and we know all the ropes; but we can’t pull
our skiff across the bar and the big boat is not for us,
bein’ the keeper’s orders. And we haven’t the weight
to pull it anyhow.’ And he stared me out of me
laugh.

“‘There’s no seagoin’ craft in the harbor,’ I says,
to stop his nonsinse.

“‘There is another launch,’ he remar-rks casually.

“We looked at each other and he thin says: ‘Can ye
run a gasoline engine?’

“‘I have had to,’ I infor-rms him, ‘but I dislike the
smell.’

“‘The owner of this launch is not here,’ says me
young sprig. ‘And he niver tould us not to take it.
If you’ll run the engine we’ll be off and rescue the
folks on the Gladys!‘

“Be the saints! I laughed to kill mesilf, till the[60]
little brat up and remar-rks to his gang: ‘These lighthouse
officers wear a unifor-rm and have no wor-rkin’
clothes at all, not needin’ thim in their business.’

“So I parleyed with thim a momint to save me face.
‘And how will ye save thim that’s dyin’ in deep
watthers?’

“‘By to-morrow nobody can cross the bar,’ I’m
infor-rmed. ‘And the skipper of the Gladys don’t
know this coast. We’ll just pick him up and pilot
him in.’

“‘But the bar!’ I protests. ‘It’s too rough to cross
a launch inward-bound, even if ye can get out.’

“‘I know the soft places,’ says the little sprig of a
bhoy, very proudly. ‘Come on.’

“‘And if I don’t come?’ I inquired.

“He leaned over and touched the brass buttons on
me jacket. ‘Ye have sworn to do your best,’ says he.
‘I’ve not had a chance to take me oath yet as a second-class
scout, but between ourselves we have done so.
I appeal to yez as one man to another.’

“I got up. ‘I niver expicted to serve undher so
small a captain,’ I remarks, ‘but that is neither here
nor there. Where is that gasoline engine?’

“We stepped proudly off in the dusk, me bould Tad
houldin’ himsilf very straight beside me and the gang
marchin’ at our heels shoulder to shoulder. Prisintly
we came to a wharf, and ridin’ to the float below it was
a big white launch, cabined and decked. Tad jumped
down and the gang folleyed. Thin I lowered mesilf[61]
down with dignity and intered the miserable engine
room.

“I have run every sort of engine and machine made
by experts and other ignoramuses. I balk at nothing.
The engine was new to me, but I lit a lantern and
examined its inwards with anxiety and superciliousness.
Prisintly, by the grace of God, it started off.
A very small bhoy held the lantern for me while I
adjusted the valves and the carbureter, and this bould
lad infor-rmed me with pride that the ‘leader’ had
assigned him to me as my engine-room crew. And
whin the machine was revolvin’ with some speed
that individal thrust his head in at the door to ask me
if I was ready. ‘If ye are,’ says that limb of wickedness,
‘we will start, chief.’

“‘Ye may start any time,’ I says, with great respict.
‘But whin we’ll stop is another matther.’

“‘Ye must keep her goin’ whiles we cross the bar,’
he infor-rms me, with a straight look.

“The little gong rang and I threw in the clutch and
felt the launch slide away. The jingle came and I
opened her up. ‘Twas a powerful machine and whin
I felt the jerk and pull of her four cylinders I sint
me assistant to find the gasoline tank and see
whether we had oil enough. Thinks I, if this machine
eats up fuel like this we must e’en have enough and
aplenty. The bhoy came back with smut on his nose
and sthated that the tank was full.

“‘How do ye know?’ I demanded.[62]

“‘I’ve helped the owner fill her up several times,’
says the brat. ‘The leader insists that we know the
insides of every boat on the bay. ‘Tis part of our
practice, and whin we get to be scouts we will all run
gasoline engines.’

“So we went along and the engines war-rmed up;
and I trimmed the lantern and sat me down comfortable
as a cat on a pan of dough. Thin there was a
horrible rumpus on deck and some watther splashed
down the back of me neck. ”Tis the bar,’ says me
proud engine-room crew, balancin’ himsilf on the
plates.

“‘They are shovin’ dhrinks across it too fast for
me,’ I retorts, as more watther simmers down.

“‘Oh, the leader knows all the soft places,’ he returns
proudly, this bould sprig. And with a whoop
we drove through a big felly that almost swamped us.
Thin, as far as I cud judge, the worst was over.

“Prisintly we got into the trough of the sea and
rowled along for an hour more. Then the jingle
tinkled and I slowed down. Me bould Tad stuck his
head in at the little door. ‘The Gladys is right inshore
from us,’ he remarks, careless-like. ‘We will
signal her to up anchor and come with us.’ He took
me lantern and vanished.

“Whin I waited long enough for all the oil to have
burned out of three lanterns I turned the engines over
to me crew and stepped out on deck. It was a weepin’
fog, with more rowlin’ in all the time, and the feel on[63]
me cheek was like that of a stor-rm. I saw me bould
Tad on the little for’a’d deck, swingin’ his little lamp.

“‘What’s the matther with that scut of a skipper?’
I inquires.

“The boy was fair cryin’ with rage and shame. ‘He
cannot undherstand the signal,’ says he; ‘and ’tis dangerous
to run closer to him in this sea.’

“‘If he don’t understand yer signal,’ says I, ”tis
useless to talk more to him with yer ar-rms. Use yer
tongue.’

“And at that he raised a squeal that cud be heard a
hundred feet, the voice of him bein’ but a bhoy’s,
without noise and power. ‘Let be,’ says I. ‘I’ve
talked me mind across the deep watthers many times.’
And I filled me lungs and let out a blast that fetched
everybody on deck on the other launch. Then I tould
that skipper, with rage in me throat, that he must
up anchor and folley us or be drownded with all his
passengers dragging on his coattails through purgat’ry.
And he listened, and prisintly we saw the Gladys
creep through the darkness and fog up till us. When
she crossed our stern me bould Tad tould me to
command her to folley us into port.

“Ravin’s and ragin’s were nothin’ to the language
we traded across that watther for the five minutes
necessary to knock loose the wits of that heathen
mariner. In the end he saw the light, and the passengers
that crowded his sloppy decks waved their
arms and yelled with delight. Me bould Tad went[64]
into the little pilot house and slammed the door. He
spoke to me sharply. ”Twill blow a gale before
midnight.’ He rang the bell for full speed ahead.

“I WENT TO LEEWARD AND THERE FOUND ME BOULD TAD LAUNCHIN’ THE LITTLE DINGY”

“An hour later I was signaled to stop me machines.
I dropped the clutch and sint me assistant for news.
He came back with big eyes. ‘The leader says the
other launch can’t make it across the bar,’ he reports.

“‘Well,’ I says.

“‘We’re goin’ to take off her passengers and cross
it oursilves,’ says the brat. With that he vanishes.
I folleyed him.

“We were stopped right in the fog, with roily waves
towerin’ past us and the dull noise of the bar ahead
of us. The Gladys was right astern of us, and even
in the darkness I cud catch a glimpse of white faces
and hear little screams of women. I went to leeward
and there found me bould Tad launchin’ the
little dingy that was stowed on the roof of the cabin.
Whin it was overside four of me bould gang drops
into it and pulls away for the other launch. ‘They’ll
be swamped and drownded,’ I remar-rks.

“‘They will not,’ says Tad. ‘I trained thim mesilf.
‘Tis child’s play.’

“‘Childher play with queer toys in this counthry,’
I continues to mesilf; and I had a pain in me pit to
see thim careerin’ on the big waves that looked nigh
to breakin’ any minute. But they came back with
three women and a baby, with nothin’ to say excipt:
‘There’s thirty-one of thim, leader!’[65]

“‘Leave the min,’ says he, real sharp. ‘Tell the
captain we’ll come back for thim after we’ve landed
the women safe.’

“I tucked the women down in the afther cabin, snug
and warm, and wint back on deck. The boat was
away again, swingin’ over the seas as easy as a bird.

“‘That’s good boatmanship,’ I remar-rks.

“‘It’s young Carson in command,’ says me bould
bhoy leader.

“‘Twas fifteen minutes before the boat came back,
and thin there was a man in it, with two women.
Whin it swung alongside Tad helped out the ladies
and thin pushed at the man with his foot. ‘Back ye
go!’ he says. ‘No room on this craft for min.’

“‘But you’re only a lot of bhoys!’ says the man in
a rage. ‘Who are you to give orders? I’ll come
aboard.’

“‘Ye will not,’ says me bould Tad, and I reached
into the engine room for a spanner whereby to back
him up, for I admired the spunk of the young sprig.
But the man stared into the lad’s face and said nothin’.
And the boat pulled away with him still starin’
over his shouldher.

“The nixt boatload was all the rest of the womenfolks
and childher and Tad ordered the dingy swung
in and secured. Thin he tur-rned to me. ‘We will
go in.’

“‘Which way?’ I demands.

“He put his little hand to his ear. ‘Hear it?’ he[66]
asks calmly. I listened and by the great Hivins there
was a whistlin’ buoy off in the darkness. I wint down
to me machines.

“I’ve run me engines many a long night whin the
devil was bruising his knuckles agin the plates beneath
me. But the nixt hour made me tin years
ouldher. For we hadn’t more’n got well started in
before it was ‘Stop her!’ and ‘Full speed ahead!’ and
‘Ease her!’ Me assistant was excited, but kept on
spillin’ oil into the cups and feelin’ the bearin’s like an
ould hand. Once, whin the sea walloped over our
little craft, he grinned across at me. ‘There ain’t
many soft places to-night!’ says he.

“‘Ye’re a child of the Ould Nick,’ says I, ‘and eat
fire out of an asbestos spoon.’

“”Tis the scouts’ law not to be afraid,’ retor-rts
me young demon. But me attintion was distracted
be a tremenjous scamperin’ overhead. ‘For the love
of mercy, what is that?’ I yelled.

“‘Tis the leader puttin’ out the drag,’ says me
crew. ‘Whin the breakers are high it’s safer to ride
in with a drag over the stern. It keeps the boat from
broachin’ to.’ And to the dot of his last word I felt
the sudden, strong pull of something on the launch’s
tail. Thin something lifted us up and laid us down
with a slap, like a pan of dough on a mouldin’ board.
Me machines coughed and raced and thin almost
stopped. Whin they were goin’ again I saw me
assistant houldin’ to a stanchion. His face was pasty[67]
white and he gulped. ‘Are ye scared at last?’ I demanded
of him.

“‘I am seasick,’ he chokes back. And he was, be
Hivins!

“So we joggled and bobbled about and I wondhered
how many times we had crossed the bar from ind to
ind, whin suddenly it smoothed down and I saw a red
light through the little windey. Me assistant saw it
too. ‘That’s the range light off the jetty,’ says he.
‘We’re inside.’

“I shoved open the door to the deck and looked out.
The fog lay about us thick and the wind was risin’;
I cud barely make out the lights ahead. I stuck me
head out and glanced astern. ‘Way back of us, like
a match behind a curtain, I saw a little light bobbing
up and down in the fog. I took me crew be the ear
and thrust his head out beside mine. ‘What is that?’
I demanded.

“‘Tis the other launch,’ he says. ‘I guess they
folleyed us in.’

“We ran up to the wharf and the gang made everything
fast; and then me bould Tad comes to me with
a sheepish face. ‘Wud ye mind tellin’ the ladies and
childher that they can go ashore and get to the hotel?’
he says.

“So it was me that wint in and tould the ladies
they were saved and helped thim to the wharf and
saw thim started for the hotel. Thin I came back to
the launch, but there was nobody there. Me bould[68]
gang had disappeared. Just thin the other launch
came up, limpin’ on one leg, covered with drippin’
men and blasphemy. They didn’t wait for the lines
to be put out, but jumped for the float like rats out of
biscuit barrels and swarmed for the hotel. Whiles I
was watchin’ thim the skipper of the Gladys pulls
himself out of his wrecked pilot house and approaches
me with heavy footfalls. ‘I’m toold that ’twas bhoys
that manned this launch,’ he remar-rks. ‘If it is so,
I wudn’t have come in and nearly lost me ship.’

“‘If it hadn’t been for the bhoys ye’d now be driftin’
into the breakers off yer favorite fishin’ spot,’ I
retor-rts. ‘Nixt time ye try suicide leave the women
and childher ashore.’ And with the words out of me
mouth the gale broke upon us like the blow of a fish.

“We took shelter behind a warehouse and the skipper
of the ‘Gladys’ said in me ear: ‘I suppose the
owner of the launch had to get what crew he cud.
Where is he? I’d like to thank him.’

“‘If ye will come with me to the hotel ye shall see
the man ye owe life to,’ I infor-rmed him.

“As we intered the hotel a tall man, with the mar-rk
of aut’ority on him, observed me unifor-rm and addressed
me: ‘What do you know about this?’

“Aut’ority is always aut’ority, and I tould him what
I knew and had seen, not forbearin’ to mintion the
gang and their wild ambitions. And whin I had finished
this man said: ‘I shall muster thim in to-morrow.[69]
I happen to be in command of the scouts in this
district.’

“‘But they haven’t their dollars to put in the little
bank,’ I remarked. ‘And they tell me without their
dollar they cannot be second-class scouts, whativer
that is.’

“At this a fat man reached for a hat off the hook
and put his hand in his pocket, drew it out and emptied
it into the hat, and passed it.

“And while the money jingled into it my respict for
the brave lads rose into me mouth. ‘They won’t
take it,’ I said. ‘They have refused money before.
‘Tis their oath.’

“The man with authority looked over at me. ‘The
chief is right,’ he said. ‘They have earned only a
dollar apiece. Whose launch was that they took?’

“‘Faith and I don’t know,’ I said. ‘They remar-rked
that the owner—Hivin bless him!—had niver
forbidden thim to use it.’

“‘Thin we must pay the rint of it for the night,’
says he. ‘But the bhoys will get only a dollar apiece.”
Where are they?’

“‘They disappeared whin the boat was fast, sir,’
says I. ‘I think they wint home. ‘Tis bedtime.’

“‘D’ye know where the patrol-leader lives?’ he
demands.

“So we walked up the hill in the darkness and wind
till we reached the house of me bould Tad. A knock
at the door brought the missus, with a towel on her[70]
ar-rm. I pushed in. ‘We’ve come to see yer son,’
says I.

“We stepped in and saw the young sprig be the
fire, on a chair, with his feet in a bowl of watther and
musthard. He was for runnin’ whin he saw us, but
cudn’t for the lack of clothes. So he scowled at us.
‘This is the commander of the scouts,’ I says, inthroducin’
me tall companion. ‘And here’s yer five dollars
to put with yer dollar and six bits into the little
bank, so’s yez can all of yez be second-class scouts.’

“‘We can’t take the money,’ says he, with a terrible
growl. ‘The oath forbids us to take money for
savin’ life.’

“‘Don’t be a hero,’ I rebukes him. ‘Ye’re only a
small bhoy in his undherclothes with yer feet in hot
watther and musthard. No hero was ever in such a
predicament. This gintleman will infor-rm ye about
the money.’

“Me bould companion looked at the slip of a lad and
said sharply: ‘Report to me to-morrow morning with
yer patrol at sivin o’clock to be musthered in.’

“With that we mar-rched out into the stor-rm and
back to the hotel, where I wint to slape like a bhoy
mesilf—me that was sixty-four me last birthday and
niver thought to make a fool of mesilf with a gang
of bhoys and a gasoline engine—and that on a
holiday!”

[71]

IV.—The Red-Headed League

By Arthur Conan Doyle

“You could not possibly have come at a better time,
my dear Watson,” he said, cordially.

“I was afraid that you were engaged.”

“So I am. Very much so.”

“Then I can wait in the next room.”

“Not at all. This gentleman, Mr. Wilson, has been
my partner and helper in many of my most successful[72]
cases, and I have no doubt that he will be of the
utmost use to me in yours also.”

The stout gentleman half rose from his chair and
gave a bob of greeting, with a quick little questioning
glance from his small, fat-encircled eyes.

“Try the settee,” said Holmes, relapsing into his
arm-chair, and putting his finger-tips together, as was
his custom when in judicial moods. “I know, my dear
Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre
and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of
everyday life. You have shown your relish for it by
the enthusiasm which has prompted you to chronicle,
and, if you will excuse my saying so, somewhat to
embellish so many of my own little adventures.”

“Your cases have indeed been of the greatest interest
to me,” I observed.

“You will remember that I remarked the other day,
just before we went into the very simple problem presented
by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange
effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to
life itself, which is always far more daring than any
effort of the imagination.”

“A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.”

“You did, doctor, but none the less you must come
round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling
fact upon fact on you, until your reason breaks down
under them and acknowledges me to be right. Now,
Mr. Jabez Wilson here has been good enough to call[73]
upon me this morning, and to begin a narrative which
promises to be one of the most singular which I have
listened to for some time. You have heard me remark
that the strangest and most unique things are
very often connected not with the larger but with the
smaller crimes, and occasionally, indeed, where there
is room for doubt whether any positive crime has been
committed. As far as I have heard, it is impossible
for me to say whether the present case is an instance
of crime or not, but the course of events is certainly
among the most singular that I have ever listened to.
Perhaps, Mr. Wilson, you would have the great kindness
to recommence your narrative. I ask you, not
merely because my friend, Dr. Watson, has not heard
the opening part, but also because the peculiar nature
of the story makes me anxious to have every possible
detail from your lips. As a rule, when I have heard
some slight indication of the course of events I am
able to guide myself by the thousands of other similar
cases which occur to my memory. In the present instance
I am forced to admit that the facts are, to the
best of my belief, unique.”

The portly client puffed out his chest with an appearance
of some little pride, and pulled a dirty and
wrinkled newspaper from the inside pocket of his
greatcoat. As he glanced down the advertisement column,
with his head thrust forward, and the paper flattened
out upon his knee, I took a good look at the man,
and endeavored, after the fashion of my companion,[74]
to read the indications which might be presented by
his dress or appearance.

I did not gain very much, however, by my inspection.
Our visitor bore every mark of being an average
commonplace British tradesman, obese, pompous,
and slow. He wore rather baggy gray shepherd’s
check trousers, a not over-clean black frock-coat, unbuttoned
in the front, and a drab waistcoat with a
heavy brassy Albert chain, and a square pierced bit
of metal dangling down as an ornament. A frayed
top hat and a faded brown overcoat with a wrinkled
velvet collar lay upon a chair beside him. Altogether,
look as I would, there was nothing remarkable about
the man save his blazing red head and the expression
of extreme chagrin and discontent upon his features.

Sherlock Holmes’ quick eye took in my occupation,
and he shook his head with a smile as he noticed my
questioning glances. “Beyond the obvious facts that
he has at some time done manual labor, that he takes
snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in
China, and that he has done a considerable amount of
writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.”

Mr. Jabez Wilson started up in his chair, with his
forefinger upon the paper, but his eyes upon my companion.

“How, in the name of good fortune, did you know
all that, Mr. Holmes?” he asked. “How did you
know, for example, that I did manual labor? It’s as
true as gospel, for I began as a ship’s carpenter.”[75]

“Your hands, my dear sir. You right hand is quite
a size larger than your left. You have worked with
it and the muscles are more developed.”

“Well, the snuff, then, and the Freemasonry?”

“I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you how
I read that, especially as, rather against the strict
rules of your order, you use an arc and compass
breastpin.”

“Ah, of course, I forgot that. But the writing?”

“What else can be indicated by that right cuff so
very shiny for five inches, and the left one with the
smooth patch near the elbow where you rest it upon
the desk.”

“Well, but China?”

“The fish which you have tattooed immediately
above your wrist could only have been done in China.
I have made a small study of tattoo marks, and have
even contributed to the literature of the subject. That
trick of staining the fishes’ scales of a delicate pink
is quite peculiar to China. When, in addition, I see
a Chinese coin hanging from your watch-chain, the
matter becomes even more simple.”

Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. “Well, I
never!” said he. “I thought at first that you had done
something clever, but I see that there was nothing in
it after all.”

“I begin to think, Watson,” said Holmes, “that I
make a mistake in explaining. ‘Omne ignotum pro
magnifico,’ you know, and my poor little reputation,[76]
such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I am so candid.
Can you not find the advertisement, Mr. Wilson?”

“Yes, I have got it now,” he answered, with his
thick, red finger planted half-way down the column.
“Here it is. This is what began it all. You just
read it for yourself, sir.”

I took the paper from him and read as follows:

“What on earth does this mean?” I ejaculated, after
I had twice read over the extraordinary announcement.

Holmes chuckled and wriggled in his chair, as was
his habit when in high spirits. “It is a little off the
beaten track, isn’t it?” said he. “And now, Mr. Wilson,
off you go at scratch, and tell us all about yourself,
your household, and the effect which this advertisement
had upon your fortunes. You will first
make a note, doctor, of the paper and the date.”

“It is The Morning Chronicle of April 27, 1890.
Just two months ago.”

“Very good. Now, Mr. Wilson.”[77]

“Well, it is just as I have been telling you, Mr. Sherlock
Holmes,” said Jabez Wilson, mopping his forehead,
“I have a small pawnbroker’s business at Coburg
Square, near the City. It’s not a very large affair,
and of late years it has not done more than just
give me a living. I used to be able to keep two assistants,
but now I only keep one; and I would have
a job to pay him but that he is willing to come for
half wages, so as to learn the business.”

“What is the name of this obliging youth?” asked
Sherlock Holmes.

“His name is Vincent Spaulding, and he’s not such
a youth either. It’s hard to say his age. I should
not wish a smarter assistant, Mr. Holmes; and I know
very well that he could better himself, and earn twice
what I am able to give him. But, after all, if he is
satisfied, why should I put ideas in his head?”

“Why, indeed? You seem most fortunate in having
an employee who comes under the full market
price. It is not a common experience among employers
in this age. I don’t know that your assistant is
not as remarkable as your advertisement.”

“Oh, he has his faults, too,” said Mr. Wilson.
“Never was such a fellow for photography. Snapping
away with a camera when he ought to be improving
his mind, and then diving down into the cellar like
a rabbit into its hole to develop his pictures. That is
his main fault; but, on the whole, he’s a good worker.
There’s no vice in him.”[78]

“He is still with you, I presume?”

“Yes, sir. He and a girl of fourteen, who does a
bit of simple cooking, and keeps the place clean—that’s
all I have in the house, for I am a widower,
and never had any family. We live very quietly, sir,
the three of us; and we keep a roof over our heads,
and pay our debts, if we do nothing more.

“The first thing that put us out was that advertisement.
Spaulding, he came down into the office just
this day eight weeks, with this very paper in his hand,
and he says:

“‘I wish to the Lord, Mr. Wilson, that I was a
red-headed man.’

“‘Why that?’ I asks.

“‘Why,’ says he, ‘here’s another vacancy on the
League of the Red-headed Men. It’s worth quite a
little fortune to any man who gets it, and I understand
that there are more vacancies than there are men, so
that the trustees are at their wit’s end what to do
with the money. If my hair would only change color
here’s a nice little crib all ready for me to step into.’

“‘Why, what is it, then?’ I asked. You see, Mr.
Holmes, I am a very stay-at-home man, and, as my
business came to me instead of my having to go to
it, I was often weeks on end without putting my foot
over the door-mat. In that way I didn’t know much
of what was going on outside, and I was always glad
of a bit of news.[79]

“‘Have you never heard of the League of the Red-headed
Men?’ he asked, with his eyes open.

“‘Never.’

“‘Why, I wonder at that, for you are eligible yourself
for one of the vacancies.’

‘And what are they worth?’ I asked.

“‘Oh, merely a couple of hundred a year, but the
work is slight, and it need not interfere very much
with one’s other occupations.’

“Well, you can easily think that that made me prick
up my ears, for the business has not been over good
for some years, and an extra couple of hundred would
have been very handy.

“‘Tell me all about it,’ said I.

“‘Well,’ said he, showing me the advertisement,
‘you can see for yourself that the League has a vacancy,
and there is the address where you should apply
for particulars. As far as I can make out, the
League was founded by an American millionaire,
Ezekiah Hopkins, who was very peculiar in his ways.
He was himself red-headed, and he had a great sympathy
for all red-headed men; so, when he died, it
was found that he had left his enormous fortune in
the hands of trustees, with instructions to apply the
interest to the providing of easy berths to men whose
hair is of that color. From all I hear it is splendid
pay, and very little to do.’

“‘But,’ said I, ‘there would be millions of red-headed
men who would apply.’[80]

“‘Not so many as you might think,’ he answered.
‘You see it is really confined to Londoners, and to
grown men. This American had started from London
when he was young, and he wanted to do the
old town a good turn. Then, again, I have heard it
is no use your applying if your hair is light red, or
dark red, or anything but real, bright, blazing fiery
red. Now, if you cared to apply, Mr. Wilson, you
would just walk in; but perhaps it would hardly be
worth your while to put yourself out of the way for
the sake of a few hundred pounds.’

“Now it is a fact, gentlemen, as you may see for
yourselves, that my hair is of a very full and rich tint,
so that it seemed to me that, if there was to be any
competition in the matter, I stood as good a chance
as any man that I had ever met. Vincent Spaulding
seemed to know so much about it that I thought he
might prove useful, so I just ordered him to put up
the shutters for the day, and to come right away with
me. He was very willing to have a holiday, so we
shut the business up, and started off for the address
that was given us in the advertisement.

“I never hope to see such a sight as that again, Mr.
Holmes. From north, south, east, and west every
man who had a shade of red in his hair had tramped
into the City to answer the advertisement. Fleet
Street was choked with red-headed folk, and Pope’s
Court looked like a coster’s orange barrow. I should
not have thought there were so many in the whole[81]
country as were brought together by that single advertisement.
Every shade of color they were—straw,
lemon, orange, brick, Irish-setter, liver, clay; but, as
Spaulding said, there were not many who had the real
vivid flame-colored tint. When I saw how many were
waiting, I would have given it up in despair; but
Spaulding would not hear of it. How he did it I
could not imagine, but he pushed and pulled and butted
until he got me through the crowd, and right up to
the steps which led to the office. There was a double
stream upon the stair, some going up in hope, and
some coming back dejected; but we wedged in as well
as we could, and soon found ourselves in the office.”

