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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys, by 
+Richard Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+Release Date: January 13, 2010 [EBook #30953]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY SCOUT AND OTHER STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "But how," he demanded, "how do I get ashore?"]
+
+
+
+
+THE BOY SCOUT
+
+AND OTHER STORIES FOR BOYS
+
+BY
+
+RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+NEW YORK
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1891, 1903, 1912, 1914, 1917, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHER'S NOTE
+
+RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, as a friend and fellow author has written of him,
+was "youth incarnate," and there is probably nothing that he wrote of
+which a boy would not some day come to feel the appeal. But there are
+certain of his stories that go with especial directness to a boy's heart
+and sympathies and make for him quite unforgettable literature. A few of
+these were made some years ago into a volume, "Stories for Boys," and
+found a large and enthusiastic special public in addition to Davis's
+general readers; and the present collection from stories more recently
+published is issued with the same motive. This book takes its title from
+"The Boy Scout," the first of its tales; and it includes "The Boy Who
+Cried Wolf," "Blood Will Tell," the immortal "Gallegher," and "The Bar
+Sinister," Davis's famous dog story. It is a fresh volume added to what
+Augustus Thomas calls "safe stuff to give to a young fellow who likes to
+take off his hat and dilate his nostrils and feel the wind in his face."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+                                             PAGE
+  The Boy Scout                                 3
+  The Boy Who Cried Wolf                       42
+  Gallegher                                    82
+  Blood Will Tell                             158
+  The Bar Sinister                            212
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  "But how," he demanded, "how do I get ashore?"            Frontispiece
+
+  Jimmie dropped the valise, forced his cramped fingers
+  into straight lines, and saluted                                     8
+
+  "For God's sake," Hade begged, "let me go"                         128
+
+  "Why, it's Gallegher," said the night editor                       156
+
+  In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a
+  catcher's glove                                                    184
+
+  She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder                    210
+
+  "He's a coward! I've done with him"                                230
+
+  For a long time he kneels in the sawdust                           282
+
+
+
+
+THE BOY SCOUT
+
+AND OTHER STORIES FOR BOYS
+
+
+
+
+THE BOY SCOUT
+
+
+A Rule of the Boy Scouts is every day to do some one a good turn. Not
+because the copy-books tell you it deserves another, but in spite of
+that pleasing possibility. If you are a true Scout, until you have
+performed your act of kindness your day is dark. You are as unhappy as
+is the grown-up who has begun his day without shaving or reading the New
+York _Sun_. But as soon as you have proved yourself you may, with a
+clear conscience, look the world in the face and untie the knot in your
+kerchief.
+
+Jimmie Reeder untied the accusing knot in his scarf at just ten minutes
+past eight on a hot August morning after he had given one dime to his
+sister Sadie. With that she could either witness the first-run films at
+the Palace, or by dividing her fortune patronize two of the nickel shows
+on Lenox Avenue. The choice Jimmie left to her. He was setting out for
+the annual encampment of the Boy Scouts at Hunter's Island, and in the
+excitement of that adventure even the movies ceased to thrill. But Sadie
+also could be unselfish. With a heroism of a camp-fire maiden she made a
+gesture which might have been interpreted to mean she was returning the
+money.
+
+"I can't, Jimmie!" she gasped. "I can't take it off you. You saved it,
+and you ought to get the fun of it."
+
+"I haven't saved it yet," said Jimmie. "I'm going to cut it out of the
+railroad fare. I'm going to get off at City Island instead of at Pelham
+Manor and walk the difference. That's ten cents cheaper."
+
+Sadie exclaimed with admiration:
+
+"An' you carryin' that heavy grip!"
+
+"Aw, that's nothin'," said the man of the family.
+
+"Good-by, mother. So long, Sadie."
+
+To ward off further expressions of gratitude he hurriedly advised Sadie
+to take in "The Curse of Cain" rather than "The Mohawks' Last Stand,"
+and fled down the front steps.
+
+He wore his khaki uniform. On his shoulders was his knapsack, from his
+hands swung his suitcase and between his heavy stockings and his
+"shorts" his kneecaps, unkissed by the sun, as yet unscathed by
+blackberry vines, showed as white and fragile as the wrists of a girl.
+As he moved toward the "L" station at the corner, Sadie and his mother
+waved to him; in the street, boys too small to be Scouts hailed him
+enviously; even the policeman glancing over the newspapers on the
+news-stand nodded approval.
+
+"You a Scout, Jimmie?" he asked.
+
+"No," retorted Jimmie, for was not he also in uniform? "I'm Santa Claus
+out filling Christmas stockings."
+
+The patrolman also possessed a ready wit.
+
+"Then get yourself a pair," he advised. "If a dog was to see your
+legs----"
+
+Jimmie escaped the insult by fleeing up the steps of the Elevated.
+
+An hour later, with his valise in one hand and staff in the other, he
+was tramping up the Boston Post Road and breathing heavily. The day was
+cruelly hot. Before his eyes, over an interminable stretch of asphalt,
+the heat waves danced and flickered. Already the knapsack on his
+shoulders pressed upon him like an Old Man of the Sea; the linen in the
+valise had turned to pig iron, his pipe-stem legs were wabbling, his
+eyes smarted with salt sweat, and the fingers supporting the valise
+belonged to some other boy, and were giving that boy much pain. But as
+the motor-cars flashed past with raucous warnings, or, that those who
+rode might better see the boy with bare knees, passed at "half speed,"
+Jimmie stiffened his shoulders and stepped jauntily forward. Even when
+the joy-riders mocked with "Oh, you Scout!" he smiled at them. He was
+willing to admit to those who rode that the laugh was on the one who
+walked. And he regretted--oh, so bitterly--having left the train. He was
+indignant that for his "one good turn a day" he had not selected one
+less strenuous. That, for instance, he had not assisted a frightened old
+lady through the traffic. To refuse the dime she might have offered, as
+all true Scouts refuse all tips, would have been easier than to earn it
+by walking five miles, with the sun at ninety-nine degrees, and carrying
+excess baggage. Twenty times James shifted the valise to the other hand,
+twenty times he let it drop and sat upon it.
+
+And then, as again he took up his burden, the Good Samaritan drew near.
+He drew near in a low gray racing-car at the rate of forty miles an
+hour, and within a hundred feet of Jimmie suddenly stopped and backed
+toward him. The Good Samaritan was a young man with white hair. He wore
+a suit of blue, a golf cap; the hands that held the wheel were disguised
+in large yellow gloves. He brought the car to a halt and surveyed the
+dripping figure in the road with tired and uncurious eyes.
+
+[Illustration: Jimmie dropped the valise, forced his cramped fingers
+into straight lines, and saluted.]
+
+"You a Boy Scout?" he asked.
+
+With alacrity for the twenty-first time Jimmie dropped the valise,
+forced his cramped fingers into straight lines, and saluted.
+
+The young man in the car nodded toward the seat beside him.
+
+"Get in," he commanded.
+
+When James sat panting happily at his elbow the old young man, to
+Jimmie's disappointment, did not continue to shatter the speed limit.
+Instead, he seemed inclined for conversation, and the car, growling
+indignantly, crawled.
+
+"I never saw a Boy Scout before," announced the old young man. "Tell me
+about it. First, tell me what you do when you're not scouting."
+
+Jimmie explained volubly. When not in uniform he was an office-boy and
+from pedlers and beggars guarded the gates of Carroll and Hastings,
+stock-brokers. He spoke the names of his employers with awe. It was a
+firm distinguished, conservative, and long-established. The white-haired
+young man seemed to nod in assent.
+
+"Do you know them?" demanded Jimmie suspiciously. "Are you a customer of
+ours?"
+
+"I know them," said the young man. "They are customers of mine."
+
+Jimmie wondered in what way Carroll and Hastings were customers of the
+white-haired young man. Judging him by his outer garments, Jimmie
+guessed he was a Fifth Avenue tailor; he might be even a haberdasher.
+Jimmie continued. He lived, he explained, with his mother at One Hundred
+and Forty-sixth Street; Sadie, his sister, attended the public school;
+he helped support them both, and he now was about to enjoy a well-earned
+vacation camping out on Hunter's Island, where he would cook his own
+meals and, if the mosquitoes permitted, sleep in a tent.
+
+"And you like that?" demanded the young man. "You call that fun?"
+
+"Sure!" protested Jimmie. "Don't _you_ go camping out?"
+
+"I go camping out," said the Good Samaritan, "whenever I leave New
+York."
+
+Jimmie had not for three years lived in Wall Street not to understand
+that the young man spoke in metaphor.
+
+"You don't look," objected the young man critically, "as though you were
+built for the strenuous life."
+
+Jimmie glanced guiltily at his white knees.
+
+"You ought ter see me two weeks from now," he protested. "I get all
+sunburnt and hard--hard as anything!"
+
+The young man was incredulous.
+
+"You were near getting sunstroke when I picked you up," he laughed. "If
+you're going to Hunter's Island why didn't you take the Third Avenue to
+Pelham Manor?"
+
+"That's right!" assented Jimmie eagerly. "But I wanted to save the ten
+cents so's to send Sadie to the movies. So I walked."
+
+The young man looked his embarrassment.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he murmured.
+
+But Jimmie did not hear him. From the back of the car he was dragging
+excitedly at the hated suitcase.
+
+"Stop!" he commanded. "I got ter get out. I got ter _walk_."
+
+The young man showed his surprise.
+
+"Walk!" he exclaimed. "What is it--a bet?"
+
+Jimmie dropped the valise and followed it into the roadway. It took some
+time to explain to the young man. First, he had to be told about the
+scout law and the one good turn a day, and that it must involve some
+personal sacrifice. And, as Jimmie pointed out, changing from a slow
+suburban train to a racing-car could not be listed as a sacrifice. He
+had not earned the money, Jimmie argued; he had only avoided paying it
+to the railroad. If he did not walk he would be obtaining the gratitude
+of Sadie by a falsehood. Therefore, he must walk.
+
+"Not at all," protested the young man. "You've got it wrong. What good
+will it do your sister to have you sunstruck? I think you _are_
+sunstruck. You're crazy with the heat. You get in here, and we'll talk
+it over as we go along."
+
+Hastily Jimmie backed away. "I'd rather walk," he said.
+
+The young man shifted his legs irritably.
+
+"Then how'll this suit you?" he called. "We'll declare that first 'one
+good turn' a failure and start afresh. Do me a good turn."
+
+Jimmie halted in his tracks and looked back suspiciously.
+
+"I'm going to Hunter's Island Inn," called the young man, "and I've lost
+my way. You get in here and guide me. That'll be doing me a good turn."
+
+On either side of the road, blotting out the landscape, giant hands
+picked out in electric-light bulbs pointed the way to Hunter's Island
+Inn. Jimmie grinned and nodded toward them.
+
+"Much obliged," he called, "I got ter walk." Turning his back upon
+temptation, he wabbled forward into the flickering heat waves.
+
+The young man did not attempt to pursue. At the side of the road, under
+the shade of a giant elm, he had brought the car to a halt and with his
+arms crossed upon the wheel sat motionless, following with frowning eyes
+the retreating figure of Jimmie. But the narrow-chested and knock-kneed
+boy staggering over the sun-baked asphalt no longer concerned him. It
+was not Jimmie, but the code preached by Jimmie, and not only preached
+but before his eyes put into practice, that interested him. The young
+man with white hair had been running away from temptation. At forty
+miles an hour he had been running away from the temptation to do a
+fellow mortal "a good turn." That morning, to the appeal of a drowning
+Cćsar to "Help me, Cassius, or I sink," he had answered, "Sink!" That
+answer he had no wish to reconsider. That he might not reconsider he had
+sought to escape. It was his experience that a sixty-horse-power
+racing-machine is a jealous mistress. For retrospective, sentimental, or
+philanthropic thoughts she grants no leave of absence. But he had not
+escaped. Jimmie had halted him, tripped him by the heels and set him
+again to thinking. Within the half-hour that followed those who rolled
+past saw at the side of the road a car with her engine running, and
+leaning upon the wheel, as unconscious of his surroundings as though he
+sat at his own fireplace, a young man who frowned and stared at nothing.
+The half-hour passed and the young man swung his car back toward the
+city. But at the first roadhouse that showed a blue-and-white telephone
+sign he left it, and into the iron box at the end of the bar dropped a
+nickel. He wished to communicate with Mr. Carroll, of Carroll and
+Hastings; and when he learned Mr. Carroll had just issued orders that he
+must not be disturbed, the young man gave his name.
+
+The effect upon the barkeeper was instantaneous. With the aggrieved air
+of one who feels he is the victim of a jest he laughed scornfully. "What
+are you putting over?" he demanded.
+
+The young man smiled reassuringly. He had begun to speak and, though
+apparently engaged with the beer-glass he was polishing, the barkeeper
+listened.
+
+Down in Wall Street the senior member of Carroll and Hastings also
+listened. He was alone in the most private of all his private offices,
+and when interrupted had been engaged in what, of all undertakings, is
+the most momentous. On the desk before him lay letters to his lawyer, to
+the coroner, to his wife; and hidden by a mass of papers, but within
+reach of his hand, an automatic pistol. The promise it offered of swift
+release had made the writing of the letters simple, had given him a
+feeling of complete detachment, had released him, at least in thought,
+from all responsibilities. And when at his elbow the telephone coughed
+discreetly, it was as though some one had called him from a world from
+which already he had made his exit.
+
+Mechanically, through mere habit, he lifted the receiver.
+
+The voice over the telephone came in brisk staccato sentences.
+
+"That letter I sent this morning? Forget it. Tear it up. I've been
+thinking and I'm going to take a chance. I've decided to back you boys,
+and I know you'll make good. I'm speaking from a roadhouse in the Bronx;
+going straight from here to the bank. So you can begin to draw against
+us within an hour. And--hello!--will three millions see you through?"
+
+From Wall Street there came no answer, but from the hands of the
+barkeeper a glass crashed to the floor.
+
+The young man regarded the barkeeper with puzzled eyes.
+
+"He doesn't answer," he exclaimed. "He must have hung up."
+
+"He must have fainted!" said the barkeeper.
+
+The white-haired one pushed a bill across the counter. "To pay for
+breakage," he said, and disappeared down Pelham Parkway.
+
+Throughout the day, with the bill, for evidence, pasted against the
+mirror, the barkeeper told and retold the wondrous tale.
+
+"He stood just where you're standing now," he related, "blowing in
+million-dollar bills like you'd blow suds off a beer. If I'd knowed it
+was _him_, I'd have hit him once, and hid him in the cellar for the
+reward. Who'd I think he was? I thought he was a wire-tapper, working a
+con game!"