“Your experience has been a most entertaining one,”
remarked Holmes, as his client paused and refreshed
his memory with a huge pinch of snuff. “Pray continue
your very interesting statement.”

“There was nothing in the office but a couple of
wooden chairs and a deal table, behind which sat a
small man, with a head that was even redder than
mine. He said a few words to each candidate as he
came up, and then he always managed to find some
fault in them which would disqualify them. Getting
a vacancy did not seem to be such a very easy matter
after all. However, when our turn came, the little
man was much more favorable to me than to any of
the others, and he closed the door as we entered, so
that he might have a private word with us.[82]

“‘This is Mr. Jabez Wilson,’ said my assistant,
‘and he is willing to fill a vacancy in the League.’

“‘And he is admirably suited for it,’ the other answered.
‘He has every requirement. I cannot recall
when I have seen anything so fine.’ He took a step
backward, cocked his head on one side, and gazed at
my hair until I felt quite bashful. Then suddenly he
plunged forward, wrung my hand, and congratulated
me warmly on my success.

“‘It would be injustice to hesitate,’ said he. ‘You
will, however, I am sure, excuse me for taking an obvious
precaution,’ With that he seized my hair in
both his hands, and tugged until I yelled with the pain.
‘There is water in your eyes,’ said he, as he released
me. ‘I perceive that all is as it should be. But we
have to be careful, for we have twice been deceived by
wigs and once by paint. I could tell you tales of cobbler’s
wax which would disgust you with human nature.’
He stepped over to the window and shouted
through it at the top of his voice that the vacancy was
filled. A groan of disappointment came up from below,
and the folk all trooped away in different directions,
until there was not a red head to be seen except
my own and that of the manager.

“‘My name,’ said he, ‘is Mr. Duncan Ross, and I
am myself one of the pensioners upon the fund left
by our noble benefactor. Are you a married man,
Mr. Wilson? Have you a family?’

“I answered that I had not.[83]

“His face fell immediately.

“‘Dear me!’ he said, gravely, ‘that is very serious
indeed! I am sorry to hear you say that. The fund
was, of course, for the propagation and spread of the
red-heads as well as for their maintenance. It is exceedingly
unfortunate that you should be a bachelor.’

“My face lengthened at this, Mr. Holmes, for I
thought that I was not to have the vacancy after all;
but, after thinking it over for a few minutes, he said
that it would be all right.

“‘In the case of another,’ said he, ‘the objection
might be fatal, but we must stretch a point in favor of
a man with such a head of hair as yours. When shall
you be able to enter upon your new duties?’

“‘Well, it is a little awkward, for I have a business
already,’ said I.

“‘Oh, never mind about that, Mr. Wilson!’ said
Vincent Spaulding. ‘I shall be able to look after that
for you.’

“‘What would be the hours?’ I asked.

“‘Ten to two.’

“Now a pawnbroker’s business is mostly done of an
evening, Mr. Holmes, especially Thursday and Friday
evenings, which is just before pay-day; so it would
suit me very well to earn a little in the mornings. Besides,
I knew that my assistant was a good man, and
that he would see to anything that turned up.

“‘That would suit me very well,’ said I. ‘And the
pay?’[84]

“‘Is four pounds a week.’

“‘And the work?’

“‘Is purely nominal.’

“‘What do you call purely nominal?’

“‘Well, you have to be in the office, or at least in
the building, the whole time. If you leave, you forfeit
your whole position forever. The will is very
clear upon that point. You don’t comply with the
conditions if you budge from the office during that
time.’

“‘It’s only four hours a day, and I should not think
of leaving,’ said I.

“‘No excuse will avail,’ said Mr. Duncan Ross,
‘neither sickness, nor business, nor anything else.
There you must stay, or you lose your billet.’

“‘And the work?’

“‘Is to copy out the “Encyclopædia Britannica.”
There is the first volume of it in that press. You
must find your own ink, pens, and blotting-paper, but
we provide this table and chair. Will you be ready
to-morrow?’

“‘Certainly,’ I answered.

“‘Then, good-by, Mr. Jabez Wilson, and let me congratulate
you once more on the important position
which you have been fortunate enough to gain.’ He
bowed me out of the room, and I went home with my
assistant hardly knowing what to say or do, I was so
pleased at my own good fortune.

“Well, I thought over the matter all day, and by[85]
evening I was in low spirits again; for I had quite
persuaded myself that the whole affair must be some
great hoax or fraud, though what its object might be
I could not imagine. It seemed altogether past belief
that any one could make such a will, or that they
would pay such a sum for doing anything so simple
as copying out the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica.’ Vincent
Spaulding did what he could to cheer me up, but by
bed-time I had reasoned myself out of the whole thing.
However, in the morning I determined to have a look
at it anyhow, so I bought a penny bottle of ink, and
with a quill pen and seven sheets of foolscap paper I
started off for Pope’s Court.

“Well, to my surprise and delight everything was
as right as possible. The table was set out ready for
me, and Mr. Duncan Ross was there to see that I got
fairly to work. He started me off upon the letter A,
and then he left me; but he would drop in from time
to time to see that all was right with me. At two
o’clock he bade me good-day, complimented me upon
the amount that I had written, and locked the door
of the office after me.

“This went on day after day, Mr. Holmes, and on
Saturday the manager came in and planked down four
golden sovereigns for my week’s work. It was the
same next week, and the same the week after. Every
morning I was there at ten, and every afternoon I
left at two. By degrees Mr. Duncan Ross took to
coming in only once of a morning, and then, after a[86]
time, he did not come in at all. Still, of course, I
never dared to leave the room for an instant, for I
was not sure when he might come, and the billet was
such a good one, and suited me so well, that I would
not risk the loss of it.

“Eight weeks passed away like this, and I had written
about Abbots, and Archery, and Armor, and Architecture,
and Attica, and hoped with diligence that
I might get on to the B’s before very long. It cost me
something in foolscap, and I had pretty nearly filled
a shelf with my writings. And then suddenly the
whole business came to an end.”

“To an end?”

“Yes, sir. And no later than this morning. I
went to my work as usual at ten o’clock, but the door
was shut and locked, with a little square of cardboard
hammered onto the middle of the panel with a tack.
Here it is, and you can read for yourself.”

He held up a piece of white cardboard, about the
size of a sheet of note-paper. It read in this fashion:

Sherlock Holmes and I surveyed this curt announcement
and the rueful face behind it, until the comical
side of the affair so completely overtopped every consideration
that we both burst out into a roar of laughter.[87]

“I cannot see that there is anything very funny,”
cried our client, flushing up to the roots of his flaming
head. “If you can do nothing better than laugh at
me, I can go elsewhere.”

“No, no,” cried Holmes, shoving him back into the
chair from which he had half risen. “I really
wouldn’t miss your case for the world. It is most refreshingly
unusual. But there is, if you will excuse
my saying so, something just a little funny about it.
Pray what steps did you take when you found the
card upon the door?”

“I was staggered, sir. I did not know what to do.
Then I called at the offices round, but none of them
seemed to know anything about it. Finally, I went
to the landlord, who is an accountant living on the
ground floor, and I asked him if he could tell me what
had become of the Red-headed League. He said that
he had never heard of any such body. Then I asked
him who Mr. Duncan Ross was. He answered that
the name was new to him.

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘the gentleman at No. 4,’

“‘What, the red-headed man?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Oh,’ said he, ‘his name was William Morris. He
was a solicitor, and was using my room as a temporary
convenience until his new premises were ready.
He moved out yesterday.’

“‘Where could I find him?’

“‘Oh, at big new offices. He did tell me the address.[88]
Yes, 17 King Edward Street, near St. Paul’s.’

“I started off, Mr. Holmes, but when I got to that
address it was a manufactory of artificial knee-caps,
and no one in it had ever heard of either Mr. William
Morris or Mr. Duncan Ross.’

“And what did you do then?” asked Holmes.

“I went home to Saxe-Coburg Square, and I took
the advice of my assistant. But he could not help
me in any way. He could only say that if I waited
I should hear by post. But that was not quite good
enough, Mr. Holmes. I did not wish to lose such a
place without a struggle, so, as I had heard that you
were good enough to give advice to poor folk who
were in need of it, I came right away to you.”

“And you did very wisely,” said Holmes. “Your
case is an exceedingly remarkable one, and I shall be
happy to look into it. From what you have told me
I think that it is possible that graver issues hang from
it than might at first sight appear.”

“Grave enough!” said Mr. Jabez Wilson. “Why, I
have lost four pound a week.”

“As far as you are personally concerned,” remarked
Holmes, “I do not see that you have any grievance
against this extraordinary league. On the contrary,
you are, as I understand, richer by some thirty pounds,
to say nothing of the minute knowledge which you
have gained on every subject which comes under the
letter A. You have lost nothing by them.”

“No, sir. But I want to find out about them, and[89]
who they are, and what their object was in playing
this prank—if it was a prank—upon me. It was a
pretty expensive joke for them, for it cost them two-and-thirty
pounds.”

“We shall endeavor to clear up these points for you.
And, first, one or two questions, Mr. Wilson. This
assistant of yours who first called your attention to
the advertisement—how long had he been with you?”

“About a month then.”

“How did he come?”

“In answer to an advertisement.”

“Was he the only applicant?”

“No, I had a dozen.”

“Why did you pick him?”

“Because he was handy and would come cheap.”

“At half wages, in fact.”

“Yes.”

“What is he like, this Vincent Spaulding?”

“Small, stout-built, very quick in his ways, no hair
on his face, though he’s not short of thirty. Has a
white splash of acid upon his forehead.”

Holmes sat up in his chair in considerable excitement.
“I thought as much,” said he. “Have you
ever observed that his ears are pierced for earrings?”

“Yes, sir. He told me that a gypsy had done it for
him when he was a lad.”

“Hum!” said Holmes, sinking back in deep thought.
“He is still with you?”

“Oh, yes, sir; I have only just left him.”[90]

“And has your business been attended to in your
absence?”

“Nothing to complain of, sir. There’s never very
much to do of a morning.”

“That will do, Mr. Wilson. I shall be happy to
give you an opinion upon the subject in the course
of a day or two. To-day is Saturday, and I hope that
by Monday we may come to a conclusion.

“Well, Watson,” said Holmes, when our visitor had
left us, “what do you make of it all?”

“I make nothing of it,” I answered, frankly. “It
is a most mysterious business.”

“As a rule,” said Holmes, “the more bizarre a thing
is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace,
featureless crimes which are really puzzling,
just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to
identify. But I must be prompt over this matter.”

“What are you going to do, then?” I asked.

“To smoke,” he answered. “It is quite a three-pipe
problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for
fifty minutes.” He curled himself up in his chair,
with his thin knees drawn up to his hawk-like nose,
and there he sat with his eyes closed and his black
clay pipe thrusting out like the bill of some strange
bird. I had come to the conclusion that he had
dropped asleep, and indeed was nodding myself, when
he suddenly sprang out of his chair with the gesture
of a man who has made up his mind, and put his pipe
down upon the mantelpiece.[91]

“Sarasate plays at St. James’ Hall this afternoon,”
he remarked. “What do you think, Watson? Could
your patients spare you for a few hours?”

“I have nothing to do to-day. My practice is never
very absorbing.”

“Then put on your hat and come. I am going
through the city first, and we can have some lunch on
the way. I observe that there is a good deal of German
music on the programme, which is rather more
to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective,
and I want to introspect. Come along!”

We traveled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate;
and a short walk took us to Saxe-Coburg Square,
the scene of the singular story which we had listened
to in the morning. It was a poky, little, shabby-genteel
place, where four lines of dingy, two-storied brick
houses looked out into a small railed-in inclosure,
where a lawn of weedy grass and a few clumps of
faded laurel bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden
and uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls
and a brown board with Jabez Wilson in white letters,
upon a corner house, announced the place where
our red-headed client carried on his business. Sherlock
Holmes stopped in front of it with his head on
one side, and looked it all over, with his eyes shining
brightly between puckered lids. Then he walked
slowly up the street, and then down again to the corner,
still looking keenly at the houses. Finally he returned
to the pawnbroker’s and, having thumped vigorously[92]
upon the pavement with his stick two or three
times, he went up to the door and knocked. It was
instantly opened by a bright-looking, clean-shaven
young fellow, who asked him to step in.

“Thank you,” said Holmes, “I only wished to ask
you how you would go from here to the Strand.”

“Third right, fourth left,” answered the assistant,
promptly, closing the door.

“Smart fellow, that,” observed Holmes as we
walked away. “He is, in my judgment, the fourth
smartest man in London, and for daring I am not
sure that he has not a claim to be third. I have
known something of him before.”

“Evidently,” said I, “Mr. Wilson’s assistant counts
for a good deal in this mystery of the Red-headed
League. I am sure that you inquired your way merely
in order that you might see him.”

“Not him.”

“What then?”

“The knees of his trousers.”

“And what did you see?”

“What I expected to see.”

“Why did you beat the pavement?”

“My dear doctor, this is a time for observation,
not for talk. We are spies in an enemy’s country.
We know something of Saxe-Coburg Square. Let us
now explore the parts which lie behind it.”

The road in which we found ourselves as we turned
round the corner from the retired Saxe-Coburg[93]
Square presented as great a contrast to it as the front
of a picture does to the back. It was one of the main
arteries which convey the traffic of the city to the
north and west. The roadway was blocked with the
immense stream of commerce flowing in a double tide
inward and outward, while the footpaths were black
with the hurrying swarm of pedestrians. It was difficult
to realize, as we looked at the line of fine shops
and stately business premises, that they really abutted
on the other side upon the faded and stagnant square
which we had just quitted.

“Let me see,” said Holmes, standing at the corner,
and glancing along the line, “I should like just to remember
the order of the houses here. It is a hobby
of mine to have an exact knowledge of London.
There is Mortimer’s, the tobacconist; the little newspaper
shop, the Coburg branch of the City and
Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, and McFarlane’s
carriage-building depot. That carries us
right on to the other block. And now, doctor, we’ve
done our work, so it’s time we had some play. A
sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land,
where all is sweetness, and delicacy, and harmony,
and there are no red-headed clients to vex us
with their conundrums.”

My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself
not only a very capable performer, but a composer
of no ordinary merit. All the afternoon he
sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness,[94]
gently waving his long thin fingers in time to
the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid,
dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes
the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted,
ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to
conceive. In his singular character the dual nature
alternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness
and astuteness represented, as I have often thought,
the reaction against the poetic and contemplative
mood which occasionally predominated in him. The
swing of his nature took him from extreme languor
to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was
never so truly formidable as when, for days on end,
he had been lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations
and his black-letter editions. Then it was
that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon
him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would
rise to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted
with his methods would look askance at
him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of
other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so
enwrapped in the music at St. James’ Hall, I felt that
an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had
set himself to hunt down.

“You want to go home, no doubt, doctor,” he remarked,
as we emerged.

“Yes, it would be as well.”

“And I have some business to do which will take[95]
some hours. This business at Saxe-Coburg Square is
serious.”

“Why serious?”

“A considerable crime is in contemplation. I have
every reason to believe that we shall be in time to
stop it. But to-day being Saturday rather complicates
matters. I shall want your help to-night.”

“At what time?”

“Ten will be early enough.”

“I shall be at Baker Street at ten.”

“Very well. And, I say, doctor! there may be
some little danger, so kindly put your army revolver
in your pocket.” He waved his hand, turned on his
heel, and disappeared in an instant among the crowd.

I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbors,
but I was always oppressed with a sense of my
own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock Holmes.
He and I had heard what he had heard, I had seen
what he had seen, and yet from his words it was evident
that he saw clearly not only what had happened,
but what was about to happen, while to me the whole
business was still confused and grotesque. As I drove
home to my house in Kensington I thought over it
all, from the extraordinary story of the red-headed
copier of the “Encyclopædia” down to the visit to
Saxe-Coburg Square, and the ominous words with
which he had parted from me. What was this nocturnal
expedition, and why should I go armed?
Where were we going, and what were we to do? I[96]
had the hint from Holmes that this smooth-faced
pawnbroker’s assistant was a formidable man—a man
who might play a deep game. I tried to puzzle it out
but gave it up in despair, and set the matter aside until
night should bring an explanation.

It was a quarter-past nine when I started from
home and made my way across the Park, and so
through Oxford Street to Baker Street. Two hansoms
were standing at the door, and, as I entered the
passage, I heard the sound of voices from above. On
entering his room, I found Holmes in animated conversation
with two men, one of whom I recognized as
Peter Jones, the official police agent; while the other
was a long, thin, sad-faced man, with a very shiny
hat and oppressively respectable frock-coat.

“Ha! our party is complete,” said Holmes, buttoning
up his pea-jacket, and taking his heavy hunting
coat from the rack. “Watson, I think you know
Mr. Jones of Scotland Yard? Let me introduce you
to Mr. Merryweather, who is to be our companion in
to-night’s adventure.”

“We’re hunting in couples again, doctor, you see,”
said Jones, in his consequential way. “Our friend
here is a wonderful man for starting a chase. All he
wants is an old dog to help him do the running
down.”

“I hope a wild goose may not prove to be the end of
our chase,” observed Mr. Merryweather, gloomily.

“You may place considerable confidence in Mr.[97]
Holmes, sir,” said the police agent, loftily. “He has
his own little methods, which are, if he won’t mind
my saying so, just a little too theoretical and fantastic,
but he has the makings of a detective in him. It
is not too much to say that once or twice, as in that
business of the Sholto murder and the Agra treasure,
he has been more nearly correct than the official
force.”

“Oh, if you say so, Mr. Jones, it is all right!” said
the stranger, with deference. “Still, I confess that I
miss my rubber. It is the first Saturday night for
seven-and-twenty years that I have not had my rubber.”

“I think you will find,” said Sherlock Holmes, “that
you will play for a higher stake to-night than you have
ever done yet, and that the play will be more exciting.
For you, Mr. Merryweather, the stake will be
some thirty thousand pounds; and for you, Jones, it
will be the man upon whom you wish to lay your
hands.”

“John Clay, the murderer, thief, smasher, and forger.
He’s a young man, Mr. Merryweather, but he
is at the head of his profession, and I would rather
have my bracelets on him than on any criminal in
London. He’s a remarkable man, is young John
Clay. His grandfather was a Royal Duke, and he
himself has been to Eton and Oxford. His brain is
as cunning as his fingers, and though we meet signs
of him at every turn, we never know where to find[98]
the man himself. He’ll crack a crib in Scotland one
week, and be raising money to build an orphanage in
Cornwall the next. I’ve been on his track for years,
and have never set eyes on him yet.”

“I hope that I may have the pleasure of introducing
you to-night. I’ve had one or two little turns also
with Mr. John Clay, and I agree with you that he is
at the head of his profession. It is past ten, however,
and quite time that we started. If you two will take
the first hansom, Watson and I will follow in the
second.”

Sherlock Holmes was not very communicative during
the long drive, and lay back in the cab humming
the tunes which he had heard in the afternoon. We
rattled through an endless labyrinth of gas-lit streets
until we emerged into Farringdon Street.

“We are close there now,” my friend remarked.
“This fellow Merryweather is a bank director and
personally interested in the matter. I thought it as
well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad
fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession.
He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as
a bulldog, and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his
claws upon any one. Here we are, and they are waiting
for us.”

We had reached the same crowded thoroughfare in
which we had found ourselves in the morning. Our
cabs were dismissed, and following the guidance of
Mr. Merryweather, we passed down a narrow passage,[99]
and through a side door which he opened for us.
Within there was a small corridor, which ended in a
very massive iron gate. This also was opened, and
led down a flight of winding stone steps, which terminated
at another formidable gate. Mr. Merryweather
stopped to light a lantern, and then conducted
us down a dark, earth-smelling passage, and
so, after opening a third door, into a huge vault or
cellar, which was piled all round with crates and massive
boxes.

“You are not very vulnerable from above,” Holmes
remarked, as he held up the lantern and gazed about
him.

“Nor from below,” said Mr. Merryweather, striking
his stick upon the flags which lined the floor.
“Why, dear me, it sounds quite hollow!” he remarked,
looking up in surprise.

“I must really ask you to be a little more quiet,”
said Holmes, severely. “You have already imperiled
the whole success of our expedition. Might I beg
that you would have the goodness to sit down upon
one of those boxes, and not to interfere?”

The solemn Mr. Merryweather perched himself
upon a crate, with a very injured expression upon his
face, while Holmes fell upon his knees upon the floor,
and, with the lantern and a magnifying lens, began
to examine minutely the cracks between the stones.
A few seconds sufficed to satisfy him, for he sprang
to his feet again, and put his glass in his pocket.[100]

“We have at least an hour before us,” he remarked,
“for they can hardly take any steps until the good
pawnbroker is safely in bed. Then they will not lose
a minute, for the sooner they do their work the longer
time they will have for their escape. We are at
present, doctor—as no doubt you have divined—in the
cellar of the city branch of one of the principal London
banks. Mr. Merryweather is the chairman of
directors, and he will explain to you that there are
reasons why the more daring criminals of London
should take a considerable interest in this cellar at
present.”

“It is our French gold,” whispered the director.
“We have had several warnings that an attempt might
be made upon it.”

“Your French gold?”

“Yes. We had occasion some months ago to
strengthen our resources, and borrowed, for that purpose,
thirty thousand napoleons from the Bank of
France. It has become known that we have never had
occasion to unpack the money, and that it is still lying
in our cellar. The crate upon which I sit contains two
thousand napoleons packed between layers of lead
foil. Our reserve of bullion is much larger at present
than is usually kept in a single branch office, and the
directors have had misgivings upon the subject.”

“Which were very well justified,” observed Holmes.
“And now it is time that we arranged our little plans.
I expect that within an hour matters will come to a[101]
head. In the meantime, Mr. Merryweather, we must
put the screen over that dark lantern.”

“And sit in the dark?”

“I am afraid so. I had brought a pack of cards in
my pocket, and I thought that, as we were a partie
carrée, you might have your rubber after all. But I
see that the enemy’s preparations have gone so far
that we cannot risk the presence of a light. And, first
of all, we must choose our positions. These are daring
men, and, though we shall take them at a disadvantage,
they may do us some harm, unless we are
careful. I shall stand behind this crate, and do you
conceal yourself behind those. Then, when I flash
a light upon them, close in swiftly. If they fire, Watson,
have no compunction about shooting them down.”

I placed my revolver, cocked, upon the top of the
wooden case behind which I crouched. Holmes shot
the slide across the front of his lantern, and left us
in pitch darkness—such an absolute darkness as I have
never before experienced. The smell of hot metal
remained to assure us that the light was still there,
ready to flash out at a moment’s notice. To me, with
my nerves worked up to a pitch of expectancy, there
was something depressing and subduing in the sudden
gloom, and in the cold, dank air of the vault.

“They have but one retreat,” whispered Holmes.
“That is back through the house into Saxe-Coburg
Square. I hope that you have done what I asked you,
Jones?”[102]

“I have an inspector and two officers waiting at the
front door.”

“Then we have stopped all the holes. And now we
must be silent and wait.”

What a time it seemed! From comparing notes
afterwards, it was but an hour and a quarter, yet it
appeared to me that the night must have almost gone,
and the dawn be breaking above us. My limbs were
weary and stiff, for I feared to change my position,
yet my nerves were worked up to the highest pitch
of tension, and my hearing was so acute that I could
not only hear the gentle breathing of my companions,
but I could distinguish the deeper, heavier inbreath of
the bulky Jones from the thin, sighing note of the
bank director. From my position I could look over
the case in the direction of the floor. Suddenly my
eyes caught the glint of a light.

At first it was but a lurid spark upon the stone
pavement. Then it lengthened out until it became a
yellow line, and then, without any warning or sound,
a gash seemed to open and a hand appeared, a white,
almost womanly hand, which felt about in the center
of the little area of light. For a minute or more the
hand, with its writhing fingers, protruded out of the
floor. Then it was withdrawn as suddenly as it appeared,
and all was dark again save the single lurid
spark, which marked a chink between the stones.

Its disappearance, however, was but momentary.
With a rending, tearing sound, one of the broad white[103]
stones turned over upon its side, and left a square,
gaping hole, through which streamed the light of a
lantern. Over the edge there peeped a clean-cut, boyish
face, which looked keenly about it, and then, with
a hand on either side of the aperture, drew itself
shoulder-high and waist-high, until one knee rested
upon the edge. In another instant he stood at the side
of the hole, and was hauling after him a companion,
lithe and small like himself, with a pale face and a
shock of very red hair.

“It’s all clear,” he whispered. “Have you the chisel
and the bags? Great Scott! Jump, Archie, jump,
and I’ll swing for it!”

Sherlock Holmes had sprung out and seized the
intruder by the collar. The other dived down the
hole, and I heard the sound of rending cloth as Jones
clutched at his skirts. The light flashed upon the
barrel of a revolver, but Holmes’ hunting crop came
down on the man’s wrist, and the pistol clinked upon
the stone floor.

“It’s no use, John Clay,” said Holmes, blandly, “you
have no chance at all.”

“So I see,” the other answered, with the utmost
coolness. “I fancy that my pal is all right, though I
see you have got his coat-tails.”

“There are three men waiting for him at the door,”
said Holmes.

“Oh, indeed. You seem to have done the thing very
completely. I must compliment you.”[104]

“And I you,” Holmes answered. “Your red-headed
idea was very new and effective.”

“You’ll see your pal again presently,” said Jones.
“He’s quicker at climbing down holes than I am.
Just hold out while I fix the derbies.”

“I beg that you will not touch me with your filthy
hands,” remarked our prisoner, as the handcuffs clattered
upon his wrists. “You may not be aware that I
have royal blood in my veins. Have the goodness
also, when you address me, always to say ‘sir’ and
‘please.'”

“All right,” said Jones, with a stare and a snigger.
“Well, would you please, sir, march upstairs where
we can get a cab to carry your highness to the police
station.”

“That is better,” said John Clay, serenely. He
made a sweeping bow to the three of us, and walked
quietly off in the custody of the detective.

“Really, Mr. Holmes,” said Mr. Merryweather, as
we followed them from the cellar, “I do not know how
the bank can thank you or repay you. There is no
doubt that you have detected and defeated in the most
complete manner one of the most determined attempts
at bank robbery that have ever come within my experience.”