+
+Mr. Carroll had not "hung up," but when in the Bronx the beer-glass
+crashed, in Wall Street the receiver had slipped from the hand of the
+man who held it, and the man himself had fallen forward. His desk hit
+him in the face and woke him--woke him to the wonderful fact that he
+still lived; that at forty he had been born again; that before him
+stretched many more years in which, as the young man with the white hair
+had pointed out, he still could make good.
+
+The afternoon was far advanced when the staff of Carroll and Hastings
+were allowed to depart, and, even late as was the hour, two of them were
+asked to remain. Into the most private of the private offices Carroll
+invited Gaskell, the head clerk; in the main office Hastings had asked
+young Thorne, the bond clerk, to be seated.
+
+Until the senior partner has finished with Gaskell young Thorne must
+remain seated.
+
+"Gaskell," said Mr. Carroll, "if we had listened to you, if we'd run
+this place as it was when father was alive, this never would have
+happened. It _hasn't_ happened, but we've had our lesson. And after
+this we're going slow and going straight. And we don't need you to tell
+us how to do that. We want you to go away--on a month's vacation. When I
+thought we were going under I planned to send the children on a
+sea-voyage with the governess--so they wouldn't see the newspapers. But
+now that I can look them in the eye again, I need them, I can't let them
+go. So, if you'd like to take your wife on an ocean trip to Nova Scotia
+and Quebec, here are the cabins I reserved for the kids. They call it
+the Royal Suite--whatever that is--and the trip lasts a month. The boat
+sails to-morrow morning. Don't sleep too late or you may miss her."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The head clerk was secreting the tickets in the inside pocket of his
+waistcoat. His fingers trembled, and when he laughed his voice trembled.
+
+"Miss the boat!" the head clerk exclaimed. "If she gets away from Millie
+and me she's got to start now. We'll go on board to-night!"
+
+A half-hour later Millie was on her knees packing a trunk, and her
+husband was telephoning to the drug-store for a sponge bag and a cure
+for sea-sickness.
+
+Owing to the joy in her heart and to the fact that she was on her knees,
+Millie was alternately weeping into the trunk-tray and offering up
+incoherent prayers of thanksgiving. Suddenly she sank back upon the
+floor.
+
+"John!" she cried, "doesn't it seem sinful to sail away in a 'royal
+suite' and leave this beautiful flat empty?"
+
+Over the telephone John was having trouble with the drug clerk.
+
+"No!" he explained, "I'm not sea-sick _now_. The medicine I want is
+to be taken later. I _know_ I'm speaking from the Pavonia; but the
+Pavonia isn't a ship; it's an apartment-house."
+
+He turned to Millie. "We can't be in two places at the same time," he
+suggested.
+
+"But, think," insisted Millie, "of all the poor people stifling to-night
+in this heat, trying to sleep on the roofs and fire-escapes; and our
+flat so cool and big and pretty--and no one in it."
+
+John nodded his head proudly.
+
+"I know it's big," he said, "but it isn't big enough to hold all the
+people who are sleeping to-night on the roofs and in the parks."
+
+"I was thinking of your brother--and Grace," said Millie. "They've been
+married only two weeks now, and they're in a stuffy hall bedroom and
+eating with all the other boarders. Think what our flat would mean to
+them; to be by themselves, with eight rooms and their own kitchen and
+bath, and our new refrigerator and the gramophone! It would be Heaven!
+It would be a real honeymoon!"
+
+Abandoning the drug clerk, John lifted Millie in his arms and kissed
+her, for next to his wife nearest his heart was the younger brother.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The younger brother and Grace were sitting on the stoop of the
+boarding-house. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were the
+other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The air
+of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations of
+rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passing
+taxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors of
+a gas-stove and a kitchen, the choice was difficult.
+
+"We've got to cool off somehow," the young husband was saying, "or you
+won't sleep. Shall we treat ourselves to ice-cream sodas or a trip on
+the Weehawken ferry-boat?"
+
+"The ferry-boat!" begged the girl, "where we can get away from all these
+people."
+
+A taxicab with a trunk in front whirled into the street, kicked itself
+to a stop, and the head clerk and Millie spilled out upon the pavement.
+They talked so fast, and the younger brother and Grace talked so fast,
+that the boarders, although they listened intently, could make nothing
+of it.
+
+They distinguished only the concluding sentences:
+
+"Why don't you drive down to the wharf with us," they heard the elder
+brother ask, "and see our royal suite?"
+
+But the younger brother laughed him to scorn.
+
+"What's your royal suite," he mocked, "to our royal palace?"
+
+An hour later, had the boarders listened outside the flat of the head
+clerk, they would have heard issuing from his bathroom the cooling
+murmur of running water and from his gramophone the jubilant notes of
+"Alexander's Ragtime Band."
+
+When in his private office Carroll was making a present of the royal
+suite to the head clerk, in the main office Hastings, the junior
+partner, was addressing "Champ" Thorne, the bond clerk. He addressed him
+familiarly and affectionately as "Champ." This was due partly to the
+fact that twenty-six years before Thorne had been christened Champneys
+and to the coincidence that he had captained the football eleven of one
+of the Big Three to the championship.
+
+"Champ," said Mr. Hastings, "last month, when you asked me to raise your
+salary, the reason I didn't do it was not because you didn't deserve it,
+but because I believed if we gave you a raise you'd immediately get
+married."
+
+The shoulders of the ex-football captain rose aggressively; he snorted
+with indignation.
+
+"And why should I _not_ get married?" he demanded. "You're a fine
+one to talk! You're the most offensively happy married man I ever met."
+
+"Perhaps I know I am happy better than you do," reproved the junior
+partner; "but I know also that it takes money to support a wife."
+
+"You raise me to a hundred a week," urged Champ, "and I'll make it
+support a wife whether it supports me or not."
+
+"A month ago," continued Hastings, "we could have _promised_ you a
+hundred, but we didn't know how long we could pay it. We didn't want you
+to rush off and marry some fine girl----"
+
+"Some fine girl!" muttered Mr. Thorne. "The Finest Girl!"
+
+"The finer the girl," Hastings pointed out, "the harder it would have
+been for you if we had failed and you had lost your job."
+
+The eyes of the young man opened with sympathy and concern.
+
+"Is it as bad as that?" he murmured.
+
+Hastings sighed happily.
+
+"It _was_," he said, "but this morning the Young Man of Wall Street
+did us a good turn--saved us--saved our creditors, saved our homes,
+saved our honor. We're going to start fresh and pay our debts, and we
+agreed the first debt we paid would be the small one we owe you. You've
+brought us more than we've given, and if you'll stay with us we're going
+to 'see' your fifty and raise it a hundred. What do you say?"
+
+Young Mr. Thorne leaped to his feet. What he said was: "Where'n hell's
+my hat?"
+
+But by the time he had found the hat and the door he mended his manners.
+
+"I say, 'thank you a thousand times,'" he shouted over his shoulder.
+"Excuse me, but I've got to go. I've got to break the news to----"
+
+He did not explain to whom he was going to break the news; but Hastings
+must have guessed, for again he sighed happily and then, a little
+hysterically, laughed aloud. Several months had passed since he had
+laughed aloud.
+
+In his anxiety to break the news Champ Thorne almost broke his neck. In
+his excitement he could not remember whether the red flash meant the
+elevator was going down or coming up, and sooner than wait to find out
+he started to race down eighteen flights of stairs when fortunately the
+elevator-door swung open.
+
+"You get five dollars," he announced to the elevator man, "if you drop
+to the street without a stop. Beat the speed limit! Act like the
+building is on fire and you're trying to save me before the roof falls."
+
+Senator Barnes and his entire family, which was his daughter Barbara,
+were at the Ritz-Carlton. They were in town in August because there was
+a meeting of the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber Company, of
+which company Senator Barnes was president. It was a secret meeting.
+Those directors who were keeping cool at the edge of the ocean had been
+summoned by telegraph; those who were steaming across the ocean, by
+wireless.
+
+Up from the equator had drifted the threat of a scandal, sickening,
+grim, terrible. As yet it burned beneath the surface, giving out only an
+odor, but an odor as rank as burning rubber itself. At any moment it
+might break into flame. For the directors, was it the better wisdom to
+let the scandal smoulder, and take a chance, or to be the first to give
+the alarm, the first to lead the way to the horror and stamp it out?
+
+It was to decide this that, in the heat of August, the directors and the
+president had foregathered.
+
+Champ Thorne knew nothing of this; he knew only that by a miracle
+Barbara Barnes was in town; that at last he was in a position to ask her
+to marry him; that she would certainly say she would. That was all he
+cared to know.
+
+A year before he had issued his declaration of independence. Before he
+could marry, he told her, he must be able to support a wife on what he
+earned, without her having to accept money from her father, and until he
+received "a minimum wage" of five thousand dollars they must wait.
+
+"What is the matter with my father's money?" Barbara had demanded.
+
+Thorne had evaded the direct question.
+
+"There is too much of it," he said.
+
+"Do you object to the way he makes it?" insisted Barbara. "Because
+rubber is most useful. You put it in golf balls and auto tires and
+galoches. There is nothing so perfectly respectable as galoches. And
+what is there 'tainted' about a raincoat?"
+
+Thorne shook his head unhappily.
+
+"It's not the finished product to which I refer," he stammered; "it's
+the way they get the raw material."
+
+"They get it out of trees," said Barbara. Then she exclaimed with
+enlightenment----"Oh!" she cried, "you are thinking of the Congo. There
+it is terrible! _That_ is slavery. But there are no slaves on the
+Amazon. The natives are free and the work is easy. They just tap the
+trees the way the farmers gather sugar in Vermont. Father has told me
+about it often."
+
+Thorne had made no comment. He could abuse a friend, if the friend were
+among those present, but denouncing any one he disliked as heartily as
+he disliked Senator Barnes was a public service he preferred to leave to
+others. And he knew besides that, if the father she loved and the man
+she loved distrusted each other, Barbara would not rest until she
+learned the reason why.
+
+One day, in a newspaper, Barbara read of the Puju Mayo atrocities, of
+the Indian slaves in the jungles and back waters of the Amazon, who are
+offered up as sacrifices to "red rubber." She carried the paper to her
+father. What it said, her father told her, was untrue, and if it were
+true it was the first he had heard of it.
+
+Senator Barnes loved the good things of life, but the thing he loved
+most was his daughter; the thing he valued the highest was her good
+opinion. So when for the first time she looked at him in doubt, he
+assured her he at once would order an investigation.
+
+"But, of course," he added, "it will be many months before our agents
+can report. On the Amazon news travels very slowly."
+
+In the eyes of his daughter the doubt still lingered.
+
+"I am afraid," she said, "that that is true."
+
+That was six months before the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber
+Company were summoned to meet their president at his rooms in the
+Ritz-Carlton. They were due to arrive in half an hour, and while Senator
+Barnes awaited their coming Barbara came to him. In her eyes was a light
+that helped to tell the great news. It gave him a sharp, jealous pang.
+He wanted at once to play a part in her happiness, to make her grateful
+to him, not alone to this stranger who was taking her away. So fearful
+was he that she would shut him out of her life that had she asked for
+half his kingdom he would have parted with it.
+
+"And besides giving my consent," said the rubber king, "for which no one
+seems to have asked, what can I give my little girl to make her remember
+her old father? Some diamonds to put on her head, or pearls to hang
+around her neck, or does she want a vacant lot on Fifth Avenue?"
+
+The lovely hands of Barbara rested upon his shoulders; her lovely face
+was raised to his; her lovely eyes were appealing, and a little
+frightened.
+
+"What would one of those things cost?" asked Barbara.
+
+The question was eminently practical. It came within the scope of the
+senator's understanding. After all, he was not to be cast into outer
+darkness. His smile was complacent. He answered airily:
+
+"Anything you like," he said; "a million dollars?"
+
+The fingers closed upon his shoulders. The eyes, still frightened, still
+searched his in appeal.
+
+"Then for my wedding-present," said the girl, "I want you to take that
+million dollars and send an expedition to the Amazon. And I will choose
+the men. Men unafraid; men not afraid of fever or sudden death; not
+afraid to tell the truth--even to _you_. And all the world will
+know. And they--I mean _you_--will set those people free!"
+
+Senator Barnes received the directors with an embarrassment which he
+concealed under a manner of just indignation.
+
+"My mind is made up," he told them. "Existing conditions cannot
+continue. And to that end, at my own expense, I am sending an expedition
+across South America. It will investigate, punish, and establish
+reforms. I suggest, on account of this damned heat, we do now adjourn."
+
+That night, over on Long Island, Carroll told his wife all, or nearly
+all. He did not tell her about the automatic pistol. And together on
+tiptoe they crept to the nursery and looked down at their sleeping
+children. When she rose from her knees the mother said, "But how can I
+thank him?"
+
+By "him" she meant the Young Man of Wall Street.
+
+"You never can thank him," said Carroll; "that's the worst of it."
+
+But after a long silence the mother said: "I will send him a photograph
+of the children. Do you think he will understand?"
+
+Down at Seabright, Hastings and his wife walked in the sunken garden.
+The moon was so bright that the roses still held their color.
+
+"I would like to thank him," said the young wife. She meant the Young
+Man of Wall Street. "But for him we would have lost _this_."
+
+Her eyes caressed the garden, the fruit-trees, the house with wide,
+hospitable verandas. "To-morrow I will send him some of these roses,"
+said the young wife. "Will he understand that they mean our home?"
+
+At a scandalously late hour, in a scandalous spirit of independence,
+Champ Thorne and Barbara were driving around Central Park in a taxicab.
+
+"How strangely the Lord moves, his wonders to perform," misquoted
+Barbara. "Had not the Young Man of Wall Street saved Mr. Hastings, Mr.
+Hastings could not have raised your salary; you would not have asked me
+to marry you, and had you not asked me to marry you, father would not
+have given me a wedding-present, and----"
+
+"And," said Champ, taking up the tale, "thousands of slaves would still
+be buried in the jungles, hidden away from their wives and children, and
+the light of the sun and their fellow men. They still would be dying of
+fever, starvation, tortures."
+
+He took her hand in both of his and held her finger-tips against his
+lips.
+
+"And they will never know," he whispered, "when their freedom comes,
+that they owe it all to _you_."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+On Hunter's Island Jimmie Reeder and his bunkie, Sam Sturges, each on
+his canvas cot, tossed and twisted. The heat, the moonlight, and the
+mosquitoes would not let them even think of sleep.
+
+"That was bully," said Jimmie, "what you did to-day about saving that
+dog. If it hadn't been for you he'd ha' drownded."
+
+"He would _not_!" said Sammy with punctilious regard for the truth;
+"it wasn't deep enough."