“I have had one or two little scores of my own to
settle with Mr. John Clay,” said Holmes. “I have
been at some small expense over this matter, which
I shall expect the bank to refund, but beyond that I am[105]
amply repaid by having had an experience which is in
many ways unique, and by hearing the very remarkable
narrative of the Red-headed League.”

“You see, Watson,” he explained, in the early hours
of the morning, as we sat over a glass of whisky and
soda in Baker Street, “it was perfectly obvious from
the first that the only possible object of this rather
fantastic business of the advertisement of the League,
and the copying of the ‘Encyclopædia,’ must be to get
this not over-bright pawnbroker out of the way for a
number of hours every day. It was a curious way of
managing it, but really it would be difficult to suggest
a better. The method was no doubt suggested to
Clay’s ingenious mind by the color of his accomplice’s
hair. The four pounds a week was a lure which must
draw him, and what was it to them, who were playing
for thousands? They put in the advertisement, one
rogue has the temporary office, the other rogue incites
the man to apply for it, and together they manage to
secure his absence every morning in the week. From
the time that I heard of the assistant having come for
half wages, it was obvious to me that he had some
strong motive for securing the situation.”

“But how could you guess what the motive was?”

“Had there been women in the house, I should have
suspected a mere vulgar intrigue. That, however, was
out of the question. The man’s business was a small
one, and there was nothing in his house which could[106]
account for such elaborate preparations, and such an
expenditure as they were at. It must then be something
out of the house. What could it be? I thought
of the assistant’s fondness for photography, and his
trick of vanishing into the cellar. The cellar? There
was the end of this tangled clew. Then I made inquiries
as to this mysterious assistant, and found that
I had to deal with one of the coolest and most daring
criminals in London. He was doing something in the
cellar—something which took many hours a day for
months on end. What could it be, once more? I
could think of nothing save that he was running a
tunnel to some other building.

“So far I had got when we went to visit the scene
of action. I surprised you by beating upon the pavement
with my stick. I was ascertaining whether the
cellar stretched out in front or behind. It was not in
front. Then I rang the bell, and, as I hoped, the
assistant answered it. We have had some skirmishes,
but we had never set eyes upon each other before.
I hardly looked at his face. His knees were what I
wished to see. You must yourself have remarked
how worn, wrinkled, and stained they were. They
spoke of those hours of burrowing. The only remaining
point was what they were burrowing for. I
walked round the corner, saw that the City and Suburban
Bank abutted on our friend’s premises, and felt
that I had solved my problem. When you drove home
after the concert I called upon Scotland Yard, and[107]
upon the chairman of the bank directors, with the
result that you have seen.”

“And how could you tell that they would make
their attempt to-night?” I asked.

“Well, when they closed their League offices that
was a sign that they cared no longer about Mr. Jabez
Wilson’s presence; in other words, that they had completed
their tunnel. But it was essential that they
should use it soon, as it might be discovered, or the
bullion might be removed. Saturday would suit them
better than any other day, as it would give them two
days for their escape. For all these reasons I expected
them to come to-night.”

“You reasoned it out beautifully,” I exclaimed, in
unfeigned admiration. “It is so long a chain, and yet
every link rings true.”

“It saved me from ennui,” he answered, yawning.
“Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life
is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces
of existence. These little problems help me to
do so.”

“And you are a benefactor of the race,” said I. He
shrugged his shoulders. “Well, perhaps, after all, it
is of some little use,” he remarked.[108]

V.—The Ransom of Red Chief[E]

By O. Henry

There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake,
and called Summit, of course. It contained
inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a
class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.

Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred
dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more
to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western
Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of
the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong[109]
in semi-rural communities; therefore, and for other
reasons, a kidnaping project ought to do better there
than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters
out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things.
We knew that Summit couldn’t get after us with anything
stronger than constables and, maybe, some
lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in
the Weekly Farmers’ Budget. So, it looked good.

We selected for our victim the only child of a
prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The
father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier
and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser.
The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief
freckles, and hair the color of the cover of the magazine
you buy at the news-stand when you want to catch
a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt
down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent.
But wait till I tell you.

About two miles from Summit was a little mountain,
covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation
of this mountain was a cave. There we stored
provisions.

One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy
past old Dorset’s house. The kid was in the street,
throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.

“Hey, little boy!” says Bill, “would you like to have
a bag of candy and a nice ride?”

The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece
of brick.[110]

“That will cost the old man an extra five hundred
dollars,” says Bill, climbing over the wheel.

That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon
bear; but, at last, we got him down in the bottom
of the buggy and drove away. We took him up
to the cave, and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake.
After dark I drove the buggy to the little village,
three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked
back to the mountain.

Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and
bruises on his features. There was a fire burning behind
the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the
boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two
buzzard tail-feathers stuck in his red hair. He points
a stick at me when I come up, and says:

“Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp
of Red Chief, the terror of the plains?”

“He’s all right now,” says Bill, rolling up his
trousers and examining some bruises on his shins.
“We’re playing Indian. We’re making Buffalo Bill’s
show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in
the town hall. I’m Old Hank, the Trapper, Red
Chief’s captive, and I’m to be scalped at daybreak.
By Geronimo! that kid can kick hard.”

Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of
his life. The fun of camping out in a cave had made
him forget that he was a captive himself. He immediately
christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced
that, when his braves returned from the warpath,[111]
I was to be broiled at the stake at the rising of
the sun.

Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of
bacon and bread and gravy, and began to talk. He
made a during-dinner speech something like this:

“I like this fine. I never camped out before; but
I had a pet ‘possum once, and I was nine last birthday.
I hate to go to school. Rats ate up sixteen of
Jimmy Talbot’s aunt’s speckled hen’s eggs. Are there
any real Indians in these woods? I want some more
gravy. Does the trees moving make the wind blow?
We had five puppies. What makes your nose so red,
Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars
hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don’t
like girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a
string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges
round? Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave?
Amos Murray has got six toes. A parrot can talk, but
a monkey or a fish can’t. How many does it take to
make twelve?”

Every few minutes he would remember that he was
a pesky redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe
to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of
the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out
a war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper shiver.
That boy had Bill terrorized from the start.

“Red Chief,” says I to the kid, “would you like to
go home?”

“Aw, what for?” says he. “I don’t have any fun[112]
at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out.
You won’t take me back home again, Snake-eye, will
you?”

“Not right away,” says I. “We’ll stay here in the
cave a while.”

“All right!” says he. “That’ll be fine. I never
had such fun in all my life.”

We went to bed about eleven o’clock. We spread
down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red
Chief between us. We weren’t afraid he’d run away.
He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and
reaching for his rifle and screeching: “Hist! pard,”
in mine and Bill’s ears, as the fancied crackle of a
twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young
imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band.
At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that
I had been kidnaped and chained to a tree by a
ferocious pirate with red hair.

Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of
awful screams from Bill. They weren’t yells, or
howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you’d
expect from a manly set of vocal organs—they were
simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such
as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars.
It’s an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat
man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.

I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief
was sitting on Bill’s chest, with one hand twined in
Bill’s hair. In the other he had the sharp case-knife[113]
we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously
and realistically trying to take Bill’s scalp, according
to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the
evening before.

I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie
down again. But, from that moment, Bill’s spirit was
broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he
never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy
was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward
sun-up I remembered that Red Chief had said I
was to be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun.
I wasn’t nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my
pipe and leaned against a rock.

“What you getting up so soon for, Sam?” asked
Bill.

“Me?” says I. “Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my
shoulder. I thought sitting up would rest it.”

“You’re a liar!” says Bill. “You’re afraid. You
was to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he’d
do it. And he would, too, if he could find a match.
Ain’t it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay
out money to get a little imp like that back home?”

“Sure,” said I. “A rowdy kid like that is just the
kind that parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief
get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of
this mountain and reconnoiter.”

I went up on the peak of the little mountain and
ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over
toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry[114]
of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks
beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnapers.
But what I saw was a peaceful landscape
dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule.
Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed
hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted
parents. There was a sylvan attitude of
somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external
outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to
my view. “Perhaps,” says I to myself, “it has not yet
been discovered that the wolves have borne away the
tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the
wolves!” says I, and I went down the mountain to
breakfast.

When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up
against the side of it, breathing hard, and the boy
threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as
a cocoanut.

“He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back,” explained
Bill, “and then mashed it with his foot; and
I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you,
Sam?”

I took the rock away from the boy and kind of
patched up the argument. “I’ll fix you,” says the kid
to Bill. “No man ever yet struck the Red Chief but
what he got paid for it. You better beware!”

After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with
strings wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes
outside the cave unwinding it.[115]

“What’s he up to now?” says Bill anxiously. “You
don’t think he’ll run away, do you, Sam?”

“No fear of it,” says I. “He don’t seem to be
much of a home body. But we’ve got to fix up some
plan about the ransom. There don’t seem to be much
excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance;
but maybe they haven’t realized yet that
he’s gone. His folks may think he’s spending the
night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbors. Anyhow,
he’ll be missed to-day. To-night we must get a
message to his father demanding the two thousand
dollars for his return.”

Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as
David might have emitted when he knocked out the
champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had
pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around
his head.

I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a
sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take
his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the size of an egg
had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened
himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying
pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged
him out and poured cold water on his head for half
an hour.

By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and
says: “Sam, do you know who my favorite Biblical
character is?”[116]

“Take it easy,” says I. “You’ll come to your senses
presently.”

“King Herod,” says he. “You won’t go away and
leave me here alone, will you, Sam?”

I went out and caught that boy and shook him until
his freckles rattled.

“If you don’t behave,” says I, “I’ll take you straight
home. Now, are you going to be good, or not?”

“I was only funning,” says he sullenly. “I didn’t
mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for?
I’ll behave, Snake-eye, if you won’t send me home,
and if you’ll let me play the Black Scout to-day.”

“I don’t know the game,” says I. “That’s for you
and Mr. Bill to decide. He’s your playmate for the
day. I’m going away for a while, on business. Now,
you come in and make friends with him and say you
are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once.”

I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took
Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove,
a little village three miles from the cave, and find out
what I could about how the kidnaping had been regarded
in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a
peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding
the ransom and dictating how it should be paid.

“You know, Sam,” says Bill, “I’ve stood by you
without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire, and flood—in
poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids,
train robberies, and cyclones. I never lost my nerve
yet till we kidnaped that two-legged skyrocket of a[117]
kid. He’s got me going. You won’t leave me long
with him, will you, Sam?”

“I’ll be back some time this afternoon,” says I.
“You must keep the boy amused and quiet till I return.
And now we’ll write the letter to old Dorset.”

Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the
letter while Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around
him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the
cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom
fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. “I
ain’t attempting,” says he, “to decry the celebrated
moral aspect of parental affection, but we’re dealing
with humans, and it ain’t human for anybody to give
up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk
of freckled wildcat. I’m willing to take a chance at
fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference
up to me.”

So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated
a letter that ran this way:

I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my
pocket. As I was about to start, the kid comes up to
me and says:

“Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black
Scout while you was gone.”

“Play it, of course,” says I. “Mr. Bill will play
with you. What kind of a game is it?”

“I’m the Black Scout,” says Red Chief, “and I
have to ride to the stockade to warn the settlers that
the Indians are coming. I’m tired of playing Indian
myself. I want to be the Black Scout.”

“All right,” says I. “It sounds harmless to me.
I guess Mr. Bill will help you foil the pesky savages.”

“What am I to do?” asks Bill, looking at the kid
suspiciously.

“You are the hoss,” says Black Scout. “Get down
on your hands and knees. How can I ride to the
stockade without a hoss?”[119]

“You’d better keep him interested,” said I, “till we
get the scheme going. Loosen up.”

Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in
his eye like a rabbit’s when you catch it in a trap.

“How far is it to the stockade, kid?” he asks, in a
husky manner of voice.

“Ninety miles,” says the Black Scout. “And you
have to hump yourself to get there on time. Whoa,
now!”

The Black Scout jumps on Bill’s back and digs his
heels in his side.

“For Heaven’s sake,” says Bill, “hurry back, Sam,
as soon as you can. I wish we hadn’t made the ransom
more than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking
me or I’ll get up and warm you good.”

I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the
post-office and store, talking with the chawbacons that
came in to trade. One whiskerando says that he hears
Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset’s
boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I
wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco,
referred casually to the price of black-eyed peas,
posted my letter surreptitiously, and came away. The
postmaster said the mail-carrier would come by in an
hour to take the mail on to Summit.

When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were
not to be found. I explored the vicinity of the cave,
and risked a yodel or two, but there was no response.[120]

THE BLACK SCOUT JUMPS ON BILL’S BACK AND DIGS HIS HEELS IN HIS SIDE

So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank
to await developments.

In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle,
and Bill wabbled out into the little glade in front of
the cave. Behind him was the kid, stepping softly
like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill
stopped, took off his hat, and wiped his face with a
red handkerchief. The kid stopped about eight feet
behind him.

“Sam,” says Bill, “I suppose you’ll think I’m a
renegade, but I couldn’t help it. I’m a grown person
with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense,
but there is a time when all systems of egotism and
predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent
him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old
times,” goes on Bill, “that suffered death rather than
give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of
’em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures
as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles
of depredation; but there came a limit.”

“What’s the trouble, Bill?” I asks him.

“I was rode,” says Bill, “the ninety miles to the
stockade, not barring an inch. Then, when the settlers
was rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain’t a palatable
substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to
explain to him why there was nothin’ in holes, how a
road can run both ways, and what makes the grass
green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so
much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes and[121]
drags him down the mountain. On the way he kicks
my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and
I’ve got to have two or three bites on my thumb and
hand cauterized.

“But he’s gone”—continues Bill—”gone home. I
showed him the road to Summit and kicked him about
eight feet nearer there at one kick. I’m sorry we lose
the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to
the madhouse.”

Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of
ineffable peace and growing content on his rose-pink
features.

“Bill,” says I, “there isn’t any heart disease in your
family, is there?”

“No,” says Bill, “nothing chronic except malaria
and accidents. Why?”

“Then you might turn around,” says I, “and have
a look behind you.”

Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion
and sits down plump on the ground and begins to pluck
aimlessly at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was
afraid for his mind. And then I told him that my
scheme was to put the whole job through immediately
and that we would get the ransom and be off with it by
midnight if old Dorset fell in with our proposition.
So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a weak sort
of a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a
Japanese war with him as soon as he felt a little
better.[122]

I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without
danger of being caught by counterplots that ought to
commend itself to professional kidnapers. The tree
under which the answer was to be left—and the money
later on—was close to the road fence with big, bare
fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be
watching for any one to come for the note, they could
see him a long way off crossing the fields or in the
road. But no, siree! At half-past eight I was up in
that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the
messenger to arrive.

Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the
road on a bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the
foot of the fence-post, slips a folded piece of paper
into it, and pedals away again back toward Summit.

I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was
square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped
along the fence till I struck the woods, and was back
at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the
note, got near the lantern, and read it to Bill. It
was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the
sum and substance of it was this:

“Great pirates of Penzance!” says I; “of all the
impudent——”

But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the
most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face
of a dumb or a talking brute.

“Sam,” says he, “what’s two hundred and fifty
dollars, after all? We’ve got the money. One more
night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam.
Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset
is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer.
You ain’t going to let the chance go, are you?”

“Tell you the truth, Bill,” says I, “this little he ewe
lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We’ll
take him home, pay the ransom, and make our getaway.”

We took him home that night. We got him to go
by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted
rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we
were going to hunt bears the next day.

It was just twelve o’clock when we knocked at
Ebenezer’s front door. Just at the moment when I
should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars
from the box under the tree, according to the
original proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred
and fifty dollars into Dorset’s hand.[124]

When the kid found out we were going to leave
him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and
fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill’s leg. His
father peeled him away gradually, like a porous
plaster.

“How long can you hold him!” asks Bill.

“I’m not as strong as I used to be,” says old Dorset,
“but I think I can promise you ten minutes.”

“Enough,” says Bill. “In ten minutes I shall cross
the Central, Southern, and Middle Western States,
and be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border.”

And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and
as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile and a
half out of Summit before I could catch up with him.

[125]

VI.—The Honk-Honk Breed[F]

By Stewart Edward White

“Speakin’ of snakes,” said Windy, “I mind when
they catched the great-granddaddy of all the bullsnakes[126]
up at Lead in the Black Hills. I was only a
kid then. This wasn’t no such tur’ble long a snake,
but he was more’n a foot thick. Looked just like a
sahuaro stalk. Man name of Terwilliger Smith
catched it. He named this yere bull-snake Clarence,
and got it so plumb gentle it followed him everywhere.
One day old P. T. Barnum come along and wanted to
buy this Clarence snake—offered Terwilliger a thousand
cold—but Smith wouldn’t part with the snake
nohow. So finally they fixed up a deal so Smith could
go along with the show. They shoved Clarence in a
box in the baggage car, but after a while Mr. Snake
gets so lonesome he gnaws out and starts to crawl
back to find his master. Just as he is half-way between
the baggage car and the smoker, the couplin’
give way—right on that heavy grade between Custer
and Rocky Point. Well, sir, Clarence wound his head
’round one brake wheel and his tail around the other,
and held that train together to the bottom of the grade.
But it stretched him twenty-eight feet and they had to
advertise him as a boa-constrictor.”

Windy Bill’s history of the faithful bull-snake
aroused to reminiscence the grizzled stranger, who
thereupon held forth as follows:

Wall, I’ve see things and I’ve heerd things, some of
them ornery, and some you’d love to believe, they
was that gorgeous and improbable. Nat’ral history
was always my hobby and sportin’ events my special
pleasure—and this yarn of Windy’s reminds me of the[127]
only chanst I ever had to ring in business and pleasure
and hobby all in one grand merry-go-round of joy. It
come about like this:

One day, a few year back, I was sittin’ on the beach
at Santa Barbara watchin’ the sky stay up, and wonderin’
what to do with my year’s wages, when a little
squinch-eye round-face with big bow spectacles came
and plumped down beside me.

“Did you ever stop to think,” says he, shovin’ back
his hat, “that if the horse-power delivered by them
waves on this beach in one single hour could be concentrated
behind washin’ machines, it would be enough
to wash all the shirts for a city of four hundred and
fifty-one thousand one hundred and thirty-six people?”

“Can’t say I ever did,” says I, squintin’ at him sideways.

“Fact,” says he, “and did it ever occur to you that
if all the food a man eats in the course of a natural
life could be gathered together at one time, it would
fill a wagon-train twelve miles long?”

“You make me hungry,” says I.

“And ain’t it interestin’ to reflect,” he goes on,
“that if all the finger-nail parin’s of the human race
for one year was to be collected and subjected to
hydraulic pressure it would equal in size the pyramid
of Cheops?”

“Look here,” says I, sittin’ up, “did you ever pause
to excogitate that if all the hot air you is dispensin’
was to be collected together it would fill a balloon big[128]
enough to waft you and me over that Bullyvard of
Palms to yonder gin mill on the corner?”

He didn’t say nothin’ to that—just yanked me to my
feet, faced me towards the gin mill above mentioned,
and exerted considerable pressure on my arm in urgin’
of me forward.

“You ain’t so much of a dreamer, after all,” thinks
I. “In important matters you are plumb decisive.”

We sat down at little tables, and my friend ordered
a beer and a chicken sandwich.

“Chickens,” says he, gazin’ at the sandwich, “is a
dollar apiece in this country, and plumb scarce. Did
you ever pause to ponder over the returns chickens
would give on a small investment? Say you start with
ten hens. Each hatches out thirteen aigs, of which
allow a loss of say six for childish accidents. At the
end of two years that flock has increased to six
hundred and twenty. At the end of the third
year——”

He had the medicine tongue! Ten days later him
and me was occupyin’ of an old ranch fifty mile from
anywhere. When they run stage-coaches this joint
used to be a road-house. The outlook was on about
a thousand little brown foothills. A road two miles
four rods two foot eleven inches in sight run by in
front of us. It come over one foothill and disappeared
over another. I know just how long it was,
for later in the game I measured it.

Out back was about a hundred little wire chicken[129]
corrals filled with chickens. We had two kinds. That
was the doin’s of Tuscarora. My pardner called himself
Tuscarora Maxillary. I asked him once if that
was his real name.

“It’s the realest little old name you ever heerd tell
of,” says he. “I know, for I made it myself—liked
the sound of her. Parents ain’t got no rights to
name their children. Parents don’t have to be called
them names.”

Well, these chickens, as I said, was of two kinds.
The first was these low-set, heavy-weight propositions
with feathers on their laigs, and not much laigs
at that, called Cochin Chinys. The other was a tall
ridiculous outfit made up entire of bulgin’ breast and
gangle laigs. They stood about two foot and a half
tall, and when they went to peck the ground their tail
feathers stuck straight up to the sky. Tusky called
’em Japanese Games.

“Which the chief advantage of them chickens is,”
says he, “that in weight about ninety per cent. of ’em
is breast meat. Now my idee is, that if we can cross
’em with these Cochin Chiny fowls we’ll have a low-hung,
heavy-weight chicken runnin’ strong on breast
meat. These Jap Games is too small, but if we can
bring ’em up in size and shorten their laigs, we’ll shore
have a winner.”

That looked good to me, so we started in on that
idee. The theery was bully, but she didn’t work out.
The first broods we hatched growed up with big[130]
husky Cochin Chiny bodies and little short necks,
perched up on laigs three foot long. Them chickens
couldn’t reach ground nohow. We had to build a
table for ’em to eat off, and when they went out rustlin’
for themselves they had to confine themselves to side-hills
or flyin’ insects. Their breasts was all right,
though—”And think of them drumsticks for the
boardin’-house trade!” says Tusky.

So far things wasn’t so bad. We had a good grub-stake.
Tusky and me used to feed them chickens
twict a day, and then used to set around watchin’ the
playful critters chase grasshoppers up and down the
wire corrals, while Tusky figgered out what’d happen
if somebody was dumfool enough to gather up somethin’
and fix it in baskets or wagons or such. That
was where we showed our ignorance of chickens.

One day in the spring I hitched up, rustled a dozen
of the youngsters into coops, and druv over to the
railroad to make our first sale. I couldn’t fold them
chickens up into them coops at first, but then I stuck
the coops up on aidge and they worked all right,
though I will admit they was a comical sight. At the
railroad one of them towerist trains had just slowed
down to a halt as I come up, and the towerists was
paradin’ up and down allowin’ they was particular enjoyin’
of the warm Californy sunshine. One old
terrapin with gray chin whiskers, projected over, with
his wife, and took a peek through the slats of my coop.[131]
He straightened up like some one had touched him off
with a red-hot poker.

“Stranger,” said he, in a scared kind of whisper,
“what’s them?”

“Them’s chickens,” says I.

He took another long look.

“Marthy,” says he to the old woman, “this will
be about all! We come out from Ioway to see the
Wonders of Californy, but I can’t go nothin’ stronger
than this. If these is chickens, I don’t want to see no
Big Trees.”

Well, I sold them chickens all right for a dollar and
two bits, which was better than I expected, and got
an order for more. About ten days later I got a letter
from the commission house.

“We are returnin’ a sample of your Arts and Crafts
chickens with the lovin’ marks of the teeth still onto
him,” says they. “Don’t send any more till they stops
pursuin’ of the nimble grasshopper. Dentist bill will
foller.”

With the letter came the remains of one of the
chickens. Tusky and I, very indignant, cooked her
for supper. She was tough, all right. We thought
she might do better biled, so we put her in the pot over
night. Nary bit. Well, then we got interested. Tusky
kep’ the fire goin’ and I rustled greasewood. We
cooked her three days and three nights. At the end
of that time she was sort of pale and frazzled, but
still givin’ points to three-year-old jerky on cohesion[132]
and other uncompromisin’ forces of Nature. We
buried her then, and went out back to recuperate.

There we could gaze on the smilin’ landscape, dotted
by about four hundred long-laigged chickens swoopin’
here and there after grasshoppers.

“We got to stop that,” says I.

“We can’t,” murmured Tusky, inspired. “We
can’t. It’s born in ’em; it’s primal instinct, like the
love of a mother for her young, and it can’t be
eradicated! Them chickens is constructed by a divine
providence for the express purpose of chasin’ grasshoppers,
just as the beaver is made for building dams,
and the cow-puncher is made for whisky and faro-games.
We can’t keep ’em from it. If we was to
shut ’em in a dark cellar, they’d flop after imaginary
grasshoppers in their dreams, and die emaciated in the
midst of plenty. Jimmy, we’re up agin the Cosmos,
the oversoul——” Oh, he had the medicine tongue,
Tusky had, and risin’ on the wings of eloquence that
way, he had me faded in ten minutes. In fifteen I was
wedded solid to the notion that the bottom had dropped
out of the chicken business. I think now that if we’d
shut them hens up, we might have—still, I don’t know;
they was a good deal in what Tusky said.

“Tuscarora Maxillary,” says I, “did you ever stop
to entertain that beautiful thought that if all the dumfoolishness
possessed now by the human race could be
gathered together, and lined up alongside of us, the[133]
first feller to come along would say to it, ‘Why, hello,
Solomon!'”

We quit the notion of chickens for profit right then
and there, but we couldn’t quit the place. We hadn’t
much money, for one thing, and then we kind of liked
loafin’ around and raisin’ a little garden truck, and—oh,
well, I might as well say so, we had a notion about
placers in the dry wash back of the house—you know
how it is. So we stayed on, and kept a-raisin’ these
long-laigs for the fun of it. I used to like to watch
’em projectin’ around, and I fed ’em twict a day about
as usual.

So Tusky and I lived alone there together, happy
as ducks in Arizona. About onc’t in a month somebody’d
pike along the road. She wasn’t much of a
road, generally more chuck-holes than bumps, though
sometimes it was the other way around. Unless it
happened to be a man horseback or maybe a freighter
without the fear of God in his soul, we didn’t have
no words with them; they was too busy cussin’ the
highways and generally too mad for social discourses.