+
+"Well, the scout-master ought to know," argued Jimmie; "he said it was
+the best 'one good turn' of the day!"
+
+Modestly Sam shifted the limelight so that it fell upon his bunkie.
+
+"I'll bet," he declared loyally, "_your_ 'one good turn' was a
+better one!"
+
+Jimmie yawned, and then laughed scornfully.
+
+"Me," he scoffed, "I didn't do nothing. I sent my sister to the movies."
+
+
+
+
+THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+
+
+Before he finally arrested him, "Jimmie" Sniffen had seen the man with
+the golf-cap, and the blue eyes that laughed at you, three times. Twice,
+unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road and once on Round Hill
+where the stranger was pretending to watch the sunset. Jimmie knew
+people do not climb hills merely to look at sunsets, so he was not
+deceived. He guessed the man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and
+secretly vowed to "stalk" him. From that moment, had the stranger known
+it, he was as good as dead. For a boy scout with badges on his sleeve
+for "stalking" and "path-finding," not to boast of others for
+"gardening" and "cooking," can outwit any spy. Even had General
+Baden-Powell remained in Mafeking and not invented the boy scout, Jimmie
+Sniffen would have been one. Because by birth he was a boy, and by
+inheritance a scout. In Westchester County the Sniffens are one of the
+county families. If it isn't a Sarles, it's a Sniffen; and with
+Brundages, Platts, and Jays, the Sniffens date back to when the acres of
+the first Charles Ferris ran from the Boston post road to the coach road
+to Albany, and when the first Gouverneur Morris stood on one of his
+hills and saw the Indian canoes in the Hudson and in the Sound and
+rejoiced that all the land between belonged to him.
+
+If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie's
+great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and hunted
+deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted
+weasels will count for nothing. It will not explain why to Jimmie, from
+Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the woods, and the
+cowpaths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as
+familiar as his own kitchen garden.
+
+Nor explain why, when you could not see a Pease and Elliman "For Sale"
+sign nailed to a tree, Jimmie could see in the highest branches a last
+year's bird's nest.
+
+Or why, when he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's
+axe into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt that once before
+in those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own
+tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a
+secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he
+would raise his eyes fearing to see a panther facing him.
+
+"But there ain't no panthers in Westchester," Jimmie would reassure
+himself. And in the distance the roar of an automobile climbing a hill
+with the muffler open would seem to suggest he was right. But still
+Jimmie remembered once before he had knelt at that same spring, and that
+when he raised his eyes he had faced a crouching panther. "Mebbe dad
+told me it happened to grandpop," Jimmie would explain, "or I dreamed
+it, or, mebbe, I read it in a story book."
+
+The "German spy" mania attacked Round Hill after the visit to the boy
+scouts of Clavering Gould, the war correspondent. He was spending the
+week-end with "Squire" Harry Van Vorst, and as young Van Vorst, besides
+being a justice of the peace and a Master of Beagles and President of
+the Country Club, was also a local "councilman" for the Round Hill
+Scouts, he brought his guest to a camp-fire meeting to talk to them. In
+deference to his audience, Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen
+in Belgium and of the part they were playing in the great war. It was
+his peroration that made trouble.
+
+"And any day," he assured his audience, "this country may be at war with
+Germany; and every one of you boys will be expected to do his bit. You
+can begin now. When the Germans land it will be near New Haven, or New
+Bedford. They will first capture the munition works at Springfield,
+Hartford, and Watervliet so as to make sure of their ammunition, and
+then they will start for New York City. They will follow the New Haven
+and New York Central railroads, and march straight through this village.
+I haven't the least doubt," exclaimed the enthusiastic war prophet,
+"that at this moment German spies are as thick in Westchester as
+blackberries. They are here to select camp sites and gun positions, to
+find out which of these hills enfilade the others and to learn to what
+extent their armies can live on the country. They are counting the cows,
+the horses, the barns where fodder is stored; and they are marking down
+on their maps the wells and streams."
+
+As though at that moment a German spy might be crouching behind the
+door, Mr. Gould spoke in a whisper. "Keep your eyes open!" he commanded.
+"Watch every stranger. If he acts suspiciously, get word quick to your
+sheriff, or to Judge Van Vorst here. Remember the scouts' motto, 'Be
+prepared!'"
+
+That night as the scouts walked home, behind each wall and hayrick they
+saw spiked helmets.
+
+Young Van Vorst was extremely annoyed.
+
+"Next time you talk to my scouts," he declared, "you'll talk on 'Votes
+for Women.' After what you said to-night every real-estate agent who
+dares open a map will be arrested. We're not trying to drive people away
+from Westchester, we're trying to sell them building sites."
+
+"_You_ are not!" retorted his friend, "you own half the county now,
+and you're trying to buy the other half."
+
+"I'm a justice of the peace," explained Van Vorst. "I don't know
+_why_ I am, except that they wished it on me. All I get out of it
+is trouble. The Italians make charges against my best friends for
+over-speeding, and I have to fine them, and my best friends bring
+charges against the Italians for poaching, and when I fine the Italians
+they send me Black Hand letters. And now every day I'll be asked to
+issue a warrant for a German spy who is selecting gun sites. And he will
+turn out to be a millionaire who is tired of living at the Ritz-Carlton
+and wants to 'own his own home' and his own golf-links. And he'll be so
+hot at being arrested that he'll take his millions to Long Island and
+try to break into the Piping Rock Club. And it will be your fault!"
+
+The young justice of the peace was right. At least so far as Jimmie
+Sniffen was concerned, the words of the war prophet had filled one mind
+with unrest. In the past Jimmie's idea of a holiday had been to spend it
+scouting in the woods. In this pleasure he was selfish. He did not want
+companions who talked, and trampled upon the dead leaves so that they
+frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie liked
+to pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile
+adversaries. It was a game of his own inventing. If he crept to the top
+of a hill and, on peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he
+pretended the woodchuck was a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if,
+himself unobserved, he could lie and watch, off its guard, a rabbit,
+squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a crow, it became a deer and that
+night at supper Jimmie made believe he was eating venison. Sometimes he
+was a scout of the Continental Army and carried despatches to General
+Washington. The rules of that game were that if any man ploughing in the
+fields, or cutting trees in the woods, or even approaching along the
+same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie was taken prisoner,
+and before sunrise was shot as a spy. He was seldom shot. Or else why on
+his sleeve was the badge for "stalking"? But always to have to make
+believe became monotonous. Even "dry shopping" along the Rue de la Paix,
+when you pretend you can have anything you see in any window, leaves one
+just as rich, but unsatisfied. So the advice of the war correspondent to
+seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the circus, like a
+week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms, to protect his
+flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in which he most
+delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he waste his
+energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot field.
+The game now was his fellow-man and his enemy; not only his enemy, but
+the enemy of his country.
+
+In his first effort Jimmie was not entirely successful. The man looked
+the part perfectly; he wore an auburn beard, disguising spectacles, and
+he carried a suspicious knapsack. But he turned out to be a professor
+from the Museum of Natural History, who wanted to dig for Indian
+arrow-heads. And when Jimmie threatened to arrest him, the indignant
+gentleman arrested Jimmie. Jimmie escaped only by leading the professor
+to a secret cave of his own, though on some one else's property, where
+one not only could dig for arrow-heads, but find them. The professor was
+delighted, but for Jimmie it was a great disappointment. The week
+following Jimmie was again disappointed.