One day early in the year, when the ‘dobe mud
made ruts to add to the bumps, one of these automobeels
went past. It was the first Tusky and me had
seen in them parts, so we run out to view her.

“Which them folks don’t seem to be enjoyin’ of the
scenery,” says I to Tusky. “Do you reckon that there
blue trail is smoke from the machine or remarks from
the inhabitants thereof?”[134]

Tusky raised his head and sniffed long and inquirin’.

“It’s langwidge,” says he. “Did you ever stop to
think that all the words in the dictionary hitched end
to end would reach——”

But at that minute I catched sight of somethin’ brass
lyin’ in the road. It proved to be a curled-up sort of
horn with a rubber bulb on the end. I squoze the
bulb and jumped twenty foot over the remark she
made.

“Jarred off the machine,” says Tusky.

“Oh, did it?” says I, my nerves still wrong. “I
thought maybe it had growed up from the soil like a
toadstool.”

About this time we abolished the wire chicken corrals,
because we needed some of the wire. Them
long-laigs thereupon scattered all over the flat searchin’
out their prey. When feed time come I had to screech
my lungs out gettin’ of ’em in, and then sometimes they
didn’t all hear. It was plumb discouragin’, and I
mighty nigh made up my mind to quit ’em, but they
had come to be sort of pets, and I hated to turn ’em
down. It used to tickle Tusky almost to death to see
me out there hollerin’ away like an old bull-frog. He
used to come out reg’la, with his pipe lit, just to enjoy
me. Finally I got mad and opened up on him.

“Oh,” he explains, “it just plumb amuses me to see
the dumfool at his childish work. Why don’t you[135]
teach ’em to come to that brass horn, and save your
voice?”

“Tusky,” says I, with feelin’, “sometimes you do
seem to get a glimmer of real sense.”

Well, first off them chickens used to throw back-summersets
over that horn. You have no idee how
slow chickens is to learn things. I could tell you
things about chickens—say, this yere bluff about
roosters bein’ gallant is all wrong. I’ve watched ’em.
When one finds a nice feed he gobbles it so fast that
the pieces foller down his throat like yearlin’s through
a hole in the fence. It’s only when he scratches up a
measly one-grain quick-lunch that he calls up the
hens and stands noble and self-sacrificin’ to one side.
That ain’t the point, which is, that after two months
I had them long-laigs so they’d drop everythin’ and
come kitin’ at the honk-honk of that horn. It was a
purty sight to see ’em, sailin’ in from all directions
twenty foot at a stride. I was proud of ’em, and
named ’em the Honk-honk Breed. We didn’t have
no others, for by now the coyotes and bob-cats had
nailed the straight-breds. There wasn’t no wild cat
or coyote could catch one of my Honk-honks, no, sir!

We made a little on our placer—just enough to keep
interested. Then the supervisors decided to fix our
road, and what’s more, they done it! That’s the only
part in this yarn that’s hard to believe, but, boys, you’ll
have to take it on faith. They plowed her, and
crowned her, and scraped her, and rolled her, and when[136]
they moved on we had the fanciest highway in the
State of Californy.

That noon—the day they called her a job—Tusky
and I sat smokin’ our pipes as per usual, when way
over the foothills we seen a cloud of dust and faint
to our ears was bore a whizzin’ sound. The chickens
was gathered under the cottonwood for the heat of
the day, but they didn’t pay no attention. Then faint,
but clear, we heard another of them brass horns:

“Honk! honk!” says it, and every one of them
chickens woke up, and stood at attention.

“Honk! honk!” it hollered clearer and nearer. Then
over the hill come an automobeel, blowin’ vigorous at
every jump.

“Stop ’em! Stop ’em!” I yells to Tusky, kickin’
over my chair, as I springs to my feet.

But it was too late. Out the gate sprinted them
poor devoted chickens, and up the road they trailed in
vain pursuit. The last we seen of ’em was a minglin’
of dust and dim figgers goin’ thirty mile an hour after
a disappearin’ automobeel.

That was all we seen for the moment. About three
o’clock the first straggler came limpin’ in, his wings
hangin’, his mouth open, his eyes glazed with the
heat. By sundown fourteen had returned. All the
rest had disappeared utter; we never seen ’em again.
I reckon they just naturally run themselves into a
sunstroke and died on the road.

It takes a long time to learn a chicken a thing, but[137]
a heap longer to unlearn him. After that two or
three of these yere automobeels went by every day, all
a-blowin’ of their horns. And every time them fourteen
Honk-honks of mine took along after ’em, just
as I’d taught ’em to do, layin’ to get to their corn
when they caught up. No more of ’em died, but that
fourteen did get into elegant trainin’. After a while
they got plumb to enjoyin’ it. When you come right
down to it, a chicken don’t have many amusements and
relaxations in this life. Searchin’ for worms, chasin’
grasshoppers, and wallerin’ in the dust is about the
limits of joys for chickens.

It was sure a fine sight to see ’em after they got
well into the game. About nine o’clock every mornin’
they would saunter down to the rise of the road where
they would wait patient until a machine came along.
Then it would warm your heart to see the enthusiasm
of them. With exultant cackles of joy they’d trail in,
reachin’ out like quarter-horses, their wings half
spread out, their eyes beamin’ with delight. At the
lower turn they’d quit. Then, after talkin’ it over
excited-like for a few minutes, they’d calm down and
wait for another.

After a few months of this sort of trainin’ they got
purty good at it. I had one two-year-old rooster that
made fifty-four mile an hour behind one of those
sixty-horsepower Panhandles. When cars didn’t
come along often enough, they’d all turn out and chase
jack-rabbits. They wasn’t much fun at that. After[138]
a short, brief sprint the rabbit would crouch down
plumb terrified, while the Honk-honks pulled off triumphal
dances around his shrinkin’ form.

Our ranch got to be purty well known them days
among automobeelists. The strength of their cars
was horsepower, of course, but the speed of them they
got to ratin’ by chickenpower. Some of them used to
come way up from Los Angeles just to try out a new
car along our road with the Honk-honks for pacemakers.
We charged them a little somethin’ and then,
too, we opened up the road-house and the bar, so we
did purty well. It wasn’t necessary to work any
longer at that bogus placer. Evenin’s we sat around
outside and swapped yarns, and I bragged on my chickens.
The chickens would gather round close to listen.
They liked to hear their praises sung, all right. You
bet they sabe! The only reason a chicken, or any
other critter, isn’t intelligent is because he hasn’t no
chance to expand.

Why, we used to run races with ’em. Some of us
would hold two or more chickens back of a chalk line,
and the starter’d blow the horn from a hundred yards
to a mile away, dependin’ on whether it was a sprint
or for distance. We had pools on the results, gave
odds, made books, and kept records. After the thing
got knowed we made money hand over fist.

The stranger broke off abruptly and began to roll
a cigarette.[139]

“What did you quit it for, then?” ventured Charley,
out of the hushed silence.

“Pride,” replied the stranger solemnly. “Haughtiness
of spirit.”

“How so?” urged Charley, after a pause.

“Them chickens,” continued the stranger, after a
moment, “stood around listenin’ to me a-braggin’ of
what superior fowls they was until they got all puffed
up. They wouldn’t have nothin’ whatever to do with
the ordinary chickens we brought in for eatin’ purposes,
but stood around lookin’ bored when there
wasn’t no sport doin’. They got to be just like that
Four Hundred you read about in the papers. It was
one continual round of grasshopper balls, race meets,
and afternoon hen-parties. They got idle and haughty,
just like folks. They got to feelin’ so aristocratic the
hens wouldn’t have no eggs.”

Nobody dared say a word.

“Windy Bill’s snake——” began the narrator
genially.

“Stranger,” broke in Windy Bill, with great
emphasis, “as to that snake, I want you to understand
this: yereafter in my estimation that snake is nothin’
but an ornery angle-worm!”

[140]

VII.—The Devil-Fish[G]

By Norman Duncan

“‘TIS THE DEVIL-FISH!” SCREAMED BOBBY.

[141]

Billy Topsail did not know what a cephalopod was;
but he did know a squid when he saw its picture, for
Ruddy Cove is a fishing harbor, and he had caught
many a thousand for bait. So when he found that to
the lay mind a squid and a cephalopod were one and
the same, save in size, he read the long article from
beginning to end, doing the best he could with the
strange, long words.

So interested was he that he read it again; and by
that time he had learned enough to surprise him,
even to terrify him, notwithstanding the writer’s assurance
that the power and ferocity of the creatures
had generally been exaggerated.

He was a lad of sound common sense. He had
never wholly doubted the tales of desperate encounters
with devil-fish, told in the harbor these many years;[142]
for the various descriptions of how the long slimy
arms had curled about the punts had rung too true
to be quite disbelieved; but he had considered them
somewhat less credible than certain wild yarns of
shipwreck, and somewhat more credible than the
bedtime stories of mermaids which the grandmothers
told the children of the place.

Here, however, in plain print, was described the
capture of a giant squid in a bay which lay beyond
a point of land that Billy could see from the window.

That afternoon Billy put out in his leaky old punt
to “jig” squid for bait. He was so disgusted with
the punt—so ashamed of the squat, weather-worn,
rotten cast-off—that he wished heartily for a new one
all the way to the grounds. The loss of the Never
Give Up had brought him to humiliating depths.

But when he had once joined the little fleet of boats,
he cheerfully threw his grapnel into Bobby Lot’s punt
and beckoned Bobby aboard. Then, as together they
drew the writhing-armed, squirting little squids from
the water, he told of the “big squids” which lurked
in the deep water beyond the harbor; and all the time
Bobby opened his eyes wider and wider.

“Is they just like squids?” Bobby asked.

“But bigger,” answered Billy. “Their bodies is so
big as hogsheads. Their arms is thirty-five feet long.”

Bobby picked a squid from the heap in the bottom
of the boat. It had instinctively turned from a reddish-brown
to a livid green, the color of sea-water;[143]
indeed, had it been in the water, its enemy would
have had hard work to see it.

He handled it gingerly; but the ugly little creature
managed somehow to twine its slender arms about his
hand, and swiftly to take hold with a dozen cup-like
suckers. The boy uttered an exclamation of disgust,
and shook it off. Then he shuddered, laughed at
himself, shuddered again. A moment later he chose
a dead squid for examination.

“Leave us look at it close,” said he. “Then we’ll
know what a real devil-fish is like. Sure, I’ve been
wantin’ to know that for a long, long time.”

They observed the long cylindrical body, flabby and
cold, with the broad, flap-like tail attached. The head
was repulsively ugly—perhaps because of the eyes,
which were disproportionately large, brilliant, and,
in the live squid, ferocious.

A group of arms—two long, slender, tentacular
arms, and eight shorter, thicker ones—projected from
the region of the mouth, which, indeed, was set in the
center of the ring they formed at the roots. They
were equipped with innumerable little suckers, were
flexible and active, and as long as the head, body and
tail put together.

Closer examination revealed that there was a horny
beak, like a parrot’s, in the mouth, and that on the
under side of the head was a curious tube-like structure.

“Oh, that’s his squirter!” Billy explained. “When[144]
he wants to back up he points that forward, and
squirts out water so hard as he can; and when he
wants to go ahead he points it backward, and does the
same thing. That’s where his ink comes from, too,
when he wants to make the water so dirty nobody
can see him.”

“What does he do with his beak?”

“When he gets his food in his arms he bites out
pieces with his beak. He hasn’t any teeth; but he’s
got something just as good—a tongue like a rasp.”

“I wouldn’t like to be cotched by a squid as big
as a hogshead,” Bobby remarked, timidly.

“Huh!” said Billy, grimly. “He’d make short work
o’ you! Why, b’y, they weighs half a tone apiece!
I isn’t much afraid, though,” he added. “They’re
only squid. Afore I read about them in the book I
used to think they was worse than they is—terrible
ghostlike things. But they’re no worse than squids,
only bigger, and——”

“They’re bad enough for me,” Bobby interrupted.

“And,” Billy concluded, “they only comes up in
the night or when they’re sore wounded and dyin’.”

“I’m not goin’ out at night, if I can help it,” said
Bobby, with a canny shake of the head.

“If they was a big squid come up the harbor to
your house,” said Billy, after a pause, “and got close
to the rock, he could put one o’ they two long arms in
your bedroom window, and——”

“‘Tis in the attic!”[145]

“Never mind that. He could put it in the window
and feel around for your bed, and twist that arm
around you, and——”

“I’d cut it off!”

“Anyhow, that’s how long they is. And if he
knowed you was there, and wanted you, he could get
you. But I’m not so sure that he would want you.
He couldn’t see you, anyhow; and if he could, he’d
rather have a good fat salmon.”

Bobby shuddered as he looked at the tiny squid in
his hand, and thought of the dreadful possibilities in
one a thousand times as big.

“You leave them alone, and they’ll leave you alone,”
Billy went on. “But if you once make them mad,
they can dart their arms out like lightning. ‘Tis time
to get, then!”

“I’m goin’ to keep an ax in my punt after this,”
said Bobby, “and if I sees an arm slippin’ out of the
water——”

“‘Tis as big as your thigh!” cried Billy.

“Never mind. If I sees it I’ll be able to cut it off.”

“If I sees one,” said Billy, “I’m goin’ to cotch it.
It said in the book that they was worth a lot to some
people. And if I can sell mine I’m goin’ to have a
new punt.”

But although Bobby Lot and Billy Topsail kept a
sharp lookout for giant squids wherever they went,
they were not rewarded. There was not so much as
a sign of one. By and by, so bold did they become,[146]
they hunted for one in the twilight of summer days,
even daring to pry into the deepest coves and holes in
the Ruddy Cove rocks.

Notwithstanding the ridicule he had to meet, Bobby
never ventured out in the punt without a sharp ax.
He could not tell what time he would need it, he said;
and thus he formed the habit of making sure that it
was in its place before casting off from the wharf.

As autumn drew near they found other things to
think of; the big squids passed out of mind altogether.

“Wonderful queer,” Billy said, long afterwards,
“how things happen when you isn’t expectin’ them!”

One day late in September—it was near evening
of a gray day—Billy Topsail and Bobby Lot were
returning in Bobby’s punt from Birds’ Nest Islands,
whither they had gone to hunt a group of seals, reported
to have taken up a temporary residence there.
They had a mighty, muzzle-loading, flintlock gun;
and they were so delighted with the noise it made that
they had exhausted their scanty provision of powder
and lead long before the seals were in sight.

They had taken the shortest way home. It lay past
Chain Hole, a small, landlocked basin, very deep, with
a narrow entrance, which was shallow at low tide.
The entrance opened into a broad bay, and was called
Chain Tickle.[147]

“What’s that in the tickle?” Billy exclaimed, as
they were rowing past.

It was a black object, apparently floating quietly on
the surface of the water. The boys gazed at it for
a long time, but could make nothing of it. They were
completely puzzled.

“‘Tis a small bit o’ wreck, I’m thinkin’,” said
Bobby. “Leave us row close and see.”

“Maybe ’tis a capsized punt.”

When they were within about thirty yards of the
object they lay on their oars. For some unaccountable
reason they did not care to venture nearer. Twilight
was then fast approaching. The light was already
beginning to fail.

“‘Tis a wonderful queer thing!” Billy muttered,
his curiosity getting the better of him. “Row ahead,
Bobby. We’ll go alongside.”

“They’s something movin’ on it!” Bobby whispered,
as he let his oars fall in the water. “Look! They’s
two queer, big, round spots on it—big as plates.”

Billy thought he saw the whole object move. He
watched it closely. It did stir! It was some living
thing, then. But what? A whale?

A long, snake-like arm was lifted out of the water.
It swayed this way and that, darted here and there,
and fell back with a splash. The moving spots, now
plainly gigantic eyes, glittered.

“‘Tis the devil-fish!” screamed Bobby.

Another arm was lifted up, then a third and a fourth[148]
and a fifth. The monster began to lash the water—faster
and yet more furiously—until the tickle was
heaving and frothy, and the whole neighborhood was
in an uproar.

“Pull! Pull!” cried Bobby.

Billy, too, was in a panic. They turned the head
of the punt and pulled with all their might. The
water swirled in the wake of the boat. Perceiving,
however, that the squid made no effort to follow,
they got the better of their fright. Then they lay on
their oars to watch the monster.

They wondered why it still lay in the tickle, why it
so furiously lashed the water with its arms and great
tail. It was Bobby who solved the mystery.

“‘Tis aground,” said he.

That was evidently the situation. The squid had
been caught in the shallow tickle when the tide, which
ran swiftly at that point, was on the ebb. The boys
took courage. Their curiosity still further emboldened
them. So once more they turned the punt about
and pulled cautiously towards the tickle.

There was less light than before, but still sufficient
to disclose the baleful eyes and writhing arms of the
squid when the boat was yet a safe distance away.
One by one the arms fell back into the water, as if
from exhaustion; slowly the beating of the tail subsided.
After a time all sound and motion ceased.
The boys waited for some further sign of life, but
none came. The squid was still, as if dead.[149]

“Sure, he’s dead now,” said Billy. “Leave us pull
close up.”

“Oh, no, b’y! He’s but makin’ believe.”

But Billy thought otherwise. “I wants that squid,”
he said, in a dogged way, “and I’m goin’ to have him.
I’ll sell him and get a new punt.”

Bobby protested in vain. Nothing would content
Billy Topsail but the possession of the big squid’s body.
Bobby pointed out that if the long, powerful arms were
once laid on the boat there would be no escape. He
recalled to Billy the harbor story of the horrible death
of Zachariah North, who, as report said, had been
pursued, captured, and pulled under water by a devil-fish
in Gander Bay.[2]

It was all to no purpose, however, for Billy obstinately
declared that he would make sure of the squid
before the tide turned. He admitted a slight risk, but
he wanted a new punt, and he was willing to risk
something to obtain it.

He proposed to put Bobby ashore, and approach
the squid alone; but Bobby would not listen. Two
hands might be needed in the boat, he said. What
if the squid were alive, after all? What if it laid
hold of the punt? In that event, two hands would
surely be needed.

“I’ll go,” he said. “But leave us pull slow. And[150]
if we sees so much as a wink of his eye we’ll pull
away.”

They rowed nearer, with great caution. Billy was
in the bow of the boat. It was he who had the ax.
Bobby, seated amidships, faced the bow. It was he
who did the rowing.

The squid was quiet. There was not a sign of life
about it. Billy estimated the length of its body, from
the beak to the point of the tail, as twenty feet, the
circumference as “the size of a hogshead.” Its tentacular
arms, he determined, must be at least thirty-five
feet long; and when the boat came within that
distance he shuddered.

“Is you sure he’s dead?” Bobby whispered, weakly.

“I don’t know!” Billy answered, in a gasp. “I
thinks so.”

Bobby dropped the oars and stepped to the bow of
the punt. The boat lost way and came to a stop within
twenty feet of the squid. Still there was no sign of
life.

The boys stared at the great, still body, lying quiet
in the gathering dusk and haze. Neither seemed to
feel the slight trembling of the boat that might have
warned them. Not a word was spoken until Billy,
in a whisper, directed Bobby to pull the boat a few
feet nearer.

“But we’re movin’ already,” he added, in a puzzled
way.

The boat was very slowly approaching the squid.[151]
The motion was hardly perceptible, but it was real.

“‘Tis queer!” said Bobby.

He turned to take up the oars. What he saw
lying over the port gunwale of the boat made him
gasp, grip Billy’s wrist and utter a scream of terror!

“We’re cotched!”

The squid had fastened one of its tentacles to the
punt. The other was poised above the stern, ready to
fall and fix its suckers. The onward movement of
the punt was explained.

Billy knew the danger, but he was not so terrified
as to be incapable of action. He was about to spring
to the stern to strike off the tentacle that already
lay over the gunwale; but as he looked down to choose
his step he saw that one of the eight powerful arms
was slowly creeping over the starboard bow.

He struck at that arm with all his might, missed,
wrenched the ax from the gunwale, and struck true.
The mutilated arm was withdrawn. Billy leaped to
the stern, vaguely conscious in passing that another
arm was creeping from the water. He severed the
first tentacle with one blow. When he turned to
strike the second it had disappeared; so, too, had the
second arm. The boat seemed to be free, but it was
still within grasp.

In the meantime the squid had awakened to furious
activity. It was lashing the water with arms and tail,
angrily snapping its great beak and ejecting streams of[152]
black water from its siphon-tube. The water was
violently agitated and covered with a black froth.

In this the creature manifested fear and distress.
Had it not been aground it would have backed swiftly
into the deep water of the basin. But, as if finding
itself at bay, it lifted its uninjured tentacle high above
the boat. Billy made ready to strike.

By this time Bobby had mastered his terror. While
Billy stood with uplifted ax, his eyes fixed on the
waving tentacle overhead, Bobby heaved mightily on
the oars. The boat slowly drew away from that highly
dangerous neighborhood. In a moment it was beyond
reach of the arms, but still, apparently, within reach of
the tentacle. The tentacle was withdrawn a short
distance; then like a flash it shot towards the boat,
writhing as it came.

Billy struck blindly—and struck nothing. The tentacle
had fallen short. The boat was out of danger!

But still Billy Topsail was determined to have the
body of the squid. Notwithstanding Bobby’s pleading
and protestation, he would not abandon his purpose.
He was only the more grimly bent on achieving
it. Bobby would not hear of again approaching
nearer than the boat then floated, nor did Billy think
it advisable. But it occurred to Bobby that they might
land, and approach the squid from behind. If they
could draw near enough, he said, they could cast the[153]
grapnel on the squid’s back, and moor it to a tree
ashore.

“Sure,” he said, excitedly, “you can pick up a squid
from behind, and it can’t touch you with its arms! It
won’t be able to see us, and it won’t be able to reach
us.”

So they landed. Billy carried the grapnel, which
was attached to twelve fathoms of line. It had six
prongs, and each prong was barbed.

A low cliff at the edge of the tickle favored the
plan. The squid lay below, and some twenty feet out
from the rock. It was merely a question of whether
or not Billy was strong enough to throw the grapnel
so far. They tied the end of the line to a stout shrub.
Billy cast the grapnel, and it was a strong, true cast.
The iron fell fair on the squid’s back. It was a capture.

“That means a new punt for me,” said Billy, quietly.
“The tide’ll not carry that devil-fish away.”

“And now,” Bobby pleaded, “leave us make haste
home, for ’tis growin’ wonderful dark—and—and
there might be another somewhere.”

So that is how one of the largest specimens of
Architeuthis princeps—enumerated in Prof. John
Adam Wright’s latest monograph on the cephalopods
of North America as the “Chain Tickle specimen”—was
captured. And that is how Billy Topsail fairly
won a new punt; for when Doctor Marvey, the curator
of the Public Museum at St. John’s—who is deeply[154]
interested in the study of the giant squids—came to
Ruddy Cove to make photographs and take measurements,
in response to a message from Billy’s father,
he rewarded the lad.

[155]

VIII.—The Jumping Frog[H]

By Mark Twain

I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the
bar-room stove of the dilapidated tavern in the decaying
mining camp of Angel’s, and I noticed that he was
fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning
gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance.
He roused up, and gave me good-day. I told
him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make
some inquiries about a cherished companion of his
boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley—Rev. Leonidas
W. Smiley, a young minister of the Gospel, who he
had heard was at one time a resident of Angel’s Camp.
I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything
about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel
under many obligations to him.

Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded
me there with his chair, and then sat down and
reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this
paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he
never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key
to which he tuned his initial sentence, he never betrayed
the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all
through the interminable narrative there ran a vein
of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed
me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there
was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he
regarded it as a really important matter, and admired
its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse.[157]
I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted
him once.

“Rev. Leonidas W. H’m, Reverend Le—well, there
was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in
the winter of ’49—or maybe it was the spring of ’50—I
don’t recollect exactly, somehow, though what
makes me think it was one or the other is because I
remember the big flume warn’t finished when he first
came to the camp; but anyway, he was the curiosest
man about always betting on anything that turned up
you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the
other side, and if he couldn’t he’d change sides. Any
way what suited the other man would suit him—any
way just so’s he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still
he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he ‘most always come
out winner. He was always ready and laying for a
chance; there couldn’t be no solit’ry thing mentioned
but that feller’d offer to bet on it, and take ary side
you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a
horse-race, you’d find him flush or you’d find him
busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he’d
bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he’d bet on it; if
there was a chicken-fight, he’d bet on it; why, if there
was two birds sitting on a fence, he would bet you
which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting,
he would be there reg’lar to bet on Parson
Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter
about here, and so he was, too, and a good man. If
he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he[158]
would bet you how long it would take him to get
to—to wherever he was going to, and if you took him
up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but
what he would find out where he was bound for and
how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here
has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him.
Why, it never made no difference to him—he’d bet on
any thing—the dangdest feller. Parson Walker’s
wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it
seemed as if they warn’t going to save her; but one
morning he came in, and Smiley up and asked him how
she was, and he said she was consid’able better—thank
the Lord for his inf’nite mercy—and coming on so
smart that with the blessing of Prov’dence she’d get
well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says: ‘Well,
I’ll resk two-and-a-half she don’t anyway.’

“Thish-yer Smiley had a mare—the boys called her
the fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you
know, because, of course, she was faster than that—and
he used to win money on that horse, for all she
was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper,
or the consumption, or something of that
kind. They used to give her two or three hundred
yards start, and then pass her under way; but always
at the fag end of the race she’d get excited and
desperate like, and come cavorting and straddling up,
and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in
the air, and sometimes out to one side among the
fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and raising m-o-r-e[159]
racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing
her nose—and always fetch up at the stand just about
a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down.

“And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look
at him you’d think he warn’t worth a cent but to set
around and look ornery and lay for a chance to steal
something. But as soon as money was up on him he
was a different dog; his under-jaw’d begin to stick
out like the fo’castle of a steamboat, and his teeth
would uncover and shine like the furnaces. And a
dog might tackle him and bully-rag him, and bite him,
and throw him over his shoulder two or three times,
and Andrew Jackson—which was the name of the
pup—Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he
was satisfied, and hadn’t expected nothing else—and
the bets being doubled and doubled on the other side
all the time, till the money was all up; and then all of
a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the
j’int of his hind leg and freeze to it—not chaw, you
understand, but only just grip and hang on till they
throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley
always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed
a dog once that didn’t have no hind legs, because
they’d been sawed off in a circular saw, and when the
thing had gone alone far enough, and the money was
all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet holt,
he see in a minute how he’d been imposed on, and how
the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he
‘peared surprised, and then he looked sorter discouraged-like[160]
and didn’t try no more to win the fight, and
so he got shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look,
as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his
fault, for putting up a dog that hadn’t no hind legs
for him to take holt of, which was his main dependence
in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and laid down
and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson,
and would have made a name for hisself if he’d
lived, for the stuff was in him and he had genius—I
know it, because he hadn’t no opportunities to speak
of, and it don’t stand to reason that a dog could make
such a fight as he could under them circumstances if
he hadn’t no talent. It always makes me feel sorry
when I think of that last fight of his’n, and the way
it turned out.

“Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and
chicken cocks, and tomcats, and all them kind of
things, till you couldn’t rest, and you couldn’t fetch
nothing for him to bet on but he’d match you. He
ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said
he cal’lated to educate him; and so he never done nothing
for three months but set in his back yard and learn
that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him,
too. He’d give him a little punch behind, and the next
minute you’d see that frog whirling in the air like a
doughnut—see him turn one summerset, or maybe a
couple, if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed
and all right, like a cat. He got him up so
in the matter of ketching flies, and kep’ him in practice[161]
so constant, that he’d nail a fly every time as fur as he
could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was
education, and he could do ‘most anything—and I
believe him. Why, I’ve seen him set Dan’l Webster
down here on this floor—Dan’l Webster was the name
of the frog—and sing out, ‘Flies, Dan’l, flies!’ and
quicker’n you could wink he’d spring straight up and
snake a fly off’n the counter there, and flop down on
the floor ag’in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to
scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as
indifferent as if he hadn’t no idea he’d been doin’ any
more’n any frog might do. You never see a frog
so modest and straightfor’ard as he was, for all he was
so gifted. And when it come to fair and square
jumping on a dead level, he could get over more
ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed
you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong
suit, you understand; and when it come to that, Smiley
would ante up money on him as long as he had a red.
Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he
might be, for fellers that had traveled and been
everywheres all said he laid over any frog that ever
they see.

“Well, Smiley kep’ the beast in a little lattice box,
and he used to fetch him down-town sometimes and lay
for a bet. One day a feller—a stranger in the camp,
he was—come acrost him with his box, and says:

“‘What might it be that you’ve got in the box?’

“And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like: ‘It might[162]
be a parrot, or it might be a canary, maybe, but it ain’t—it’s
only just a frog.’

“And the feller took it, and looked at it careful,
and turned it round this way and that, and says:
‘H’m—so ’tis. Well, what’s he good for?’

“‘Well,’ Smiley says, easy and careless, ‘he’s good
enough for one thing, I should judge—he can outjump
any frog in Calaveras county.’

“The feller took the box again, and took another
long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley, and
says, very deliberate, ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I don’t see no
p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other
frog.’

“‘Maybe you don’t,’ Smiley says. ‘Maybe you
understand frogs and maybe you don’t understand
’em; maybe you’ve had experience, and maybe you
ain’t only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I’ve got
my opinion, and I’ll resk forty dollars that he can outjump
any frog in Calaveras county.’

“And the feller studied a minute, and then says,
kinder sad like, ‘Well, I’m only a stranger here, and
I ain’t got no frog; but if I had a frog, I’d bet you.’

“And then Smiley says, ‘That’s all right—that’s
all right—if you hold my box a minute, I’ll go and get
you a frog.’ And so the feller took the box, and put
up his forty dollars along with Smiley’s, and set down
to wait.

“So he set there a good while thinking and thinking
to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized[163]
his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full
of quail shot—filled him pretty near up to his chin—and
set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the
swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time,
and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and
give him to this feller, and says:

“‘Now, if you’re ready, set him alongside of Dan’l,
with his forepaws just even with Dan’ls, and I’ll give
the word.’ Then he says, ‘One—two—three—git!‘
and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind,
and the new frog hopped off lively, but Dan’l
give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders—so—like a
Frenchman, but it warn’t no use—he couldn’t budge;
he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn’t
no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley
was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too,
but he didn’t have no idea what the matter was, of
course.

“The feller took the money and started away; and
when he was going out at the door, he sorter jerked
his thumb over his shoulder—so—at Dan’l, and says
again, very deliberate, ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I don’t see no
p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other
frog.’

“Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking
down at Dan’l a long time, and at last he says, ‘I do
wonder what in the nation that frog throw’d off for—I
wonder if there ain’t something the matter with
him—he ‘pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.’ And[164]
he ketched Dan’l by the nap of the neck, and hefted
him, and says, ‘Why, blame my cats if he don’t weigh
five pound!’ and turned him upside down and he
belched out a double handful of shot. And then he
see how it was, and he was the maddest man—he set
the frog down and took out after that feller, but he
never ketched him. And——”

[Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from
the front yard, and got up to see what was wanted.]
And turning to me as he moved away, he said: “Just
set where you are, stranger, and rest easy—I ain’t
going to be gone a second.”

But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation
of the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim
Smiley would be likely to afford me much information
concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I
started away.

At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning,
and he button-holed me and re-commenced:

“Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yeller one-eyed cow
that didn’t have no tail, only just a short stump like
a bananner, and——”

However, lacking both time and inclination, I did
not wait to hear about the afflicted cow, but took my
leave.

[165]

IX.—Bingism[I]

By Booth Tarkington

To one of Penrod’s inner texture, a mere unadorned
walk from one point to another was intolerable, and
he had not gone a block without achieving some slight
remedy for the tameness of life. An electric-light
pole at the corner, invested with powers of observation,
might have been surprised to find itself suddenly
enacting a rôle of dubious honor in improvised melodrama.
Penrod, approaching, gave the pole a look
of sharp suspicion, then one of conviction; slapped it
lightly and contemptuously with his open hand; passed
on a few paces, but turned abruptly, and, pointing his
right forefinger, uttered the symbolic word, “Bing!”

The plot was somewhat indefinite; yet nothing is
more certain than that the electric-light pole had first
attempted something against him, then growing bitter
when slapped, and stealing after him to take him
treacherously in the back, had got itself shot through
and through by one too old in such warfare to be
caught off his guard.

Leaving the body to lie where it was, he placed the
smoking pistol in a holster at his saddlebow—he had
decided that he was mounted—and proceeded up the
street. At intervals he indulged himself in other encounters,
reining in at first suspicion of ambush with
a muttered, “Whoa, Charlie!” or “Whoa, Mike!” or
even “Whoa, Washington!” for preoccupation with[167]
the enemy outweighed attention to the details of
theatrical consistency, though the steed’s varying
names were at least harmoniously masculine, since a
boy, in these creative moments, never rides a mare.
And having brought Charlie or Mike or Washington
to a standstill, Penrod would draw the sure weapon
from its holster and—”Bing! Bing! Bing!”—let them
have it.

It is not to be understood that this was a noisy
performance, or even an obvious one. It attracted
no attention from any pedestrian, and it was to be
perceived only that a boy was proceeding up the
street at a somewhat irregular gait. Three or four
years earlier, when Penrod was seven or eight, he
would have shouted “Bing!” at the top of his voice;
he would have galloped openly; all the world might
have seen that he bestrode a charger. But a change
had come upon him with advancing years. Although
the grown people in sight were indeed to him as walking
trees, his dramas were accomplished principally
by suggestion and symbol. His “Whoas” and
“Bings” were delivered in a husky whisper, and his
equestrianism was established by action mostly of the
mind, the accompanying artistry of the feet being
unintelligible to the passerby.

And yet, though he concealed from observation
the stirring little scenes he thus enacted, a love of
realism was increasing within him. Early childhood
is not fastidious about the accessories of its drama—a[168]
cane is vividly a gun which may instantly, as vividly,
become a horse; but at Penrod’s time of life the lath
sword is no longer satisfactory. Indeed, he now
had a vague sense that weapons of wood were unworthy
to the point of being contemptible and ridiculous,
and he employed them only when he was alone
and unseen. For months a yearning had grown more
and more poignant in his vitals, and this yearning
was symbolized by one of his most profound secrets.
In the inner pocket of his jacket he carried a bit of
wood whittled into the distant likeness of a pistol,
but not even Sam Williams had seen it. The wooden
pistol never knew the light of day, save when Penrod
was in solitude; and yet it never left his side except
at night, when it was placed under his pillow. Still,
it did not satisfy; it was but the token of his yearning
and his dream. With all his might and main
Penrod longed for one thing beyond all others. He
wanted a Real Pistol!

That was natural. Pictures of real pistols being
used to magnificently romantic effect were upon almost
all the billboards in town, the year round; and
as for the “movie” shows, they could not have lived
an hour unpistoled. In the drug store, where Penrod
bought his candy and soda when he was in funds,
he would linger to turn the pages of periodicals
whose illustrations were fascinatingly pistolic. Some
of the magazines upon the very library table at home
were sprinkled with pictures of people (usually in[169]
evening clothes) pointing pistols at other people. Nay,
the Library Board of the town had emitted a “Selected
List of Fifteen Books for Boys,” and Penrod had read
fourteen of them with pleasure, but as the fifteenth
contained no weapons in the earlier chapters and held
forth little prospect of any shooting at all, he
abandoned it halfway, and read the most sanguinary
of the other fourteen over again. So, the daily food
of his imagination being gun, what wonder that he
thirsted for the Real!

He passed from the sidewalk into his own yard,
with a subdued “Bing!” inflicted upon the stolid person
of a gatepost, and, entering the house through
the kitchen, ceased to bing for a time. However,
driven back from the fore part of the house by a
dismal sound of callers, he returned to the kitchen
and sat down.

“Della,” he said to the cook, “do you know what
I’d do if you was a crook and I had my ottomatic
with me?”

Della was industrious and preoccupied. “If I was
a cook!” she repeated ignorantly, and with no cordiality.
“Well, I am a cook. I’m a-cookin’ right
now. Either g’wan in the house where y’b’long, or
git out in th’ yard!”

Penrod chose the latter, and betook himself slowly
to the back fence, where he was greeted in a boisterous
manner by his wistful little old dog, Duke, returning
from some affair of his own in the alley.[170]

“Get down!” said Penrod coldly, and bestowed a
spiritless “Bing!” upon him.

At this moment a shout was heard from the alley,
“Yay, Penrod!” and the sandy head of comrade Sam
Williams appeared above the fence.

“Come on over,” said Penrod.

As Sam obediently climbed the fence, the little
old dog, Duke, moved slowly away, but presently,
glancing back over his shoulder and seeing the two
boys standing together, he broke into a trot and disappeared
round a corner of the house. He was a dog
of long and enlightening experience; and he made it
clear that the conjunction of Penrod and Sam portended
events which, from his point of view, might
be unfortunate. Duke had a forgiving disposition,
but he also possessed a melancholy wisdom. In the
company of either Penrod or Sam, alone, affection
often caused him to linger, albeit with a little pessimism,
but, when he saw them together, he invariably
withdrew in as unobtrusive a manner as haste would
allow.

“What you doin’?” Sam asked.

“Nothin’. What you?”

“I’ll show you if you’ll come over to our house,”
said Sam, who was wearing an important and secretive
expression.

“What for?” Penrod showed little interest.

“Well, I said I’d show you if you came on over,
didn’t I?”[171]

“But you haven’t got anything I haven’t got,” said
Penrod indifferently. “I know everything that’s in
your yard and in your stable, and there isn’t a
thing——”

“I didn’t say it was in the yard or in the stable,
did I?”

“Well, there ain’t anything in your house,” returned
Penrod frankly, “that I’d walk two feet to
look at—not a thing!”

“Oh, no!” Sam assumed mockery. “Oh, no, you
wouldn’t! You know what it is, don’t you? Yes,
you do!”

Penrod’s curiosity stirred somewhat.

“Well, all right,” he said, “I got nothin’ to do. I
just as soon go. What is it?”

“You wait and see,” said Sam, as they climbed the
fence. “I bet your ole eyes’ll open pretty far in about
a minute or so!”

“I bet they don’t. It takes a good deal to get me
excited, unless it’s sumpthing mighty——”

“You’ll see!” Sam promised.

He opened an alley gate and stepped into his own
yard in a manner signaling caution—though the exploit,
thus far, certainly required none—and Penrod
began to be impressed and hopeful. They entered the
house, silently, encountering no one, and Sam led the
way upstairs, tiptoeing, implying unusual and increasing
peril. Turning, in the upper hall, they went into
Sam’s father’s bedroom, and Sam closed the door with[172]
a caution so genuine that already Penrod’s eyes began
to fulfill his host’s prediction. Adventures in another
boy’s house are trying to the nerves; and another boy’s
father’s bedroom, when invaded, has a violated sanctity
that is almost appalling. Penrod felt that something
was about to happen—something much more
important than he had anticipated.

Sam tiptoed across the room to a chest of drawers,
and, kneeling, carefully pulled out the lowest drawer
until the surface of its contents—Mr. Williams’ winter
underwear—lay exposed. Then he fumbled beneath
the garments and drew forth a large object, displaying
it triumphantly to the satisfactorily dumbfounded
Penrod.

It was a blue-steel Colt’s revolver, of the heaviest
pattern made in the Seventies. Mr. Williams had
inherited it from Sam’s grandfather (a small man, a
deacon, and dyspeptic) and it was larger and more
horrible than any revolver either of the boys had ever
seen in any picture, moving or stationary. Moreover,
greenish bullets of great size were to be seen in the
chambers of the cylinder, suggesting massacre rather
than mere murder. This revolver was Real and it was
Loaded!

Both boys lived breathlessly through a magnificent
moment.

“Leave me have it!” gasped Penrod. “Leave me
have hold of it!”[173]

“You wait a minute!” Sam protested, in a whisper.
“I want to show you how I do.”

“No; you let me show you how I do!” Penrod insisted;
and they scuffled for possession.

“Look out!” Sam whispered warningly. “It might
go off.”

“Then you better leave me have it!” And Penrod,
victorious and flushed, stepped back, the weapon
in his grasp. “Here,” he said, “this is the way I do:
You be a crook; and suppose you got a dagger, and
I——”

“I don’t want any dagger,” Sam protested, advancing.
“I want that revolaver. It’s my father’s revolaver,
ain’t it?”

“Well, wait a minute, can’t you? I got a right to
show you the way I do, first, haven’t I?” Penrod began
an improvization on the spot. “Say I’m comin’
along after dark like this—look, Sam! And say you
try to make a jump at me——”

“I won’t!” Sam declined this rôle impatiently.
“I guess it ain’t your father’s revolaver, is it?”

“Well, it may be your father’s but it ain’t yours,”
Penrod argued, becoming logical. “It ain’t either’s
of us revolaver, so I got as much right——”

“You haven’t either. It’s my fath——”

“Watch, can’t you—just a minute!” Penrod urged
vehemently. “I’m not goin’ to keep it, am I? You
can have it when I get through, can’t you? Here’s[174]
how I do: I’m comin’ along after dark, just walkin’
along this way—like this—look, Sam!”

Penrod, suiting the action to the word, walked to
the other end of the room, swinging the revolver at
his side with affected carelessness.

“I’m just walkin’ along like this, and first I don’t
see you,” continued the actor. “Then I kind of get
a notion sumpthing wrong’s liable to happen, so I—— No!”
He interrupted himself abruptly. “No; that
isn’t it. You wouldn’t notice that I had my good ole
revolaver with me. You wouldn’t think I had one,
because it’d be under my coat like this, and you
wouldn’t see it.” Penrod stuck the muzzle of the
pistol into the waistband of his knickerbockers at the
left side and, buttoning his jacket, sustained the weapon
in concealment by pressure of his elbow. “So
you think I haven’t got any; you think I’m just a man
comin’ along, and so you——”

Sam advanced. “Well, you’ve had your turn,” he
said. “Now, it’s mine. I’m goin’ to show you how
I——”

“Watch me, can’t you?” Penrod wailed. “I haven’t
showed you how I do, have I? My goodness! Can’t
you watch me a minute?”

“I have been! You said yourself it’d be my turn
soon as you——”

“My goodness! Let me have a chance, can’t you?”
Penrod retreated to the wall, turning his right side
toward Sam and keeping the revolver still protected[175]
under his coat. “I got to have my turn first, haven’t
I?”

“Well, yours is over long ago.”

“It isn’t either! I——”

“Anyway,” said Sam decidedly, clutching him by
the right shoulder and endeavoring to reach his left
side—”anyway, I’m goin’ to have it now.”

“You said I could have my turn out!” Penrod,
carried away by indignation, raised his voice.

“I did not!” Sam, likewise lost to caution, asserted
his denial loudly.

“You did, too.”

“You said——”

“I never said anything!”

“You said—— Quit that!”

“Boys!” Mrs. Williams, Sam’s mother, opened
the door of the room and stood upon the threshold.
The scuffling of Sam and Penrod ceased instantly,
and they stood hushed and stricken, while fear fell
upon them. “Boys, you weren’t quarreling, were
you?”

“Ma’am?” said Sam.

“Were you quarreling with Penrod?”

“No, ma’am,” answered Sam in a small voice.

“It sounded like it. What was the matter?”

Both boys returned her curious glance with meekness.
They were summoning their faculties—which
were needed. Indeed, these are the crises which prepare
a boy for the business difficulties of his later life.[176]
Penrod, with the huge weapon beneath his jacket,
insecurely supported by an elbow and by a waistband
which he instantly began to distrust, experienced distressful
sensations similar to those of the owner of
too heavily insured property carrying a gasoline can
under his overcoat and detained for conversation by
a policeman. And if, in the coming years, it was to
be Penrod’s lot to find himself in that precise situation,
no doubt he would be the better prepared for it
on account of this present afternoon’s experience
under the scalding eye of Mrs. Williams. It should
be added that Mrs. Williams’s eye was awful to the
imagination only. It was a gentle eye and but mildly
curious, having no remote suspicion of the dreadful
truth, for Sam had backed upon the chest of drawers
and closed the damnatory open one with the calves of
his legs.

Sam, not bearing the fatal evidence upon his person,
was in a better state than Penrod, though when boys
fall into the stillness now assumed by these two, it
should be understood that they are suffering. Penrod,
in fact, was the prey to apprehension so keen that
the actual pit of his stomach was cold.

Being the actual custodian of the crime, he understood
that his case was several degrees more serious
than that of Sam, who, in the event of detection,
would be convicted as only an accessory. It was a
lesson, and Penrod already repented his selfishness in
not allowing Sam to show how he did, first.[177]

“You’re sure you weren’t quarreling, Sam?” said
Mrs. Williams.

“No, ma’am; we were just talking.”

Still she seemed dimly uneasy, and her eyes swung
to Penrod.

“What were you and Sam talking about, Penrod?”

“Ma’am?”

“What were you talking about?”

Penrod gulped invisibly.

“Well,” he murmured, “it wasn’t much. Different
things.”

“What things?”

“Oh, just sumpthing. Different things.”

“I’m glad you weren’t quarreling,” said Mrs. Williams,
reassured by this reply, which, though somewhat
baffling, was thoroughly familiar to her ear. “Now,
if you’ll come downstairs, I’ll give you each one cookie
and no more, so your appetites won’t be spoiled for
your dinners.”

She stood, evidently expecting them to precede her.
To linger might renew vague suspicion, causing it to
become more definite; and boys preserve themselves
from moment to moment, not often attempting to
secure the future. Consequently, the apprehensive
Sam and the unfortunate Penrod (with the monstrous
implement bulking against his ribs) walked out of the
room and down the stairs, their countenances indicating
an interior condition of solemnity. And a curious
shade of behavior might have here interested a criminologist.[178]
Penrod endeavored to keep as close to
Sam as possible, like a lonely person seeking company,
while, on the other hand, Sam kept moving away from
Penrod, seeming to desire an appearance of aloofness.

“Go into the library, boys,” said Mrs. Williams,
as the three reached the foot of the stairs. “I’ll bring
you your cookies. Papa’s in there.”

Under her eye the two entered the library, to find
Mr. Williams reading his evening paper. He looked
up pleasantly, but it seemed to Penrod that he had an
ominous and penetrating expression.

“What have you been up to, you boys?” inquired
this enemy.

“Nothing,” said Sam. “Different things.”

“What like?”

“Oh—just different things.”

Mr. Williams nodded; then his glance rested casually
upon Penrod.

“What’s the matter with your arm, Penrod?”

Penrod became paler, and Sam withdrew from him
almost conspicuously.

“Sir?”

“I said, What’s the matter with your arm?”

“Which one?” Penrod quavered.

“Your left. You seem to be holding it in an unnatural
position. Have you hurt it?”

Penrod swallowed. “Yes, sir. A boy bit me—I
mean a dog—a dog bit me.”[179]

Mr. Williams murmured sympathetically: “That’s
too bad! Where did he bite you?”

“On the—right on the elbow.”

“Good gracious! Perhaps you ought to have it
cauterized.”

“Sir?”

“Did you have a doctor look at it?”

“No, sir. My mother put some stuff from the drug
store on it.”

“Oh, I see. Probably it’s all right, then.”

“Yes, sir.” Penrod drew breath more freely, and
accepted the warm cookie Mrs. Williams brought him.
He ate it without relish.

“You can have only one apiece,” she said. “It’s
too near dinner-time. You needn’t beg for any more,
because you can’t have ’em.”

They were good about that; they were in no frame
of digestion for cookies.

“Was it your own dog that bit you?” Mr. Williams
inquired.

“Sir? No, sir. It wasn’t Duke.”

“Penrod!” Mrs. Williams exclaimed. “When did
it happen?”

“I don’t remember just when,” he answered feebly.
“I guess it was day before yesterday.”

“Gracious! How did it——”

“He—he just came up and bit me.”

“Why, that’s terrible! It might be dangerous for
other children,” said Mrs. Williams, with a solicitous[180]
glance at Sam. “Don’t you know whom he belongs
to?”

“No’m. It was just a dog.”

“You poor boy! Your mother must have been
dreadfully frightened when you came home and she
saw——”

She was interrupted by the entrance of a middle-aged
colored woman. “Miz Williams,” she began,
and then, as she caught sight of Penrod, she addressed
him directly, “You’ ma telefoam if you here, send you
home right away, ’cause they waitin’ dinner on you.”

“Run along, then,” said Mrs. Williams, patting
the visitor lightly upon his shoulder; and she accompanied
him to the front door. “Tell your mother
I’m so sorry about your getting bitten, and you must
take good care of it, Penrod.”

“Yes’m.”

Penrod lingered helplessly outside the doorway,
looking at Sam, who stood partially obscured in the
hall, behind Mrs. Williams. Penrod’s eyes, with a
veiled anguish, conveyed a pleading for help as well
as a horror of the position in which he found himself.
Sam, however, pale and determined, seemed to have
assumed a stony attitude of detachment, as if it were
well understood between them that his own comparative
innocence was established, and that whatever
catastrophe ensued, Penrod had brought it on and must
bear the brunt of it alone.

“Well, you’d better run along, since they’re waiting[181]
for you at home,” said Mrs. Williams, closing
the door. “Good-night, Penrod.”

. . . Ten minutes later Penrod took his place at his
own dinner-table, somewhat breathless but with an
expression of perfect composure.

“Can’t you ever come home without being telephoned
for?” demanded his father.

“Yes, sir.” And Penrod added reproachfully,
placing the blame upon members of Mr. Schofield’s
own class, “Sam’s mother and father kept me, or I’d
been home long ago. They would keep on talkin’,
and I guess I had to be polite, didn’t I?”

His left arm was as free as his right; there was no
dreadful bulk beneath his jacket, and at Penrod’s
age the future is too far away to be worried about.
The difference between temporary security and permanent
security is left for grown people. To Penrod,
security was security, and before his dinner was half
eaten his spirit had become fairly serene.

Nevertheless, when he entered the empty carriage-house
of the stable, on his return from school the
next afternoon, his expression was not altogether
without apprehension, and he stood in the doorway
looking well about him before he lifted a loosened
plank in the flooring and took from beneath it the
grand old weapon of the Williams family. Nor did
his eye lighten with any pleasurable excitement as
he sat himself down in a shadowy corner and began
some sketchy experiments with the mechanism. The[182]
allure of first sight was gone. In Mr. Williams’ bed-chamber,
with Sam clamoring for possession, it had
seemed to Penrod that nothing in the world was so
desirable as to have that revolver in his own hands—it
was his dream come true. But, for reasons not
definitely known to him, the charm had departed; he
turned the cylinder gingerly, almost with distaste; and
slowly there stole over him a feeling that there was
something repellent and threatening in the heavy blue
steel.

Thus does the long-dreamed Real misbehave—not
only for Penrod!

More out of a sense of duty to bingism in general
than for any other reason, he pointed the revolver
at the lawn-mower, and gloomingly murmured,
“Bing!”

Simultaneously, a low and cautious voice sounded
from the yard outside, “Yay, Penrod!” and Sam Williams
darkened the doorway, his eye falling instantly
upon the weapon in his friend’s hand. Sam seemed
relieved to see it.

“You didn’t get caught with it, did you?” he said
hastily.

Penrod shook his head, rising.

“I guess not! I guess I got some brains around
me,” he added, inspired by Sam’s presence to assume
a slight swagger. “They’d have to get up pretty early
to find any good ole revolaver, once I got my hands
on it!”[183]

“I guess we can keep it, all right,” Sam said confidentially.
“Because this morning papa was putting
on his winter underclothes and he found it wasn’t
there, and they looked all over and everywhere, and
he was pretty mad, and said he knew it was those
cheap plumbers stole it that mamma got instead of the
regular plumbers he always used to have, and he said
there wasn’t any chance ever gettin’ it back, because
you couldn’t tell which one took it, and they’d all swear
it wasn’t them. So it looks like we could keep it for
our revolaver, Penrod, don’t it? I’ll give you half
of it.”

Penrod affected some enthusiasm. “Sam, we’ll
keep it out here in the stable.”

“Yes, and we’ll go huntin’ with it. We’ll do lots
of things with it!” But Sam made no effort to take
it, and neither boy seemed to feel yesterday’s necessity
to show the other how he did. “Wait till next Fourth
o’ July!” Sam continued. “Oh, oh! Look out!”