+
+On the bank of the Kensico Reservoir, he came upon a man who was acting
+in a mysterious and suspicious manner. He was making notes in a book,
+and his runabout which he had concealed in a wood road was stuffed with
+blue-prints. It did not take Jimmie long to guess his purpose. He was
+planning to blow up the Kensico dam, and cut off the water supply of New
+York City. Seven millions of people without water! Without firing a
+shot, New York must surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and at
+the risk of his life, by clinging to the tail of a motor truck, he
+followed the runabout into White Plains. But there it developed the
+mysterious stranger, so far from wishing to destroy the Kensico dam, was
+the State Engineer who had built it, and, also, a large part of the
+Panama Canal. Nor in his third effort was Jimmie more successful. From
+the heights of Pound Ridge he discovered on a hilltop below him a man
+working along upon a basin of concrete. The man was a German-American,
+and already on Jimmie's list of "suspects." That for the use of the
+German artillery he was preparing a concrete bed for a siege gun was
+only too evident. But closer investigation proved that the concrete was
+only two inches thick. And the hyphenated one explained that the basin
+was built over a spring, in the waters of which he planned to erect a
+fountain and raise goldfish. It was a bitter blow. Jimmie became
+discouraged. Meeting Judge Van Vorst one day in the road he told him his
+troubles. The young judge proved unsympathetic. "My advice to you,
+Jimmie," he said, "is to go slow. Accusing everybody of espionage is a
+very serious matter. If you call a man a spy, it's sometimes hard for
+him to disprove it; and the name sticks. So, go slow--very slow. Before
+you arrest any more people, come to me first for a warrant."
+
+So, the next time Jimmie proceeded with caution.
+
+Besides being a farmer in a small way, Jimmie's father was a handy man
+with tools. He had no union card, but, in laying shingles along a blue
+chalk line, few were as expert. It was August, there was no school, and
+Jimmie was carrying a dinner-pail to where his father was at work on a
+new barn. He made a cross-cut through the woods, and came upon the young
+man in the golf-cap. The stranger nodded, and his eyes, which seemed to
+be always laughing, smiled pleasantly. But he was deeply tanned, and,
+from the waist up, held himself like a soldier, so, at once, Jimmie
+mistrusted him. Early the next morning Jimmie met him again. It had not
+been raining, but the clothes of the young man were damp. Jimmie guessed
+that while the dew was still on the leaves the young man had been
+forcing his way through underbrush. The stranger must have remembered
+Jimmie, for he laughed and exclaimed:
+
+"Ah, my friend with the dinner-pail! It's luck you haven't got it now,
+or I'd hold you up. I'm starving!"
+
+Jimmie smiled in sympathy. "It's early to be hungry," said Jimmie; "when
+did you have your breakfast?"
+
+"I didn't," laughed the young man. "I went out to walk up an appetite,
+and I lost myself. But I haven't lost my appetite. Which is the shortest
+way back to Bedford?"
+
+"The first road to your right," said Jimmie.
+
+"Is it far?" asked the stranger anxiously. That he was very hungry was
+evident.
+
+"It's a half-hour's walk," said Jimmie.
+
+"If I live that long," corrected the young man; and stepped out briskly.
+
+Jimmie knew that within a hundred yards a turn in the road would shut
+him from sight. So, he gave the stranger time to walk that distance, and
+then, diving into the wood that lined the road, "stalked" him. From
+behind a tree he saw the stranger turn and look back, and seeing no one
+in the road behind him, also leave it and plunge into the woods.
+
+He had not turned toward Bedford; he had turned to the left. Like a
+runner stealing bases, Jimmie slipped from tree to tree. Ahead of him he
+heard the stranger trampling upon dead twigs, moving rapidly as one who
+knew his way. At times through the branches Jimmie could see the broad
+shoulders of the stranger, and again could follow his progress only by
+the noise of the crackling twigs. When the noises ceased, Jimmie guessed
+the stranger had reached the wood road, grass-grown and moss-covered,
+that led to Middle Patent. So, he ran at right angles until he also
+reached it, and as now he was close to where it entered the main road,
+he approached warily. But he was too late. There was a sound like the
+whir of a rising partridge, and ahead of him from where it had been
+hidden, a gray touring-car leaped into the highway. The stranger was at
+the wheel. Throwing behind it a cloud of dust, the car raced toward
+Greenwich. Jimmie had time to note only that it bore a Connecticut State
+license; that in the wheel-ruts the tires printed little V's, like
+arrow-heads.
+
+For a week Jimmie saw nothing of the spy, but for many hot and dusty
+miles he stalked arrow-heads. They lured him north, they lured him
+south, they were stamped in soft asphalt, in mud, dust, and fresh-spread
+tarvia. Wherever Jimmie walked, arrow-heads ran before. In his sleep as
+in his copy-book, he saw endless chains of V's. But not once could he
+catch up with the wheels that printed them. A week later, just at sunset
+as he passed below Round Hill, he saw the stranger on top of it. On the
+skyline, in silhouette against the sinking sun, he was as conspicuous as
+a flagstaff. But to approach him was impossible. For acres Round Hill
+offered no other cover than stubble. It was as bald as a skull. Until
+the stranger chose to descend, Jimmie must wait. And the stranger was in
+no haste. The sun sank and from the west Jimmie saw him turn his face
+east toward the Sound. A storm was gathering, drops of rain began to
+splash and as the sky grew black the figure on the hilltop faded into
+the darkness. And then, at the very spot where Jimmie had last seen it,
+there suddenly flared two tiny flashes of fire. Jimmie leaped from
+cover. It was no longer to be endured. The spy was signalling. The time
+for caution had passed, now was the time to act. Jimmie raced to the top
+of the hill, and found it empty. He plunged down it, vaulted a stone
+wall, forced his way through a tangle of saplings, and held his breath
+to listen. Just beyond him, over a jumble of rocks, a hidden stream was
+tripping and tumbling. Joyfully it laughed and gurgled. Jimmie turned
+hot. It sounded as though from the darkness the spy mocked him. Jimmie
+shook his fist at the enshrouding darkness. Above the tumult of the
+coming storm and the tossing tree-tops, he raised his voice.
+
+"You wait!" he shouted. "I'll get you yet! Next time, I'll bring a gun."
+
+Next time was the next morning. There had been a hawk hovering over the
+chicken yard, and Jimmie used that fact to explain his borrowing the
+family shotgun. He loaded it with buckshot, and, in the pocket of his
+shirt buttoned his license to "hunt, pursue and kill, to take with traps
+or other devices."
+
+He remembered that Judge Van Vorst had warned him, before he arrested
+more spies, to come to him for a warrant. But with an impatient shake of
+the head Jimmie tossed the recollection from him. After what he had seen
+he could not possibly be again mistaken. He did not need a warrant. What
+he had seen was his warrant--plus the shotgun.
+
+As a "pathfinder" should, he planned to take up the trail where he had
+lost it, but, before he reached Round Hill, he found a warmer trail.
+Before him, stamped clearly in the road still damp from the rain of the
+night before, two lines of little arrow-heads pointed the way. They were
+so fresh that at each twist in the road, lest the car should be just
+beyond him, Jimmie slackened his steps. After half a mile the scent grew
+hot. The tracks were deeper, the arrow-heads more clearly cut, and
+Jimmie broke into a run. Then, the arrow-heads swung suddenly to the
+right, and in a clearing at the edge of a wood, were lost. But the tires
+had pressed deep into the grass, and just inside the wood, he found the
+car. It was empty. Jimmie was drawn two ways. Should he seek the spy on
+the nearest hilltop, or, until the owner returned, wait by the car?
+Between lying in ambush and action, Jimmie preferred action. But, he did
+not climb the hill nearest the car; he climbed the hill that overlooked
+that hill.
+
+Flat on the ground, hidden in the goldenrod, he lay motionless. Before
+him, for fifteen miles stretched hills and tiny valleys. Six miles away
+to his right rose the stone steeple, and the red roofs of Greenwich.
+Directly before him were no signs of habitation, only green forests,
+green fields, gray stone walls, and, where a road ran up-hill, a splash
+of white, that quivered in the heat. The storm of the night before had
+washed the air. Each leaf stood by itself. Nothing stirred; and in the
+glare of the August sun every detail of the landscape was as distinct as
+those in a colored photograph; and as still.
+
+In his excitement the scout was trembling.
+
+"If he moves," he sighed happily, "I've got him!"
+
+Opposite, across a little valley was the hill at the base of which he
+had found the car. The slope toward him was bare, but the top was
+crowned with a thick wood; and along its crest, as though establishing
+an ancient boundary, ran a stone wall, moss-covered and wrapped in
+poison-ivy. In places, the branches of the trees, reaching out to the
+sun, overhung the wall and hid it in black shadows. Jimmie divided the
+hill into sectors. He began at the right, and slowly followed the wall.
+With his eyes he took it apart, stone by stone. Had a chipmunk raised
+his head, Jimmie would have seen him. So, when from the stone wall, like
+the reflection of the sun upon a window-pane, something flashed, Jimmie
+knew he had found his spy. A pair of binoculars had betrayed him. Jimmie
+now saw him clearly. He sat on the ground at the top of the hill
+opposite, in the deep shadow of an oak, his back against the stone wall.
+With the binoculars to his eyes he had leaned too far forward, and upon
+the glass the sun had flashed a warning.
+
+Jimmie appreciated that his attack must be made from the rear. Backward,
+like a crab he wriggled free of the goldenrod, and hidden by the contour
+of the hill, raced down it and into the woods on the hill opposite. When
+he came to within twenty feet of the oak beneath which he had seen the
+stranger, he stood erect, and as though avoiding a live wire, stepped on
+tiptoe to the wall. The stranger still sat against it. The binoculars
+hung from a cord around his neck. Across his knees was spread a map. He
+was marking it with a pencil, and as he worked he hummed a tune.
+
+Jimmie knelt, and resting the gun on the top of the wall, covered him.
+
+"Throw up your hands!" he commanded.
+
+The stranger did not start. Except that he raised his eyes he gave no
+sign that he had heard. His eyes stared across the little sun-filled
+valley. They were half closed as though in study, as though perplexed by
+some deep and intricate problem. They appeared to see beyond the
+sun-filled valley some place of greater moment, some place far distant.
+
+Then the eyes smiled, and slowly, as though his neck were stiff, but
+still smiling, the stranger turned his head. When he saw the boy, his
+smile was swept away in waves of surprise, amazement, and disbelief.
+These were followed instantly by an expression of the most acute alarm.
+
+"Don't point that thing at me!" shouted the stranger. "Is it loaded?"
+With his cheek pressed to the stock and his eye squinted down the length
+of the brown barrel, Jimmie nodded. The stranger flung up his open
+palms. They accented his expression of amazed incredulity. He seemed to
+be exclaiming, "Can such things be?"
+
+"Get up!" commanded Jimmie.
+
+With alacrity the stranger rose.
+
+"Walk over there," ordered the scout. "Walk backward. Stop! Take off
+those field-glasses and throw them to me." Without removing his eyes
+from the gun the stranger lifted the binoculars from his neck and tossed
+them to the stone wall.
+
+"See here!" he pleaded, "if you'll only point that damned blunderbuss
+the other way, you can have the glasses, and my watch, and clothes, and
+all my money; only don't----"
+
+Jimmie flushed crimson. "You can't bribe me," he growled. At least, he
+tried to growl, but because his voice was changing, or because he was
+excited the growl ended in a high squeak. With mortification, Jimmie
+flushed a deeper crimson. But the stranger was not amused. At Jimmie's
+words he seemed rather the more amazed.
+
+"I'm not trying to bribe you," he protested. "If you don't want
+anything, why are you holding me up?"
+
+"I'm not," returned Jimmie, "I'm arresting you!"
+
+The stranger laughed with relief. Again his eyes smiled. "Oh," he cried,
+"I see! Have I been trespassing?"
+
+With a glance Jimmie measured the distance between himself and the
+stranger. Reassured, he lifted one leg after the other over the wall.
+"If you try to rush me," he warned, "I'll shoot you full of buckshot."
+
+The stranger took a hasty step _backward_.
+
+"Don't worry about that," he exclaimed. "I'll not rush you. Why am I
+arrested?"
+
+Hugging the shotgun with his left arm, Jimmie stopped and lifted the
+binoculars. He gave them a swift glance, slung them over his shoulder,
+and again clutched his weapon. His expression was now stern and
+menacing.
+
+"The name on them," he accused, "is 'Weiss, Berlin.' Is that your name?"
+The stranger smiled, but corrected himself, and replied gravely, "That's
+the name of the firm that makes them."
+
+Jimmie exclaimed in triumph. "Hah!" he cried, "made in Germany!"
+
+The stranger shook his head.
+
+"I don't understand," he said. "Where _would_ a Weiss glass be
+made?" With polite insistence he repeated, "Would you mind telling me
+why I am arrested, and who _you_ might happen to be?"
+
+Jimmie did not answer. Again he stooped and picked up the map, and as he
+did so, for the first time the face of the stranger showed that he was
+annoyed. Jimmie was not at home with maps. They told him nothing. But
+the penciled notes on this one made easy reading. At his first glance he
+saw, "Correct range, 1,800 yards"; "this stream not fordable"; "slope of
+hill 15 degrees inaccessible for artillery." "Wire entanglements here";
+"forage for five squadrons."
+
+Jimmie's eyes flashed. He shoved the map inside his shirt, and with the
+gun motioned toward the base of the hill. "Keep forty feet ahead of me,"
+he commanded, "and walk to your car." The stranger did not seem to hear
+him. He spoke with irritation.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "I'll have to explain to you about that map."
+
+"Not to me, you won't," declared his captor. "You're going to drive
+straight to Judge Van Vorst's, and explain to _him_!"
+
+The stranger tossed his arms even higher. "Thank God!" he exclaimed
+gratefully.
+
+With his prisoner Jimmie encountered no further trouble. He made a
+willing captive. And if in covering the five miles to Judge Van Vorst's
+he exceeded the speed limit, the fact that from the rear seat Jimmie
+held the shotgun against the base of his skull was an extenuating
+circumstance.
+
+They arrived in the nick of time. In his own car young Van Vorst and a
+bag of golf clubs were just drawing away from the house. Seeing the car
+climbing the steep driveway that for a half-mile led from his lodge to
+his front door, and seeing Jimmie standing in the tonneau brandishing a
+gun, the Judge hastily descended. The sight of the spy hunter filled him
+with misgiving, but the sight of him gave Jimmie sweet relief. Arresting
+German spies for a small boy is no easy task. For Jimmie the strain was
+great. And now that he knew he had successfully delivered him into the
+hands of the law, Jimmie's heart rose with happiness. The added presence
+of a butler of magnificent bearing and of an athletic looking chauffeur
+increased his sense of security. Their presence seemed to afford a
+feeling of security to the prisoner also. As he brought the car to a
+halt, he breathed a sigh. It was a sigh of deep relief.