This incited a genuine spark from Penrod.

“Fourth o’ July! I guess she’ll be a little better
than any firecrackers! Just a little ‘Bing! Bing!
Bing!’ she’ll be goin’. ‘Bing! Bing! Bing!'”

The suggestion of noise stirred his comrade. “I’ll
bet she’ll go off louder’n that time the gas-works blew
up! I wouldn’t be afraid to shoot her off any time.”

“I bet you would,” said Penrod. “You aren’t used
to revolavers the way I——”

“You aren’t, either!” Sam exclaimed promptly. “I[184]
wouldn’t be any more afraid to shoot her off than you
would.”

“You would, too!”

“I would not!”

“Well, let’s see you then; you talk so much!” And
Penrod handed the weapon scornfully to Sam, who at
once became less self-assertive.

“I’d shoot her off in a minute,” Sam said, “only
it might break sumpthing if it hit it.”

“Hold her up in the air, then. It can’t hurt the
roof, can it?”

Sam, with a desperate expression, lifted the revolver
at arm’s length. Both boys turned away their
heads, and Penrod put his fingers in his ears—but
nothing happened. “What’s the matter?” he demanded.
“Why don’t you go on if you’re goin’ to?”

Sam lowered his arm. “I guess I didn’t have her
cocked,” he said apologetically, whereupon Penrod
loudly jeered.

“Tryin’ to shoot a revolaver and didn’t know
enough to cock her! If I didn’t know any more about
revolavers than that, I’d——”

“There!” Sam exclaimed, managing to draw back
the hammer until two chilling clicks warranted his
opinion that the pistol was now ready to perform its
office. “I guess she’ll do all right to suit you this
time!”

“Well, why’n’t you go ahead, then; you know so
much!” And as Sam raised his arm, Penrod again[185]
turned away his head and placed his forefingers in
his ears.

A pause followed.

“Why’n’t you go ahead?”

Penrod, after waiting in keen suspense, turned to
behold his friend standing with his right arm above
his head, his left hand over his left ear, and both eyes
closed.

“I can’t pull the trigger,” said Sam indistinctly, his
face convulsed as in sympathy with the great muscular
efforts of other parts of his body. “She won’t pull!”

“She won’t?” Penrod remarked with scorn. “I’ll
bet I could pull her.”

Sam promptly opened his eyes and handed the
weapon to Penrod.

“All right,” he said, with surprising and unusual
mildness. “You try her, then.”

Inwardly discomfited to a disagreeable extent, Penrod
attempted to talk his own misgivings out of
countenance.

“Poor ‘ittle baby!” he said, swinging the pistol
at his side with a fair pretense of careless ease. “Ain’t
even strong enough to pull a trigger! Poor ‘ittle
baby! Well, if you can’t even do that much, you
better watch me while I——”

“Well,” said Sam reasonably, “why don’t you go
on and do it then?”

“Well, I am goin’ to, ain’t I?”

“Well, then, why don’t you?”[186]

“Oh, I’ll do it fast enough to suit you, I guess,”
Penrod retorted, swinging the big revolver up a little
higher than his shoulder and pointing it in the direction
of the double doors, which opened upon the alley.
“You better run, Sam,” he jeered. “You’ll be pretty
scared when I shoot her off, I guess.”

“Well, why don’t you see if I will? I bet you’re
afraid yourself.”

“Oh, I am, am I?” said Penrod, in a reckless voice—and
his finger touched the trigger. It seemed to
him that his finger no more than touched it; perhaps
he had been reassured by Sam’s assertion that the
trigger was difficult. His intentions must remain in
doubt, and probably Penrod himself was not certain
of them; but one thing comes to the surface as entirely
definite—that trigger was not so hard to pull as
Sam said it was.

Bang! Wh-a-a-ack. A shattering report split the
air of the stable and there was an orifice of remarkable
diameter in the alley door. With these phenomena,
three yells, expressing excitement of different
kinds, were almost simultaneous—two from within
the stable and the third from a point in the alley about
eleven inches lower than the orifice just constructed
in the planking of the door. This third point, roughly
speaking, was the open mouth of a gayly dressed
young colored man whose attention, as he strolled,
had been thus violently distracted from some mental
computations he was making in numbers, including,[187]
particularly, those symbols of ecstasy or woe, as the
case might be, seven and eleven. His eye at once
perceived the orifice on a line enervatingly little above
the top of his head; and, although he had not supposed
himself so well known in this neighborhood,
he was aware that he did, here and there, possess acquaintances
of whom some such uncomplimentary
action might be expected as natural and characteristic.
His immediate procedure was to prostrate himself
flat upon the ground, against the stable doors.

In so doing, his shoulders came brusquely in contact
with one of them, which happened to be unfastened,
and it swung open, revealing to his gaze two stark-white
white boys, one of them holding an enormous
pistol and both staring at him in stupor of ultimate
horror. For, to the glassy eyes of Penrod and Sam,
the stratagem of the young colored man, thus dropping
to earth, disclosed, with awful certainty, a slaughtered
body.

This dreadful thing raised itself upon its elbows
and looked at them, and there followed a motionless
moment—a tableau of brief duration, for both boys
turned and would have fled, shrieking, but the body
spoke:

“‘At’s a nice business!” it said reproachfully. “Nice
business! Tryin’ blow a man’s head off!”

Penrod was unable to speak, but Sam managed to
summon the tremulous semblance of a voice.

“Where—where did it hit you?” he gasped.[188]

“Nemmine anything ’bout where it hit me,” the
young colored man returned, dusting his breast and
knees as he rose. “I want to know what kine o’ white
boys you think you is—man can’t walk ‘long street
‘thout you blowin’ his head off!” He entered the
stable and, with an indignation surely justified, took
the pistol from the limp, cold hand of Penrod.
“Whose gun you playin’ with? Where you git ‘at
gun?”

“It’s ours,” quavered Sam. “It belongs to us.”

“Then you’ pa ought to be ‘rested,” said the young
colored man. “Lettin’ boys play with gun!” He
examined the revolver with an interest in which there
began to appear symptoms of a pleasurable appreciation.
“My goo’ness! Gun like ‘iss blow a team o’
steers thew a brick house! Look at ‘at gun!” With
his right hand he twirled it in a manner most dexterous
and surprising; then suddenly he became severe.
“You white boy, listen me!” he said. “Ef I went
an did what I ought to did, I’d march straight out
‘iss stable, git a policeman, an’ tell him ‘rest you an’
take you off to jail. ‘At’s what you need—blowin’
man’s head off! Listen me: I’m goin’ take ‘iss gun
an’ th’ow her away where you can’t do no mo’ harm
with her. I’m goin’ take her way off in the woods
an’ th’ow her away where can’t nobody find her an’
go blowin’ man’s head off with her. ‘At’s what I’m
goin’ do!” And placing the revolver inside his coat
as inconspicuously as possible, he proceeded to the[189]
open door and into the alley, where he turned for a
final word. “I let you off ‘iss one time,” he said,
“but listen me—you listen, white boy: you bet’ not tell
you’ pa. I ain’ goin’ tell him, an’ you ain’ goin’ tell
him. He want know where gun gone, you tell him
you los’ her.”

He disappeared rapidly.

Sam Williams, swallowing continuously, presently
walked to the alley door, and remarked in a weak
voice, “I’m sick at my stummick.” He paused, then
added more decidedly: “I’m goin’ home. I guess I’ve
stood about enough around here for one day!” And
bestowing a last glance upon his friend, who was now
sitting dumbly upon the floor in the exact spot where
he had stood to fire the dreadful shot, Sam moved
slowly away.

The early shades of autumn evening were falling
when Penrod emerged from the stable; and a better
light might have disclosed to a shrewd eye some indications
that here was a boy who had been extremely,
if temporarily, ill. He went to the cistern, and, after
a cautious glance round the reassuring horizon, lifted
the iron cover. Then he took from the inner pocket
of his jacket an object which he dropped listlessly
into the water: it was a bit of wood, whittled to the
likeness of a pistol. And though his lips moved not,
nor any sound issued from his vocal organs, yet were
words formed. They were so deep in the person of
Penrod they came almost from the slowly convalescing[190]
profundities of his stomach. These words concerned
firearms, and they were:

“Wish I’d never seen one! Never want to see one
again!”

[191]

X.—Concho Curly at the Op’ra[J]

By Edward Beecher Bronson

Bred and reared in Menard County, on a little tributary
of the Concho River that long stood the outermost
line of settlement in central west Texas, Curly
was about as raw a product as the wildest mustang
ranging his native hills. Seldom far off his home[192]
range before the preceding year’s trail drive, never
in a larger city than the then small town of Fort
Worth, for Curly Chicago was nothing short of a
wilderness of wonders. His two days’ stay there left
him awed and puzzled.

It was the second morning of our return journey
before I could get much out of him. Before that he
had sat silent, in a brown study, answering only in
monosyllables anything I said to him.

At length, however, another friendly inquiry developed
what he was worrying about.

“Come, come, Curly!” I said, “tell us what you saw.
Had a good time, didn’t you?”

“Wall, I should remark. Them short-horns is
junin’ round so thick back thar a stray long-horn
hain’t no sorta show to git to know straight up from
sideways ‘fore he gits plumb lost in them deep cañons
whar all th’ sign is tramped out an’ thar’s no trees to
blaze for back-tracking yourself.

“What they-all gits to live on is the mysteriousest
mystery to me; don’t raise or grow nothin’; got no
grass, or cows to graze on her ef they had her. ‘Course
some of them’s got spondulix their daddies left them,
an’ can buy; th’ rest—wall, mebbe so th’ rest is jest
nachally cannibiles, an’ eats up each other.”

And how nearly Curly was right about the “cannibiles”—at
least, metaphorically—he doubtless never
learned.

“But, Curly,” I asked, “didn’t you have any fun?[193]
Must have hit up the theaters a few, didn’t you, eh!”

“Wall, I should say I shore did,” he replied. “I
shore went to a the-a-ter, but she didn’t get my funny-bone
busy none.”

“Why, Curly,” I asked, “how’s that?”

“Wall, you see it’s thisaway. When you turned
me loose down to th’ stockyards, I axed th’ commission
man what was th’ ring-tailedest lally-cooler of a
hotel in town, an’ he tells me she’s th’ Palmer House.

“Then I ropes a kid an’ hobbles him with four bits
long enough to run me through th’ milling herd of
short-horns as fer as th’ Palmer.

“On th’ way I stops to a store an’ buys a new hat,
an’ a pair o’ high-heel boots, an’ a new suit, shirt, an’
red handkerchief, an’ a little ol’ humany war sack with
a handle on her, an’ inter her I puts my belt an’ spurs.

“Then, when I gets fixed up jest like them city
folks, I pikes along to th’ Palmer, an’ in I goes.

“An’ she was a shore lally-cooler all right! More
prittys about th’ fixin’ up o’ that house that I’d allowed
anything but a woman could pack.

“Wall, when I got in I axed for Mr. Palmer, an’
a little feller in sorta soldier-brass-button-clothes runs
me up to a little close pen with a fence round her
slicker than airy bar in Fort Worth—all glass an’
shiny wood an’ dandy stones. In that thar pen was a
quick-talkin’, smart-aleck feller, with a di’mond big
as a engin’ head-light staked out in th’ middle of his
bald-faced shirt.[194]

“That feller shore rubbed my hair th’ wrong way
th’ minute he shot his mouth off, with:

“‘Wall, what kin I do for you, young feller?’

“‘You cain’t do a ding thing for me, Mr. Man,’
I ups an’ tells him. ‘Hain’t got nairy business with
pikers like you-all. I don’t git to Chicago often, but
when I do I plays with nothin’ but blue chips, an’ bets
th’ limit every whirl.’

“‘Wall, what do you want, anyway?’ he jerks out.

“‘Want to see Mr. Palmer; got some p’rticular
business with him,’ says I.

“‘Sorry, sir,’ says he, ‘Mr. Palmer ain’t around
this time of day. Is your business with him private?’

“‘I reckon she are private,’ says I; ‘want to see
him an’ find out ef I kin git to stay all night in this
yere hotel of his’n.’

“An’ I reckon about that time that thar smart aleck
must o’ thought of somethin’ powerful funny that’d
happened lately, for right thar he broke out laughin’
fit to kill his fool self—jest nachally laughed till he
like to died.

“When finally he comes to, he up an’ says:

“‘Why, I sometimes attend to business like that for
Mr. Palmer; guess I can fix you. Here, write your
name down there.’

“An’ he whirls round in front of me a whopper of
a big book that ‘peared to have a lot other fellers’
names in. She shore looked s’spicious to me, an’ I
says:[195]

“‘Now see here, Mr. Man, my name don’t draw no
big lot of money, but she shorely don’t get fastened to
any dociments I don’t sabe.’

“Then that blasted idiot thought o’ somethin’ else
so plumb funny he lites in laughin’ agin till he nigh
busts.

“When he gits out o’ his system all the laugh she
cain’t hold easy, he tells me th’ big book is jest nothin’
but a tally they use to count you in when you comes
to stay to th’ hotel an’ to count you out when you
goes.

“That didn’t look onreasonable none to me, so I
says:

“‘Son, she goes.’

“An’ when he hands me a writin’ tool, not noticin’
she wa’n’t a pencil, I sticks her in my mouth to git
her ready to write good, an’ gits my dod-burned mouth
so full of ink I reckon ’tain’t all out yet; an’ while I
was writin’ in th’ book, ‘Stonewall Jackson Kip, Deadman
Ranch, Nebraska,’ Mr. Man he slips off behind a
big safe and empties out a few more laughs he couldn’t
git to hold longer.

“An’ does you know, ol’ man, this mornin’ I been
gittin’ a sort of a s’spicion that Palmer piker was
laughin’ at me inkin’ my mouth, maybe; blamed lucky
I didn’t see it then, or I’d shore leaded him a few.

“Wall, when Mr. Man had got done examinin’ my
turkey tracks in the book, he gits a key an’ comes back,
hits a bell, an’ hollers, ‘Front!’ Then, when one o’[196]
them little soldier-button fellers comes runnin’, an’
th’ piker passes him th’ key an’ sings out, ‘Gentleman
to No. 1492!’ th’ kid he makes a dive for my war
sack. But you bet your alce I grabs him pronto, an’
says:

“‘See here, son, they ain’t more’n about two million
worth o’ valuables in that thar war sack, so I
wouldn’t be broke none ef you ducked with her; but
I reckon Stonewall’s strong enough to pack his’n without
th’ help of no sawed-off like you-all.’

“Then Mr. Kid he up an’ chases me over to a railroad
car that’s built on tracks runnin’ straight up in
th’ air plumb to th’ top of th’ house, an’ into her we
gits—all free, you sabe; didn’t have to buy no ticket.

“Wall, sir, when th’ feller ridin’ her socked in
th’ spurs, that thar car humped herself once or twice
an’ then hit a gait that would make a U. P. express
look like she was standin’ still, an’ in less time than
Nebo takes to draw a gun, thar we was at th’ top floor,
about a mile higher, I reckon, than folks was ever
meant to live.

“An’ say! By cripes! when I come to look out
o’ th’ winder in my room, I thought I’d have to stake
myself to th’ bed to be safe. Lookin’ out was jest like
lookin’ down from th’ top o’ Laramie Peak on th’
spread of th’ main range—little ol’ peaks an’ deep
cañons everywhere, with signal-fires throwin’ up
smoke columns from every peak, like Injuns signalin’[197]
news. She shore looked a rough country to try to
make any short cuts across.

“When I’d got washed up some, I sticks my gun
in my waist-band an’ goes out an’ down to th’ ground
on that little ol’ upstandin’ railroad, an’ axes one o’
them soldier boys th’ trail to the grub-pile. He grins
some an’ takes me into a room so pow’ful big and
crowded with folks I allowed ’bout everybody in
town must be eatin’ there.

“Soon as I got sot down, here comes a coon an’
hands me a printed sheet bigger’n th’ Llano Weekly
Clarion. An’ when I told him I was much obliged,
but I’d come to eat an’ not to read, blamed ef that
thar coon didn’t think o’ somethin’ so funny he nigh
split hisself. ‘Pears like mos’ everybody has a most
onusual lot of laugh in ’em back thar.

“Wall, bein’ dod-burned hungry, an’ allowin’ I’d
have a bang-up feed, an’ rememberin’ you Yankees
talkin’ on th’ round-up ’bout what slick eatin’ lobsters
makes, I tells th’ coon to bring me a dozen lobsters
an’ a cup of coffee.

“‘Wha-what’s dat you say, boss? How many lobsters
does you want?’ says th’ coon.

“‘A plumb dozen, you black hash-slinger!’ says I,
‘an’ hump yourself pronto, for my tape-worm’s hollerin’
for fodder.’

“Off slides Mr. Coon, lookin’ at me sorta scared-like
outen th’ corner o’ his off eye, to the far end o’
th’ room.[198]

“Wall, thar I set for about twenty minutes, hopin’
lobsters was bigger’n oysters an’ wonderin’ ef I’d
ordered enough to fill up me an’ th’ worm, when,
lookin’ up, here comes up th’ room a p’rcession of
twelve niggers, each nigger carryin’ a plate about half
th’ size of a saddle-blanket, an’ on each plate a whale
of a big red critter, most all laigs an’ claws, that
looked like a overgrowed Gila monster with war-paint
on.

“An’ when th’ lead coon stops in front of me an’
says, ‘Here’s your dozen lobsters, sir,’ I jest nachally
nigh fell dead right thar, knowin’ Stonewall was
up agin it harder’n ever before in his life.

“Say! I never wanted a cayuse so bad in my life;
ef I had one I’d shore have skipped—forked him an’
split the scenery open gittin’ away from them war-painted
animiles—but thar I was afoot!

“So I bunches up my nerve an’ says:

“‘Say, coon, I done expected a bunch of th’ boys
to feed with me, but they hain’t showed up. Me an’
th’ worm will tackle a pair of them red jaspers, an’ you
fellers put the other ten where they cain’t git away till
th’ boys comes.’

“Then, not lettin’ on to th’ city chaps settin’ an’
grinnin’ all round me that I wa’n’t raised in th’ same
lot with lobsters, I takes my knife an’ fork an’ lites
in to go to eatin’, when I’ll just be eternally hanged
if I didn’t nigh go crazy to find them critturs was jest
nachally all hoofs an’ horns—nairy a place on ’em[199]
from end to end airy human’s jaws could ever git to
feed on.

“An’ I was about to jerk my gun an’ shoot one apart
to find out what his insides was like, when a feller
settin’ next showed me how to knock th’ horns off an’
git at th’ meat proper.

“Then me an’ th’ worm got busy good an’ plenty,
for th’ meat was sweeter an’ tenderer even than
‘possum.

“Before we got done we shore chambered five of
them animiles, an’ when I paid th’ bill an’ sashayed
out, it was with regrets I didn’t have my war sack
handy to pack off th’ rest in.

“Come evenin’, I moseyed up to Mr. Man’s pen an’
axed him what was th’ finest, highest-priced show in
town, an’ he told me she was to a the-a-ter called th’
Op’ra.

“So out I goes, an’ ropes another kid an’ gits him
to steer me to her.

“Arrived to th’ the-a-ter, I prances up to th’ ticket-wagon
an’ says, sorta reckless:

“‘Pardner, jest hand me out a dociment for th’ best
place to set in you got; price is no object. It’s th’ best
in your show for Stonewall,’ privately allowin’ to myself
he might stick me up for as much as a dollar and
a half.

“At that he whispers to me. ‘Twenty-five dollars,’
jest as easy an’ nat’rel, without turnin’ a hair or appearin’[200]
any more excited than Dunc. Blackburn sticking
up a stage-coach.

“Twenty-fi-five plunks to git to set a hour or so
to see a little ol’ fool play-actin’! I’ll just be horn-swiggled
if that wa’n’t goin’ some for Stonewall!
Nigh three weeks’ wages to git to ‘ante an’ come in,’
an’ no tellin’ what raises he’d have to stand after
drawin’ cards!

“However, allowin’ I’d take a chance, I skinned off
five fives from my little ol’ bank-roll and passes ’em
over to Mr. Holdup, an’ then he picks up an’ shuffles
a deck of little cards an’ deals me off six of them.

“Course I didn’t know whatever his game was,
makin’ me a dead foul deal deliberate thataway, but
knowin’ she spelled trouble, I shoves one of th’ cards
back to him an’ says:

“‘Mr. Holdup, I don’t know jest what liberties a
gentleman is allowed to take with a deck back here,
but out West whar I come from a feller caught in
a pot with more’n five cards in his hand is generally
buried th’ next day, an’ bein’ as all his business in this
world ain’t quite settled yet, five cards will do your
Uncle Stonewall.’

“Couldn’t make out anyway what he give me all
them dociments for, unless one o’ th’ coons down to th’
hotel had tipped him off my bunch of lobster-eaters
was liable to drop in an’ want to set with me.

“Wall, then I dropped into th’ stream o’ folks[201]
flowin’ in thro’ th’ door, all jammin’ an’ crowdin’
like a bunch of wild steers, an’ drifted inside.

“Was you ever to that Op’ra The-a-ter, ol’ man?
By cripes! but she was shore a honey-cooler for big!
Honest, th’ main corral would hold a full trail herd
of three thousand head easy.

“Wall, when I gits in, a young feller in more soldier-buttons
axes to see my cards, an’ then he steers me
down thro’ a narrow chute runnin’ along one side of
th’ big corral to a little close-pen, with a low fence in
front, right down to one end of where they was play-actin’,
an’ right atop of th’ band.

“Dead opposite was a high stack of little pens like
mine, all full of folks—same, I reckon, above me—an’
then back further three or four big pens, one above the
other, over where you come in.

“An’ mebbe so them pens wa’n’t packed none!
Don’t believe thar was a empty corner anywhere except
mine. Jest packed everywhere with men and
women.

“Th’ men all looked alike, an’ most of th’ women
Stonewall could a liked.

“Th’ men all had on black clothes, with bald-faced
shirts to match their bald heads.

“Th’ women—wall, the feller that couldn’t get suited
in that bunch needn’t wear out no leather huntin’ round
outside. An’ thar was a lot of them honey-coolers
settin’ close round me that kept lookin’ up my way[202]
an’ laughin’ so sorta friendly like that it shore got
to be real sociable.

“Wall, sir, that band was playin’ to beat any band
you ever heard—horns an’ fiddles an’ drums; horns
that worked like a accordeon, pullin’ in an’ out; ol’
mossback he-fiddles that must a been more’n a hundred
years old to git to grow so big; drums with bellies
big an’ round as your mammy’s soap kettle; an’ th’
boss music-maker on a perch in th’ middle of th’
bunch, shakin’ a little carajo pole to beat the brains
out any of th’ outfit that wa’n’t workin’ to suit him.

“Some of th’ tunes was sweet an’ slow enough so
you could follow ’em afoot, but most of ’em was so
fast a feller’d need to be runnin’ ’em on his top-cutting
horse to git close enough to tell if they was real
music or jest a hullabaloo big noise.

“But what s’rprised me most, ol’ man, was to find
that that thar the-a-ter was built up round one of the
roughest, rockiest, wildest pieces of country I ever
saw outside th’ Black Hills, it layin’ in th’ end whar
they was play-actin’. It shore looked like a side
cañon up nigh th’ head-waters of Rapid Creek, big
boulders, an’ pines, an’ cliffs, an’ a fall carryin’ as
much water as Deadman Creek.

“An’ weather! Say, that little ol’ the-a-ter cañon
could put up a worse storm than you or me ever see
in the Rockies. She was thunderin’ and lightenin’ till
I was dead sure we was all in for a water-spout, an’
I reckon one must a come after I left.[203]

“I always thought the-a-ters was built to be funny
in, but that one was jest nachally full o’ hell’s own
grief as long as I got to stay in her. Nothin’ doin’
but sufferin’ an’ murderin’ meanness.

“Plumb alone, an’ lost in th’ cañon, I reckon, was
a pore little gal, ’bout sixteen year old, leanin’ on a
stump close up to whar I was settin’, an’ sobbin’ fit
to kill herself. She had ’bout next to nothin’ on, an’
was that ga’nted up an’ lean ‘peared like she was nigh
starved to death.

“An’ thar she hung an’ cried an’ cried till it ‘peared
to me some o’ th’ women folks ought to a gone to
her; but they-all never noticed none, an’ went right on
gassin’ with their fellers.

“Finally, when she got so weak I thought she was
goin’ to drop, out from behind a boulder slips a great
big feller—all hair an’ whiskers but his laigs, for he
had on nothin’ but a fur huntin’-shirt comin’ half-way
to his knees—an’ in his hand he carries a long
bilduque skelping-knife.

“‘Fore I realized he meant trouble, he makes a
jump an’ grabs th’ gal by th’ shoulder an’ shakes her
scandalous, an’ while he’s shakin’ he’s sorta half-talkin’
an’ half-singin’ to her in some kind of talk so near like
Spanish I thought I could ketch some of it.

“By cripes! but that feller was hot good an’ plenty
over something he claimed she’d did.

“An’ when, half-sobbin’ an’ singin’, she ‘peared to
be tellin’ him she hadn’t, an’ to go off an’ let her alone,[204]
he shook an’ abused her more’n ever, till it struck me
it was about time for neighborin’ men folks to hop in
an’ take a hand, for it was plumb plain she was a pore,
sweet-faced, innercent little crittur that couldn’t done
no harm to a hummin’ bird.

“BUT BEFORE HE COULD LITE ON HER WITH HIS KNIFE, I HOPPED OUT OF MY CLOSE-PEN INTO THE CAÑON”

“‘Bout that time, Mr. Hairyman he hops back a
step or two, stands an’ scowls an’ grits his teeth at
th’ gal for a minute, an’ then he raises his knife, sorta
crouches for a jump, an’ sings out, near as I could
make it out:

“‘Maudite! Folle! Folle! Say Fini!‘

“But before he could lite on her with his knife, I
hopped out of my close-pen into the cañon, jammed
my .45 in his ear, an’ observes:

“‘Mr. Hairyman, you’re a liar, an’ it’s Stonewall
Kip, of Concho, tellin’ you!’

“‘Little Maudy thar ain’t full, an’ she don’t have
to say airy a thing she don’t want to; an’ if you don’t
pull your freight sudden for th’ brush, I’ll shore shoot
six different kinds of meanness outen your low-down
murderin’ carcass!’

“Th’ way his whiskers skipped over boulders makin’
his getaway was some active, while th’ pore little gal
she jest drops off in a dead faint an’ lays thar till some
folks comes down the gulch an’ carries her off.

“Then I takes th’ kink outen th’ hammer of my gun,
sticks her in my waist-band, an’ climbs back an’ gits
my hat—havin’ had more’n enough of such blasted
Op’ra The-a-ters.[205]

“An’ while I was driftin’ through the chute toward
the main gate of th’ big pen, to git out, there was th’
blamedest cheerin’, yellin’, an’ hand-clappin’ you ever
heard away from a stump-speakin’, but whatever she
was all about Stonewall didn’t stop to ax.”

[206]

XI.—The Lie[K]

By Hermann Hagedorn

Burton, big, athletic, handsome as a movie
hero—hesitated a second before he answered.
He was busy picking up a pad which lay under his
seat.

He deposited the pad on the wide armrest and looked
up inquiringly as though he had not fully comprehended
the question. Mr. Beaver, the algebra teacher,
was smiling his friendly and slightly irritating smile.

“I asked you, Burton,” he repeated gently, “whether
you had prepared. Did you?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Burton.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Beaver. He opened a certain
terrifying little black book and made a dot in the
lower left-hand corner of a certain square opposite the
name of Burton. “Perhaps,” he added, “you had[207]
better go over it again,” and smiled the same smile,
which would have been sardonic but for the mildness
of his tone.

Burton sank glumly back in his seat.

Mr. Beaver regarded his little book studiously for
a moment. Then he looked up. The smile was gone.
The alert face, adequately adorned by a reddish beard
fading into gray, was now solicitous.

“Harrington,” he said.

A Fourth Former in the middle row stood up. He
was slight and rather pallid, and it was evident that
he should begin shaving without further delay, for
there was already a shadow of fuzz on his cheeks
and chin that made him look unwashed and rather
weak. His mother, who was vain, had insisted that
he postpone shaving. She could not bear to think
that she was the mother of a son who was almost a
man, she always said. It made her feel so old.

Harrington, sallow and unshorn, was not an inspiring
sight. Mr. Beaver evidently thought so. His eyes
were unquestionably serious.

“Harrington,” he said, “it seems that you are another
of our weak brethren this morning. Did you
prepare your lesson?”

Again, the second’s hesitation. Harrington turned
a shade paler, if possible. Then, with an effort, he
spoke.

“No, sir.”

“I was afraid not,” said Mr. Beaver making another[208]
cryptic dot. Then he smiled. Harrington writhed
and the rest of the class, except Burton, laughed.
“Why not?”

“I—I was ill.”

Mr. Beaver was at once sympathetic, though serious.
“Did you report to Dr. Stevens?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“I knew he had already gone.”

“You were ill after ten o’clock?”

“Yes, sir.”

Again Mr. Beaver smiled. “But surely you might
have done your algebra before ten o’clock?”

“I was—busy, sir.”

“With other lessons?”

Harrington hesitated.

“With other lessons?” Mr. Beaver repeated.

“No, sir.”

“Well?”

“I had a spread.”

There was a roar from the other boys.

“Quiet!” said Mr. Beaver. “Now, Harrington, as
I understand the situation,” he continued mildly, “you
failed to prepare your lesson because you were ill in
consequence of a spread which it was against the rules
to indulge in. Is that it?”

“Y—yes, sir.”

“Professor is very much opposed to—illicit spreads,
as you know”—(“Professor” was the Headmaster)—”I[209]
am afraid this will mean about thirty demerits,
therefore. You have other demerits?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many?”

“Twenty.”

Mr. Beaver closed his little book and stood a moment
by his desk looking quietly over at Harrington.
His face was serious, but even his victim could not
help feeling that there was a certain affectionate sympathy
behind the quiet sternness.

“Look out, Harrington,” he said at last with a return
of that curious smile of his. “Broad is the way
that leadeth to destruction and the milestones are always
spreads—of one sort or another. You may sit
down.”

The boy sat down and the work of the class proceeded.
Two boys, for widely divergent reasons,
heard the other boys go through their paces as though
it were all a bad dream of wriggling x‘s and y‘s like
snakes darting in and out of the placid waters of Mr.
Beaver’s endless questioning.

The bell clanged at last, indicating the end of the
period. Three or four boys went forward to confer
with Mr. Beaver about certain vexing algebraic problems.
Needless to say, neither Burton nor Harrington
was among these. They drifted out into the cloister
with the rest of the class, having certain problems of
their own, not algebraic. One or two boys addressed
Burton and were rebuffed with a curt word, which was[210]
unusual, as Burton was almost painstakingly friendly
to everybody.

“Say!” whispered one to the other, “Burton’s got a
grouch on. He’s sour at Beaver, I guess.”

“Beaver is awfully fresh sometimes. After all,
Bill Burton’s captain of the football team.”

“He’s a good deal more important to the school
than Beaver’ll ever be.”

“That’s no joke either.”

The two boys parted. Neither ventured to intrude
again upon Burton’s sacred resentment. For Burton
was a very great man at The Towers.

No one spoke to Harrington. No one cared
whether he had a grouch or not. For Harrington was
a new boy who had as yet failed to “fit in.” He was
emphatically not an athlete. But he was not a “sissy”
either. He was quite as emphatically not a student
nor a literary light; but he was as quick as a jack rabbit
in his physics “lab” work and not to be scorned as
a guesser in reading Cæsar at sight. He was not
openly religious—which kept him out of the Y. M.
C. A. But, on the other hand, in a quiet way, he
deeply loved the out of doors, and that love, like all
love, is a kind of worship of God. Harrington was
unquestionably “hard to place.” The boys as well as
the masters, when they spoke about him at all, agreed
on that. The only pigeon-hole into which he seemed
to fit was the pigeon-hole of the “Queer Dicks.” His[211]
first name happened to be Richard, which helped to
settle the classification.

Burton passed through the West Wing, being a
Sixth Former, with a room on the top floor of the
New Building, and, chewing his lips, crossed the wide
level lawn—with its strip of bright green grass that
showed where the hot water pipes ran—and disappeared
through a door in the western end.

Harrington did not go to his room. Young men
who get demerits were not privileged at The Towers
to study in their own rooms. They spent periods not
occupied with recitations in the school room, a long
room containing some two hundred desks, with a
raised platform and an organ at the southern end;
the place had once been used as the school chapel and
was still used for the morning song-service which enlivened
the daily grind. Plaster busts of the great
of all ages, from Homer to Longfellow, peered from
their plaster brackets. There was a verse also on the
southern walls:

Dick Harrington didn’t like that verse. In fact,
he thought it was rot. He disliked even more the
black tablets on the opposite wall containing in gilt
letters at least four inches high the names of the
exemplary youths who in their time had been Heads[212]
of School. And in this place, surrounded by Models
of Good Conduct, he was supposed to study four, five
and sometimes six hours a day! Two hundred bent
forms and Mr. Watrous, the day’s jail-keeper, wandering
aimlessly about, pretending not to be the spy
that he was! Altogether, the schoolroom was a
horror.

Harrington bent over his desk like the rest and
pretended to study French. But he did not study. He
did a little mathematical problem instead. Twenty
demerits and thirty demerits made fifty demerits. And
fifty demerits meant probation, and probation meant
that he could not go to Chancellor’s Hill to see the
big game to-morrow afternoon. That was a tragedy.
All the autumn the game with Chancellor’s Hill had
been held before him by the old boys as the last word
in thrills; for a week there had been talk of nothing
else. You would have thought that the final whistle
of that game was going to bring the heavens crashing
down on creation. No one seemed to be planning
anything beyond that Saturday afternoon. The general
notion seemed to be that if The Towers won,
the rapture of that victory would make any trial
thereafter bearable; and if The Towers lost—well,
torture and death would, in comparison, be sweet.

And now, he, Dick Harrington, who loved thrills
as much as any man, was not to see the game. For
days his nerves had been at a sharp tension of anticipation.
Now suddenly they relaxed, leaving him weak[213]
and despairing. Life had lost its meaning. Of
course, the game would be held anyway, and there
would be the excitement of getting the telegraphic
reports at the end of the periods; but the real thrills
would all be at Chancellor’s Hill; and he would be at
The Towers.

He luxuriated in misery; he reveled in despair.
Just because of a bit of a spread with Sammy Oakes
and Chet Burrowes, just because of one unprepared
lesson! Of course there had been other spreads before
this fatal one; and of course there had been one
or two unprepared lessons also—therefore the original
twenty demerits. But why ruin a boy’s happiness
forever because of a missed recitation?

Dick Harrington was exceedingly sorry for himself.

His indignation was violent while it lasted but it
did not last long, for there was sharp regret of another
sort hovering all the while at the rim of his
consciousness. It was a regret not so pleasant to
indulge as the other. He had been made the butt—the
laughing stock—of the algebra class. He tingled
and flushed at the memory of it. Bill Burton had
also flunked his lesson; but Burton had been able to
say that he had at least prepared it, and the whole proceeding
had been dignified and everybody loved and
admired Burton all the more because with all his
greatness he was just like other boys about lessons.[214]
But he, Dick Harrington, had been disgraced. And in
the presence of William Burton!

That, after all, was the hardest thing to swallow.
That was worse than missing the game with Chancellor’s
Hill. For Dick Harrington worshiped Bill
Burton, because he was physically and socially everything
that Dick never could hope to be. He was the
school’s crack athlete, the president of the Sixth Form,
the chairman of the Student Council, the president of
the Y. M. C. A. He was the One Great Hero of the
boys, and the Headmaster himself consulted him
whenever he had a knotty problem of boy-nature to
solve. Before Dick had been at school a week, he
knew that he would rather find favor with “Colonel”
Burton than see his name in gold letters in the schoolroom,
or, for that matter, on the Common Room
tablets, where the athletic records are kept. “The
Colonel” was rather used to adoration, and, being
human, liked it. But he was no more attentive to
this particular adorer than to any one else, which
intensified Dick Harrington’s “case.”

Dick did not study much French on that morning
in late October. For suddenly a new, insidious question
jumped into the forefront of his thoughts: Why
had he blurted out everything to Mr. Beaver? Why
hadn’t he just lied?

That question thrust at the very roots of life, and
Dick Harrington knew it. He went cold and hot by[215]
turns. Somehow it had never occurred to him to
lie. He did not know why. It was possibly because
his father was such a shining figure of truthfulness
personified. He remembered something he had overheard
his mother say to his father a long time ago—”I
never realized until I married you that it is really
awful to lie.”

Was it really so awful? A lie in time certainly
simplified life a lot. And as long as it did not hurt
anybody else—what was really the difference? A
goody-goody Sunday-school teacher had told him,
when he was five, that the lightning would smite him
if he told a lie. Whereupon he had told a lie deliberately
during the course of the next thunderstorm to
test Mr. Goody-Goody’s veracity, and proved him a
liar, first thing.

Staring at French irregular verbs, Dick clenched his
hands, trying to figure it all out. Suddenly, forgetting
where he was, he pounded the desk-top with his
left fist. Then he gave a yowl which rang through the
schoolroom, providing exhilarating diversion to two
hundred lifted heads. For in his cogitations his right
hand had clutched the edge of the desk on which the
top closed.

He explained the accident to Mr. Watrous, who
proved skeptical, though the Spy was forced to admit
that the hand looked red enough to hurt.

The schoolroom settled again into quiet. The excitement,
from start to finish, had covered about ninety[216]
seconds. No one suspected that the unshaven, disheveled
boy was, in that studious, quiet place, having
his first great wrestle with life.

The football team, accompanied by the coaches, the
Headmaster Brewster and his wife, a half-dozen masters,
and the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Forms almost
in a body, in auto-hacks and horse-hacks, on foot and
by trolley, departed for the railroad station and
Chancellor’s Hill next morning at eight, to the sound
of cheers.

Dick Harrington stood in the great Archway with
the Lower School and a handful of other boys, like
himself on probation (or just “broke”), cheering the
school, the team, “The Colonel,” the manager, the
school, the team, and again and again “The Colonel,”
until the last boy was out of sight. The team was
hopeful of victory; the school was confident of it.
But “The Colonel’s” face was curiously grave. He
smiled and joked; now and then he tossed some gay
piece of derision into the crowd of woe-begone stay-at-homes.
But the gravity remained in the eyes all
the while. Harrington saw it, and it occurred to him
that it was natural that the Captain of The Towers
football team should feel the weight of a great responsibility;
he was quite sure that “Colonel” Burton
had never seemed to him so heroic as to-day. There
was no question about it. There was an unusual
nobility in Bill Burton’s eyes and in the carriage of[217]
his head. But there was also a curious impression of
suffering there and about the lips. Dick saw Mrs.
Brewster look at Burton with a friendly, somewhat
quizzical, smile. Then in two minutes the fortunate
ones were gone and The Towers became a St. Helena,
where a chill wind played shrilly all day long around
corners of buildings and in and out the cloisters.

Lessons that morning were a gloom and dinner in
the huge, half empty dining-room offered an opportunity
to satisfy the boy’s hunger and—that was all. As
a social function it was a flat failure. Everybody
talked of the game, as wrecked sailors drifting in an
open boat talked of shore. Life was unreal somehow,
everything so empty, so quiet. If, as some one had
once remarked, The Towers was a very furnace of
flaming life and energy—some one had certainly
dumped the grate.

The game was to be called at Chancellor’s Hill at
one-thirty; and at one-thirty the first stragglers appeared
in the chilly Archway to take their position
at the bulletin board, where the score was to be posted
as it came along the wire.

Dick Harrington, in sweater and cap, arrived at
one-forty-five. The first score had just been posted:

The Headmaster’s secretary, a studious but otherwise
attractive young man, who posted the notice,[218]
volunteered the information that the Chancellor’s Hill
left end had turned the trick with a fifty-five yard run
when The Towers eleven had tied itself into a knot
through a jumbled signal.

“That’s an awful beginning!” said Runt Woods,
who was standing next to Dick Harrington. He was
a little, flat-faced, brownie sort of boy, whom everybody
loved. “Must have been in the first five minutes
of play.”

“They won’t get any more,” Dick answered confidently.
“It’s too bad they scored, but they won’t
get any more.”

His optimism was unwarranted. There was a long
wait without news. Then Mr. Tuttle, the secretary,
reappeared from the Main Building, wearing a rueful
smile. He picked up the eraser under the bulletin
board, but he did not disturb the zero which stood
to the credit (or debit) of The Towers. He rubbed
out the 5 that followed Chancellor’s Hill and set down
11.

“Something’s happened!” cried Dick.

“Two touchdowns and a goal have happened,” said
Runt Woods gloomily.

“I don’t mean that. I mean that something’s happened
to the team! Lost their heads, or something.”

He wondered whether “The Colonel” had been taken
ill. “The Colonel” was so completely the heart and
soul of the team. If for some reason he were out of
it—[219]—

They must be playing the second period by now.
There was another long wait. Then at last Mr.
Tuttle, looking grave, reappeared.

At the edge of the Archway, he stopped. “Don’t
mob me, now,” he said, trying to grin.

“What’s the score? Score!” cried a hundred
voices.

“End of the second period,” he said, striding toward
the board. “Score 11 to 0.”

Groans, loud and prolonged.

The wind whistled through the Archway. The boys
stuck their hands in their pockets and danced, shivering,
but not one deserted the bulletin board. They
stared at the dismal figures and a dozen versions of
How It Must Have Happened were launched by
imaginative spectators, attacked ruthlessly and torpedoed
as improbable. The trouble with the whole
matter of explaining Chancellor’s Hill’s two touchdowns
was that the very fact of the touchdowns would,
an hour ago, have seemed the last word in improbabilities.
They talked and shivered and bantered and
sang and cheered (just to keep warm) for a solid
hour. Mr. Tuttle reappeared at last.

The boys surged out of the Archway into the Quadrangle
to meet him.

“Score! What’s the score?”

“Get back, you wild Indians!” cried the studious
secretary to some importunate First Formers who[220]
were tugging at his arms. “There is no news, and I
can’t get Chancellor’s Hill on the telephone.”

There were murmurs of bewilderment. The Senior
Master, tall, genial, and conspicuous for his good
sense, came out of the Main Building, and suggested a
run for health’s sake. He tagged Runt Woods lightly
and was off. With a shout the crowd followed him
at a jog-trot past the Music House, past the Cottage
out on to the cinder track. They jogged a quarter-mile.

As they reached the Cottage on the return trip, they
saw Mr. Tuttle dancing toward them, wildly waving
his arms.

The Senior Master halted his band.

“Fifteen to eleven!” shouted Mr. Tuttle ecstatically.
“We win!”

The roar that followed was memorable. Eppie,
the confectionery man, picking his teeth in his empty
shop at the foot of the hill, threw away his toothpick
and went to the kitchen to tell his wife that The
Towers had won, and business for the rest of the
afternoon would be brisk.

Two minutes later the jubilant invasion began.
Dick Harrington was not one of the crowd that
rushed, cheering down the hill. He was on probation,
and Eppie’s was out of bounds.

He stood in the Archway, lonely and miserable.

Why hadn’t he lied?[221]

The team was due back at Hainesburg, the railroad
station for The Towers, at eight-thirty. One
or two Sixth Formers, flushed and almost incoherent
with excitement, had asked the Senior Master for
permission to organize a torchlight parade.

“Sure enough! Good idea!” exclaimed the Senior
Master. “Go to it! Don’t burn yourselves up, don’t
get lost, don’t get in the way of the train and don’t
all have apoplectic fits as my friend Andrew here is
promising to do shortly if some one doesn’t put an ice
compress on his enthusiasm. But go on. Give ’em
a good time.”

“Thank you ever so much, sir!” cried Andrew,
“and I’ll promise to cool off.”

“Go ‘way!” cried the Senior Master cheerfully.
“You don’t know how. You’re a perpetual human
Roman candle.”

“I’ll hold him down, sir,” said the other boy.

“Pshaw!” cried the Senior Master. “You’re a
Whiz-bang yourself—go ‘long! Shoo!”

The boys went.

At eight, Dick Harrington made his way to the
Study to ask the Senior Master whether boys “on
probe” could join the triumphal procession. The
Senior Master was kindly, but firm.

“Sorry, old man,” he said. “Probe rules hold.”

That was all. But Dick Harrington without a
word went to his room on the third floor of the East
Wing, stumbling on the stairs, because of the tears.[222]

Why, he asked himself bitterly again and again—why
hadn’t he lied?

He crept out of his room an hour later, hearing the
cheers of the returning revelers. His hallway was
utterly deserted, the school was deserted. If he needed
any further evidence that virtue did not pay, here it
was. “Be good and you’ll be lonesome.” There was
one aphorism proved, at least.

Suddenly, standing in the Quadrangle, he heard
singing. Then through the bare branches he saw the
glow of many torches. It was all magical and mysterious,
for the wild cheering which had brought him
down from his room had given way to a solemn exaltation
of triumph. If he had had a hat on his head, he
would have pulled it off, hearing the school song sung
that way. He felt a tug at his heart and again the
dimness covered his eyes because he should be fated to
have no active part in that thrilling chorus of victory.

He stood quite still, swallowing hard. At the end
of the first stanza, there was a “regular yell” for The
Towers, as the procession turned sharply, with torches
flaring, up the steep drive. He could see now that
they were dragging a hay-wagon with ropes. The
team was on the hay-wagon. The second stanza of
the school song floated up to him, it seemed a chant
drifting over from fairyland.

The procession came nearer now. The hill and the
hay-wagon together proved too much for the singers[223]
and the song died off in breathless laughter and another
cheer. Then somebody started to call off the
score: “One—two—three—four—” to a climactic
burst—”Fifteen!” The procession disappeared behind
the Main Building only to reappear a minute or
two later around the corner of the Office, on the other
side of the Archway. Dick Harrington wished that
he had enough manly pride to scorn it all and go back
to his room. But he didn’t, so he rushed to where the
crowd was gathered and listened in rapture to the
cheers and the speeches and the songs and all the wonderful
stories of a wonderful game.

“Colonel” Burton was there, smiling embarrassed
appreciation. He had won the game for The Towers,
when it seemed hopelessly lost. Every one agreed to
that. He made a speech, thanking everybody for
everything.

Why, oh, why, Dick cried to himself, as he climbed
three flights after “creams” a half-hour later—Why
hadn’t he had the sense to lie?

Dick Harrington crept into bed, and his roommate
crept into bed. The roommate slept and Dick Harrington
tried to sleep, but sleep eluded him—it seemed
for hours. Perhaps it was only for fifteen or twenty
minutes. Then he too slept, dreaming of torchlit
chariots.

He woke and gave a low cry. Some one was sitting
on his bed. He started to jump up, scared through;[224]
but a strong hand touched his shoulder and a friendly
voice whispered—”It’s all right, Harrie; don’t be
scared.”

HE WOKE AND GAVE A LOW CRY. SOME ONE WAS SITTING ON HIS BED

Dick was still half asleep and dazed. “Who are
you?” he cried in an unnatural voice.

“It’s Bill Burton.”

“Who?” he asked, amazed.

“Bill Burton.”

“You’re somebody trying to fool me,” Dick whispered
after a pause.

“No, I’m not, Harrie,” said the other’s deep, rich
voice. “I wanted to talk to you. I couldn’t wait
until to-morrow, so I got permission from Prof, and
here I am.”

“What makes you want to see me?” asked Dick
softly. “I guess I don’t understand at all. I didn’t
think you knew me.”

“You remember yesterday in the Algebra class?”

“You bet I remember,” whispered Dick emphatically.

There was a moment’s utter quiet. From away
over in the direction of Chicken Hill came the sound
of a rumpus in the Black Belt of Hainesburg. Then
again quiet.

Burton spoke at last, slowly and rather more softly
than before. “Beaver asked you and me the same
question, you remember?”

“Yes,” murmured Dick, breathlessly.

“You told him the truth.”[225]

“I just blurted out a lot of——”

“Well, I lied.”

Somehow the shock of those words was to Dick
Harrington like the impact of a terrible fist. He literally
saw stars. The idea that “The Colonel” should
tell a lie was inconceivable. Sneaks and cowards lied.
His reeling standards straightened suddenly. His bitter
regret that he hadn’t had the sense to lie evaporated
in the glow of an overwhelming gratitude. He could
not speak.

“Harrie,” Burton went on with a quiet depth of
feeling which was not lost on Dick (for Dick had
deep capabilities of sympathy himself if any one
bothered to find it out). “You told the truth and I
know what it cost you. I lied. And it took all the
stuffin’s out of me, Harrie. As soon as the lie was
out, I felt I’d have given my head to have it back.
You see, Harrie, quite apart from the right or wrong
of it, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had told the
truth.”

“It wouldn’t?”

“No, I’ve had a fairly good record in class lately.
But——”

“Why did you do it?”

“That’s just it, old man. It was habit, I guess. It
was just the line of least resistance. It was the
quickest way out of a box—I didn’t think, and bang!—first
thing I knew I’d gone and done it! I’m a[226]
good deal older than you, Harrie, I’m twenty-one. I
was a pretty bad kid until Prof. and Mrs. Brewster
got hold of me. I’ve managed to get most of the
worst devils under. And I thought I had the lie-devil
under. I haven’t told a lie for two years. But
I didn’t have him under, Harrie. When I least expected
him, there he was. I guess I haven’t been as
unhappy for a good many years as I was yesterday
and to-day.”

Dick Harrington floundered helplessly for words—”I
never thought——”

“I was getting pretty cocky about my own goodness,
I guess,” Burton went on quietly. “That’s why I got
it in the neck this way. But it took the sand right
out of me. It seemed that all the years of tussle were
in vain and I wasn’t worth a little yaller dog’s respect,
and here the school was looking to me to do big
things. It took it right out of me, Harrie. Do you
know what was the trouble with the first two periods
of the game to-day?”

“The team lost their heads, and then you bucked
’em up and won the game. The fellows told me.”

“That sounds good, old man. But the trouble was
that I couldn’t get my mind down on the game. I was
all the time thinking of that algebra class and that
lie. I thought of it out on the field and mixed up the
plays. That was the reason for those two first
periods.”[227]

Dick Harrington sat bolt upright. “Really?
Really?” he exclaimed.

“Instead of trying to win the game, I was all the
time trying to puzzle out what I could do to wipe out
that Lie. It wasn’t square to the team, it wasn’t
square to the school, but there it was. There was
that Lie. I tried to laugh at myself, but that didn’t
do any good. There was that Lie. I tried to curse
myself out, but that didn’t do any good. There was
that Lie, sitting in my heart.”

Dick stared at him through the darkness with
burning eyes. “Then what happened?” he cried in a
low voice.

“I dunno exactly, Harrie,” Burton answered, speaking
very slowly. “Suddenly I just found that I was
thinking of you.”

“Of me?” There was awe in the exclamation.

“And then it was all clear. I had to square myself
with you. Suddenly I knew that that was what would
wipe out that Lie and give me a fresh start. It was
like a sort of revelation. You see, Harrie, I knew
that you thought I was pretty fine, and you just had
to be set straight.”

“I—I haven’t changed my mind at all about you,”
said Dick Harrington timidly. “And you won the
game after all.”

Bill Burton leaned over the younger boy. His hand
groped for Dick’s shoulder and clutched it.

“I didn’t win the game,” he whispered tensely.[228]
“The game wasn’t really played at Chancellor’s Hill
at all. It was played in the algebra class. It was lost
when I lied, and it was won a minute later when you
told the truth. And I guess I’m pretty glad you told
the truth.”

“So am I,” murmured Dick very softly.

They both breathed deeply. It had been a notable
victory.

Next morning, between breakfast and Sunday service,
Dick Harrington surreptitiously borrowed his
roommate’s safety razor, and shaved with shining
eyes.

[229]

XII.—Story of the Bandbox

By Robert Louis Stevenson

A fortunate chance and some influence obtained for
Harry, at the time of his bereavement, the position
of private secretary to Major-General Sir Thomas
Vandeleur, C. B. Sir Thomas was a man of sixty,
loud-spoken, boisterous, and domineering. For some
reason, some service, the nature of which had been
often whispered and repeatedly denied, the Rajah of
Kashgar had presented this officer with the sixth largest
known diamond of the world. The gift transformed
General Vandeleur from a poor into a wealthy man,
from an obscure and unpopular soldier into one of
the lions of London society; the possessor of the
Rajah’s Diamond was welcome in the most exclusive
circles; and he had found a lady, young, beautiful, and
well-born, who was willing to call the diamond hers
even at the price of marriage with Sir Thomas Vandeleur.
It was commonly said at the time that, as
like draws to like, one jewel had attracted another;
certainly Lady Vandeleur was not only a gem of the
finest water in her own person, but she showed herself
to the world in a very costly setting; and she was
considered by many respectable authorities as one
among the three or four best-dressed women in England.

Harry’s duty as secretary was not particularly
onerous; but he had a dislike for all prolonged work;[231]
it gave him pain to ink his fingers; and the charms of
Lady Vandeleur and her toilets drew him often from
the library to the boudoir. He had the prettiest ways
among women, could talk fashions with enjoyment,
and was never more happy than when criticizing a
shade of ribbon, or running on an errand to the milliner’s.
In short, Sir Thomas’ correspondence fell
into pitiful arrears, and my lady had another lady’s
maid.

At last the general, who was one of the least patient
of military commanders, arose from his place in a
violent excess of passion, and indicated to his secretary
that he had no further use for his services, with
one of those explanatory gestures which are most
rarely employed between gentlemen. The door being
unfortunately open, Mr. Hartley fell down-stairs head
foremost.

He arose somewhat hurt and very deeply aggrieved.
The life in the general’s house precisely suited him; he
moved, on a more or less doubtful footing, in very genteel
company, he did little, he ate of the best, and he
had a lukewarm satisfaction in the presence of Lady
Vandeleur.

Immediately after he had been outraged by the military
foot, he hurried to the boudoir and recounted his
sorrows.

“You know very well, my dear Harry,” replied
Lady Vandeleur, for she called him by name like a
child or a domestic servant, “that you never by any[232]
chance do what the general tells you. I shall be sorry
to lose you, but since you cannot stay longer in a house
where you have been insulted, I shall wish you good-bye,
and I promise you to make the general smart for
his behavior.”

“My lady,” said he, “what is an insult? I should
think little indeed of any one who could not forgive
them by the score. But to leave one’s friends; to
tear up the bonds of affection——”

He was unable to continue, for his emotion choked
him, and he began to weep.

Lady Vandeleur looked at him with a curious expression.

“This little fool,” she thought, “why should he not
become my servant instead of the general’s? He is
good-natured, obliging, and understands dress; and besides,
it will keep him out of mischief.”

That night she talked over the general, who was already
somewhat ashamed of his vivacity; and Harry
was transferred to the feminine department, where his
life was little short of heavenly. He was always
dressed with uncommon nicety, wore delicate flowers
in his button-hole, and could entertain a visitor with
tact and pleasantry.

One fine morning he came into the drawing-room
and began to arrange some music on the top of the
piano. Lady Vandeleur, at the other end of the apartment,
was speaking somewhat eagerly with her
brother, Charlie Pendragon, an elderly young man,[233]
much broken with dissipation and very lame of one
foot. The private secretary, to whose entrance they
paid no regard, could not avoid overhearing a part of
their conversation.

“To-day or never,” said the lady. “Once and for
all, it shall be done to-day.”

“To-day, it must be,” replied the brother, with a
sigh. “But it is a false step, a ruinous step, Clara;
and we shall live to repent it dismally.”

Lady Vandeleur looked her brother steadily and
somewhat strangely in the face.

“You forget,” she said; “the man must die at
last.”

“Upon my word, Clara,” said Pendragon, “I believe
you are the most heartless rascal in England.”

“You men,” she returned, “are so coarsely built,
that you can never appreciate a shade of meaning.
You are yourselves rapacious, violent, immodest, careless
of distinction; and yet the least thought for the
future shocks you in a woman. I have no patience
with such stuff. You would despise in a common
banker the imbecility that you expect to find in us.”

“You are very likely right,” replied her brother;
“you were always cleverer than I. And, anyway, you
know my motto: the family before all.”

“Yes, Charlie,” she returned, taking his hand in
hers. “I know your motto better than you know it
yourself. And ‘Clara before the family!’ Is not[234]
that the second part of it? Indeed, you are the best
of brothers, and I love you dearly.”

Mr. Pendragon got up, looking a little confused by
these family endearments.

“I had better not be seen,” said he. “I understand
my part to a miracle, and I’ll keep an eye on the Tame
Cat.”

“Do,” she replied. “He is an abject creature, and
might ruin all.”

She kissed the tips of her fingers to him daintily;
and the brother withdrew by the boudoir and the
back-stair.

“Harry,” said Lady Vandeleur, turning toward the
secretary as soon as they were alone. “I have a commission
for you this morning. But you shall take a
cab; I cannot have my secretary freckled.”

She spoke the last words with emphasis and a look
of half-motherly pride that caused great contentment
to poor Harry; and he professed himself charmed to
find an opportunity of serving her.

“It is another of our great secrets,” she went on
archly, “and no one must know of it but my secretary
and me. Sir Thomas would make the saddest
disturbance; and if you only knew how weary I am
with these scenes! Oh, Harry, Harry, can you explain
to me what makes you men so violent and unjust?
But, indeed, I know you cannot; you are the
only man in the world who knows nothing of these
shameful passions; you are so good, Harry, and so[235]
kind; you, at least, can be a woman’s friend; and do
you know? I think you make the others more ugly
by comparison.”

“It is you,” said Harry, gallantly, “who are so kind
to me. You treat me like——”

“Like a mother,” interposed Lady Vandeleur. “I
try to be a mother to you. Or, at least,” she corrected
herself with a smile, “almost a mother. I am afraid
I am too young to be your mother really. Let us say
a friend—a dear friend.”

“But all this is beside our purpose,” she resumed.
“You will find a bandbox in the left-hand side of the
oak wardrobe; it is underneath the pink slip that I
wore on Wednesday with my Mechlin. You will take
it immediately to this address,” and she gave him a
slip of paper, “but do not, on any account, let it out
of your hands until you have received a receipt written
by myself. Do you understand? Answer, if you
please—answer! This is extremely important, and
I must ask you to pay some attention.”

Harry pacified her by repeating her instructions perfectly;
and she was just going to tell him more when
General Vandeleur flung into the apartment, scarlet
with anger, and holding a long and elaborate milliner’s
bill in his hand.

“Will you look at this, madam?” cried he. “Will
you have the goodness to look at this document? I
know well enough you married me for my money, and
I hope I can make as great allowance as any other[236]
man in the service; but, as sure as God made me, I
mean to put a period to this disreputable prodigality.”

“Mr. Hartley,” said Lady Vandeleur, “I think you
understand what you have to do. May I ask you to
see to it at once?”

“Stop,” said the general, addressing Harry, “one
word before you go.” And then, turning again to
Lady Vandeleur, “What is this precious fellow’s errand?”
he demanded. “I trust him no further than
I do yourself, let me tell you. If he had as much as
the rudiments of honesty, he would scorn to stay in
this house; and what he does for his wages is a mystery
to all the world. What is his errand, madam?
and why are you hurrying him away?”

“I supposed you had something to say to me in
private,” replied the lady.

“You spoke about an errand,” insisted the general.
“Do not attempt to deceive me in my present state of
temper. You certainly spoke about an errand.”

“If you insist on making your servants privy to our
humiliating dissensions,” replied Lady Vandeleur,
“perhaps I had better ask Mr. Hartley to sit down.
No?” she continued; “then you may go, Mr. Hartley.
I trust you may remember all that you have heard in
this room; it may be useful to you.”

Harry at once made his escape from the drawing-room;
and as he ran upstairs he could hear the general’s
voice upraised in declamation, and the thin tones
of Lady Vandeleur planting icy repartees at every[237]
opening. How cordially he admired the wife! How
skillfully she could evade an awkward question! with
what secure effrontery she repeated her instructions
under the very guns of the enemy! and on the other
hand, how he detested the husband!

There had been nothing unfamiliar in the morning’s
events, for he was continually in the habit of
serving Lady Vandeleur on secret missions, principally
connected with millinery. There was a skeleton in
the house, as he well knew. The bottomless extravagance
and the unknown liabilities of the wife had long
since swallowed her own fortune, and threatened day
by day to ingulf that of the husband. Once or twice
in every year exposure and ruin seemed imminent, and
Harry kept trotting round to all sorts of furnishers’
shops, telling small fibs, and paying small advances
on the gross amount, until another term was tided
over, and the lady and her faithful secretary breathed
again. For Harry, in a double capacity, was heart
and soul upon that side of the war; not only did he
adore Lady Vandeleur and fear and dislike her husband,
but he naturally sympathized with the love of
finery, and his own single extravagance was at the
tailor’s.

He found the bandbox where it had been described,
arranged his toilet with care, and left the house. The
sun shone brightly; the distance he had to travel was
considerable, and he remembered with dismay that
the general’s sudden interruption had prevented Lady[238]
Vandeleur from giving him money for a cab. On
this sultry day there was every chance that his complexion
would suffer severely; and to walk through so
much of London with a bandbox on his arm was a
humiliation almost insupportable to a youth of his
character. He paused, and took counsel with himself.
The Vandeleurs lived in Eaton Place; his destination
was near Notting Hill; plainly, he might
cross the Park by keeping well in the open and avoiding
populous alleys; and he thanked his stars when
he reflected that it was still comparatively early in
the day.

Anxious to be rid of his incubus, he walked somewhat
faster than his ordinary, and he was already
some way through Kensington Gardens when, in a
solitary spot among trees, he found himself confronted
by the general.

“I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas,” observed Harry,
politely falling on one side; for the other stood directly
in his path.

“Where are you going, sir?” asked the general.

“I am taking a little walk among the trees,” replied
the lad.

The general struck the bandbox with his cane.

“With that thing?” he cried; “you lie, sir, and you
know you lie!”

“Indeed, Sir Thomas,” returned Harry, “I am not
accustomed to be questioned in so high a key.”

“You do not understand your position,” said the[239]
general. “You are my servant, and a servant of
whom I have conceived the most serious suspicions.
How do I know but that your box is full of teaspoons?”

“It contains a silk hat belonging to a friend,” said
Harry.

“Very well,” replied General Vandeleur. “Then I
want to see your friend’s silk hat. I have,” he added,
grimly, “a singular curiosity for hats; and I believe
you know me to be somewhat positive.”

“I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas, I am exceedingly
grieved,” Harry apologized; “but indeed this is
a private affair.”

The general caught him roughly by the shoulder
with one hand, while he raised his cane in the most
menacing manner with the other. Harry gave himself
up for lost; but at the same moment Heaven
vouchsafed him an unexpected defender in the person
of Charlie Pendragon, who now strode forward
from behind the trees.

“Come, come, general, hold your hand,” said he,
“this is neither courteous nor manly.”

“Aha!” cried the general, wheeling round upon his
new antagonist, “Mr. Pendragon! And do you suppose,
Mr. Pendragon, that because I have had the misfortune
to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself to
be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt
libertine like you? My acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur,[240]
sir, has taken away all my appetite for the
other members of her family.”

“And do you fancy, General Vandeleur,” retorted
Charlie, “that because my sister has had the misfortune
to marry you, she there and then forfeited her
rights and privileges as a lady? I own, sir, that by
that action she did as much as anybody could to derogate
from her position; but to me she is still a Pendragon.
I make it my business to protect her from
ungentlemanly outrage, and if you were ten times her
husband I would not permit her liberty to be restrained,
nor her private messenger to be violently arrested.”

“How is that, Mr. Hartley?” interrogated the general.
“Mr. Pendragon is of my opinion, it appears.
He, too, suspects that Lady Vandeleur has something
to do with your friend’s silk hat.”

Charlie saw that he had committed an unpardonable
blunder, which he hastened to repair.

“How, sir?” he cried; “I suspect, do you say? I
suspect nothing. Only where I find strength abused
and a man brutalizing his inferiors, I take the liberty
to interfere.”

As he said these words he made a sign to Harry,
which the latter was too dull or too much troubled to
understand.

“In what way am I to construe your attitude, sir?”
demanded Vandeleur.

“Why, sir, as you please,” returned Pendragon.[241]

The general once more raised his cane, and made a
cut for Charlie’s head; but the latter, lame foot and
all, evaded the blow with his umbrella, ran in, and
immediately closed with his formidable adversary.

“Run, Harry, run!” he cried; “run, you dolt!”

Harry stood petrified for a moment, watching the
two men sway together in this fierce embrace; then he
turned and took to his heels. When he cast a glance
over his shoulder he saw the general prostrate under
Charlie’s knee, but still making desperate efforts to
reverse the situation; and the gardens seemed to have
filled with people, who were running from all directions
toward the scene of the fight. This spectacle
lent the secretary wings, and he did not relax his pace
until he had gained the Bayswater Road, and plunged
at random into an unfrequented by-street.

To see two gentlemen of his acquaintance thus brutally
mauling each other was deeply shocking to Harry.
He desired to forget the sight; he desired, above all,
to put as great a distance as possible between himself
and General Vandeleur; and in his eagerness for
this he forgot everything about his destination, and
hurried before him headlong and trembling. When he
remembered that Lady Vandeleur was the wife of one
and sister of the other of these gladiators, his heart
was touched with sympathy for a woman so distressingly
misplaced in life. Even his own situation in
the general’s house looked hardly so pleasing as usual
in the light of these violent transactions.[242]

He had walked some little distance, busied with
these meditations, before a slight collision with another
passenger reminded him of the bandbox on his arm.

“Heavens!” cried he, “where was my head? and
whither have I wandered?”

Thereupon he consulted the envelope which Lady
Vandeleur had given him. The address was there,
but without a name. Harry was simply directed to
ask for “the gentleman who accepted a parcel from
Lady Vandeleur,” and if he were not at home to await
his return. The gentleman, added the note, should
present a receipt in the handwriting of the lady herself.
All this seemed mighty mysterious, and Harry
was above all astonished at the omission of the name
and the formality of the receipt. He had thought
little of this last when he heard it dropped in conversation;
but reading it in cold blood, and taking it in connection
with the other strange particulars, he became
convinced that he was engaged in perilous affairs.
For half a moment he had a doubt of Lady Vandeleur
herself; for he found these obscure proceedings somewhat
unworthy of so high a lady, and became more
critical when her secrets were preserved against himself.
But her empire over his spirit was too complete,
he dismissed his suspicions, and blamed himself
roundly for having so much as entertained them.

In one thing, however, his duty and interest, his
generosity and his terrors, coincided—to get rid of
the bandbox with the greatest possible dispatch.[243]

He accosted the first policeman and courteously inquired
his way. It turned out that he was already
not far from his destination, and a walk of a few minutes
brought him to a small house in a lane, freshly
painted, and kept with the most scrupulous attention.
The knocker and bell-pull were highly polished; flowering
pot-herbs garnished the sills of the different
windows; and curtains of some rich material concealed
the interior from the eyes of curious passengers.
The place had an air of repose and secrecy;
and Harry was so far caught with this spirit that he
knocked with more than usual discretion, and was more
than usually careful to remove all impurity from his
boots.

A servant-maid of some personal attractions immediately
opened the door, and seemed to regard the
secretary with no unkind eyes.

“This is the parcel from Lady Vandeleur,” said
Harry.

“I know,” replied the maid, with a nod. “But the
gentleman is from home. Will you leave it with me?”

“I cannot,” answered Harry. “I am directed not
to part with it but upon a certain condition, and I must
ask you, I am afraid, to let me wait.”

“Well,” said she, “I suppose I may let you wait.
I am lonely enough, I can tell you, and you do not
look as though you would eat a girl. But be sure and
do not ask the gentleman’s name, for that I am not
to tell you.”[244]

“Do you say so?” cried Harry. “Why, how
strange! But, indeed, for some time back I walk
among surprises. One question I think I may surely
ask without indiscretion: Is he the master of this
house?”

“He is a lodger, and not eight days old at that,”
returned the maid. “And now a question for a question:
Do you know Lady Vandeleur?”

“I am her private secretary,” replied Harry, with
a glow of modest pride.

“She is pretty, is she not?” pursued the servant.

“Oh, beautiful!” cried Harry; “wonderfully
lovely, and not less good and kind!”

“You look kind enough yourself,” she retorted;
“and I wager you are worth a dozen Lady Vandeleurs.”

Harry was properly scandalized.

“I?” he cried. “I am only a secretary!”

“Do you mean that for me?” said the girl. “Because
I am only a housemaid, if you please.” And
then, relenting at the sight of Harry’s obvious confusion,
“I know you mean nothing of the sort,” she
added; “and I like your looks; but I think nothing
of your Lady Vandeleur. Oh, these mistresses!” she
cried. “To send out a real gentleman like you—with
a bandbox—in broad day!”

During this talk they had remained in their original
positions—she on the doorstep, he on the sidewalk,
bareheaded for the sake of coolness, and with[245]
the bandbox on his arm. But upon this last speech
Harry, who was unable to support such point-blank
compliments to his appearance, nor the encouraging
look with which they were accompanied, began to
change his attitude, and glance from left to right in
perturbation. In so doing he turned his face toward
the lower end of the lane, and there, to his indescribable
dismay, his eyes encountered those of General
Vandeleur. The general, in a prodigious fluster of
heat, hurry and indignation, had been scouring the
streets in chase of his brother-in-law; but so soon as
he caught a glimpse of the delinquent secretary his
purpose changed, his anger flowed into a new channel,
and he turned on his heel and came tearing up
the lane with truculent gestures and vociferations.

Harry made but one bolt of it into the house, driving
the maid before him; and the door was slammed
in his pursuer’s countenance.

“Is there a bar? Will it lock?” asked Harry, while
a salvo on the knocker made the house echo from wall
to wall.

“Why, what is wrong with you?” asked the maid.
“Is it this old gentleman?”

“If he gets hold of me,” whispered Harry, “I am
as good as dead. He has been pursuing me all day,
carries a sword-stick, and is an Indian military officer.”

“These are fine manners,” cried the maid. “And
what, if you please, may be his name?”[246]

“It is the general, my master,” answered Harry.
“He is after this bandbox.”

“Did not I tell you?” cried the maid in triumph.
“I told you I thought worse than nothing of your
Lady Vandeleur; and if you had an eye in your head
you might see what she is for yourself. An ungrateful
minx, I will be bound for that!”

The general renewed his attack upon the knocker,
and his passion growing with delay, began to kick and
beat upon the panels of the door.

“It is lucky,” observed the girl, “that I am alone
in the house; your general may hammer until he is
weary, and there is none to open for him. Follow
me!”

So saying she led Harry into the kitchen, where
she made him sit down, and stood by him herself in
an affectionate attitude, with a hand upon his shoulder.
The din at the door, so far from abating, continued
to increase in volume, and at each blow the
unhappy secretary was shaken to the heart.

“What is your name?” asked the girl.

“Harry Hartley,” he replied.

“Mine,” she went on, “is Prudence. Do you like
it?”

“Very much,” said Harry. “But hear for a moment
how the general beats upon the door. He will
certainly break it in, and then, in Heaven’s name, what
have I to look for but death?”

“You put yourself very much about with no occasion,”[247]
answered Prudence. “Let your general
knock, he will do no more than blister his hands. Do
you think I would keep you here if I were not sure to
save you? Oh, no, I am a good friend to those that
please me! and we have a back door upon another lane.
But,” she added, checking him, for he had got upon
his feet immediately on this welcome news, “but I
will not show where it is unless you kiss me. Will
you, Harry?”

“That I will,” he cried, remembering his gallantry,
“not for your back door, but because you are good
and pretty.”

And he administered two or three cordial salutes,
which were returned to him in kind.

Then Prudence led him to the back gate, and put
her hand upon the key.

“Will you come and see me?” she asked.

“I will, indeed,” said Harry. “Do not I owe you
my life?”

“And now,” she added, opening the door, “run as
hard as you can, for I shall let in the general.”

Harry scarcely required this advice; fear had him
by the forelock; and he addressed himself diligently
to flight. A few steps, and he believed he would return
to Lady Vandeleur in honor and safety. But
these few steps had not been taken before he heard a
man’s voice, hailing him by name with many execrations,
and, looking over his shoulder, he beheld
Charlie Pendragon waving him with both arms to return.[248]
The shock of this new incident was so sudden
and profound, and Harry was already worked into
so high a state of nervous tension, that he could think
of nothing better than to accelerate his pace, and continue
running. He should certainly have remembered
the scene in Kensington Gardens; he should certainly
have concluded that, where the general was his enemy,
Charlie Pendragon could be no other than a friend.
But such was the fever and perturbation of his mind
that he was struck by none of these considerations,
and only continued to run the faster up the lane.

Charlie, by the sound of his voice and the vile terms
that he hurled after the secretary, was obviously beside
himself with rage. He, too, ran his very best;
but, try as he might, the physical advantages were not
upon his side, and his outcries and the fall of his lame
foot on the macadam began to fall further and further
into the wake.

Harry’s hopes began once more to arise. The lane
was both steep and narrow, but it was exceedingly
solitary, bordered on either hand by garden walls,
overhung with foliage; and, for as far as the fugitive
could see in front of him, there was neither a creature
moving nor an open door. Providence, weary of persecution,
was now offering him an open field for his
escape.

Alas! as he came abreast of a garden door under a
tuft of chestnuts, it was suddenly drawn back, and he
could see inside, upon a garden path, the figure of a[249]
butcher’s boy with his tray upon his arm. He had
hardly recognized the fact before he was some steps
beyond upon the other side. But the fellow had had
time to observe him; he was evidently much surprised
to see a gentleman go by at so unusual a pace; and
he came out into the lane and began to call after Harry
with shouts of ironical encouragement.

His appearance gave a new idea to Charlie Pendragon,
who, although he was now sadly out of
breath, once more upraised his voice.

“Stop thief!” he cried.

And immediately the butcher’s boy had taken up
the cry and joined in the pursuit.

This was a bitter moment for the hunted secretary.
It is true that his terror enabled him once more to
improve his pace, and gain with every step on his
pursuers; but he was well aware that he was near
the end of his resources, and should he meet any one
coming the other way, his predicament in the narrow
lane would be desperate indeed.

“I must find a place of concealment,” he thought,
“and that within the next few seconds, or all is over
with me in this world.”

Scarcely had the thought crossed his mind than the
lane took a sudden turning; and he found himself
hidden from his enemies. There are circumstances
in which even the least energetic of mankind learn to
behave with vigor and decision; and the more cautious
forget their prudence and embrace foolhardy resolutions.[250]
This was one of those occasions for Harry
Hartley; and those who knew him best would have
been the most astonished at the lad’s audacity. He
stopped dead, flung the bandbox over a garden wall,
and, leaping upward with incredible agility and seizing
the copestone with his hands, he tumbled headlong
after it into the garden.

He came to himself a moment afterward, seated in
a border of small rosebushes. His hands and knees
were cut and bleeding, for the wall had been protected
against such an escalade by a liberal provision
of old bottles; and he was conscious of a general dislocation
and a painful swimming in the head. Facing
him across the garden, which was in admirable
order, and set with flowers of the most delicious perfume,
he beheld the back of a house. It was of considerable
extent, and plainly habitable; but, in odd
contrast to the grounds, it was crazy, ill-kept, and of
a mean appearance. On all other sides the circuit of
the garden wall appeared unbroken.

He took in these features of the scene with mechanical
glances, but his mind was still unable to piece
together or draw a rational conclusion from what he
saw. And when he heard footsteps advancing on the
gravel, although he turned his eyes in that direction,
it was with no thought either for defense or flight.

The newcomer was a large, coarse, and very sordid
personage, in gardening clothes, and with a watering-pot
in his left hand. One less confused would have[251]
been affected with some alarm at the sight of this
man’s huge proportions and black and lowering eyes.
But Harry was too gravely shaken by his fall to be so
much as terrified; and if he was unable to divert his
glances from the gardener, he remained absolutely
passive, and suffered him to draw near, to take him
by the shoulder, and to plant him roughly on his feet,
without a motion of resistance.

For a moment the two stared into each other’s eyes,
Harry fascinated, the man filled with wrath and a
cruel, sneering humor.

“Who are you?” he demanded at last. “Who are
you to come flying over my wall and break my Gloire
de Dijons? What is your name?” he added, shaking
him; “and what may be your business here?”

Harry could not as much as proffer a word in explanation.

But just at that moment Pendragon and the butcher’s
boy went clumping past, and the sound of their
feet and their hoarse cries echoed loudly in the narrow
lane. The gardener had received his answer; and
he looked down into Harry’s face with an obnoxious
smile.

“A thief!” he said. “Upon my word, and a very
good thing you must make of it; for I see you dressed
like a gentleman from top to toe. Are you not
ashamed to go about the world in such a trim, with
honest folk, I dare say, glad to buy your cast-off finery
second-hand? Speak up, you dog,” the man went on;[252]
“you can understand English, I suppose; and I mean
to have a bit of talk with you before I march you to
the station.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Harry, “this is all a dreadful misconception;
and if you will go with me to Sir Thomas
Vandeleur’s in Eaton Place, I can promise that all
will be made plain. The most upright person, as I
now perceive, can be led into suspicious positions.”

“My little man,” replied the gardener, “I will go
with you no further than the station-house in the next
street. The inspector, no doubt, will be glad to take
a stroll with you as far as Eaton Place, and have a
bit of afternoon tea with your great acquaintances.
Or would you prefer to go direct to the home secretary?
Sir Thomas Vandeleur, indeed! Perhaps you
think I don’t know a gentleman when I see one, from
a common run-the-hedge like you? Clothes or no
clothes, I can read you like a book. Here is a shirt
that maybe cost as much as my Sunday hat; and that
coat, I take it, has never seen the inside of Rag-fair,
and then your boots——”