+
+Jimmie fell from the tonneau. In concealing his sense of triumph, he was
+not entirely successful.
+
+"I got him!" he cried. "I didn't make no mistake about _this_ one!"
+
+"What one?" demanded Van Vorst.
+
+Jimmie pointed dramatically at his prisoner. With an anxious expression
+the stranger was tenderly fingering the back of his head. He seemed to
+wish to assure himself that it was still there.
+
+"_That_ one!" cried Jimmie. "He's a German spy!"
+
+The patience of Judge Van Vorst fell from him. In his exclamation was
+indignation, anger, reproach.
+
+"Jimmie!" he cried.
+
+Jimmie thrust into his hand the map. It was his "Exhibit A." "Look what
+he's wrote," commanded the scout. "It's all military words. And these
+are his glasses. I took 'em off him. They're made in _Germany_! I
+been stalking him for a week. He's a spy!"
+
+When Jimmie thrust the map before his face, Van Vorst had glanced at it.
+Then he regarded it more closely. As he raised his eyes they showed that
+he was puzzled.
+
+But he greeted the prisoner politely.
+
+"I'm extremely sorry you've been annoyed," he said. "I'm only glad it's
+no worse. He might have shot you. He's mad over the idea that every
+stranger he sees----"
+
+The prisoner quickly interrupted.
+
+"Please!" he begged, "don't blame the boy. He behaved extremely well.
+Might I speak with you--_alone_?" he asked.
+
+Judge Van Vorst led the way across the terrace, and to the smoking-room,
+that served also as his office, and closed the door. The stranger walked
+directly to the mantelpiece and put his finger on a gold cup.
+
+"I saw your mare win that at Belmont Park," he said. "She must have been
+a great loss to you?"
+
+"She was," said Van Vorst. "The week before she broke her back, I
+refused three thousand for her. Will you have a cigarette?"
+
+The stranger waved aside the cigarettes.
+
+"I brought you inside," he said, "because I didn't want your servants to
+hear; and because I don't want to hurt that boy's feelings. He's a fine
+boy; and he's a damned clever scout. I knew he was following me and I
+threw him off twice, but to-day he caught me fair. If I really had been
+a German spy, I couldn't have got away from him. And I want him to think
+he _has_ captured a German spy. Because he deserves just as much
+credit as though he had, and because it's best he shouldn't know whom he
+_did_ capture."
+
+Van Vorst pointed to the map. "My bet is," he said, "that you're an
+officer of the State militia, taking notes for the fall manoeuvres. Am
+I right?"
+
+The stranger smiled in approval, but shook his head.
+
+"You're warm," he said, "but it's more serious than manoeuvres. It's
+the Real Thing." From his pocketbook he took a visiting card and laid it
+on the table. "I'm 'Sherry' McCoy," he said, "Captain of Artillery in
+the United States Army." He nodded to the hand telephone on the table.
+
+"You can call up Governor's Island and get General Wood or his aide,
+Captain Dorey, on the phone. They sent me here. Ask _them_. I'm not
+picking out gun sites for the Germans; I'm picking out positions of
+defense for Americans when the Germans come!"
+
+Van Vorst laughed derisively.
+
+"My word!" he exclaimed. "You're as bad as Jimmie!"
+
+Captain McCoy regarded him with disfavor.
+
+"And you, sir," he retorted, "are as bad as ninety million other
+Americans. You _won't_ believe! When the Germans are shelling this
+hill, when they're taking your hunters to pull their cook-wagons, maybe,
+you'll believe _then_."
+
+"Are you serious?" demanded Van Vorst. "And you an army officer?"
+
+"That's why I am serious," returned McCoy. "_We_ know. But when we
+try to prepare for what is coming, we must do it secretly--in underhand
+ways, for fear the newspapers will get hold of it and ridicule us, and
+accuse us of trying to drag the country into war. That's why we have to
+prepare under cover. That's why I've had to skulk around these hills
+like a chicken thief. And," he added sharply, "that's why that boy must
+not know who I am. If he does, the General Staff will get a calling down
+at Washington, and I'll have my ears boxed."
+
+Van Vorst moved to the door.
+
+"He will never learn the truth from me," he said. "For I will tell him
+you are to be shot at sunrise."
+
+"Good!" laughed the Captain. "And tell me his name. If ever we fight
+over Westchester County, I want that lad for my chief of scouts. And
+give him this. Tell him to buy a new scout uniform. Tell him it comes
+from you."
+
+But no money could reconcile Jimmie to the sentence imposed upon his
+captive. He received the news with a howl of anguish. "You mustn't," he
+begged; "I never knowed you'd _shoot_ him! I wouldn't have caught
+him if I'd knowed that. I couldn't sleep if I thought he was going to be
+shot at sunrise." At the prospect of unending nightmares Jimmie's voice
+shook with terror. "Make it for twenty years," he begged. "Make it for
+ten," he coaxed, "but, _please_, promise you won't shoot him."
+
+When Van Vorst returned to Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the butler
+who followed, bearing a tray and tinkling glasses, was trying not to
+smile.
+
+"I gave Jimmie your ten dollars," said Van Vorst, "and made it twenty,
+and he has gone home. You will be glad to hear that he begged me to
+spare your life, and that your sentence has been commuted to twenty
+years in a fortress. I drink to your good fortune."
+
+"No!" protested Captain McCoy, "we will drink to Jimmie!"
+
+When Captain McCoy had driven away, and his own car and the golf clubs
+had again been brought to the steps, Judge Van Vorst once more attempted
+to depart; but he was again delayed.
+
+Other visitors were arriving.
+
+Up the driveway a touring-car approached, and though it limped on a flat
+tire, it approached at reckless speed. The two men in the front seat
+were white with dust; their faces, masked by automobile glasses, were
+indistinguishable. As though preparing for an immediate exit, the car
+swung in a circle until its nose pointed down the driveway up which it
+had just come. Raising his silk mask the one beside the driver shouted
+at Judge Van Vorst. His throat was parched, his voice was hoarse and hot
+with anger.
+
+"A gray touring-car," he shouted. "It stopped here. We saw it from that
+hill. Then the damn tire burst, and we lost our way. Where did he go?"
+
+"Who?" demanded Van Vorst, stiffly, "Captain McCoy?"
+
+The man exploded with an oath. The driver, with a shove of his elbow,
+silenced him.
+
+"Yes, Captain McCoy," assented the driver eagerly. "Which way did he
+go?"
+
+"To New York," said Van Vorst.
+
+The driver shrieked at his companion.
+
+"Then, he's doubled back," he cried. "He's gone to New Haven." He
+stooped and threw in the clutch. The car lurched forward.
+
+A cold terror swept young Van Vorst.
+
+"What do you want with him?" he called. "Who _are_ you?"
+
+Over one shoulder the masked face glared at him. Above the roar of the
+car the words of the driver were flung back.
+
+"We're Secret Service from Washington," he shouted. "He's from their
+embassy. He's a German spy!"
+
+Leaping and throbbing at sixty miles an hour, the car vanished in a
+curtain of white, whirling dust.
+
+
+
+
+GALLEGHER
+
+A NEWSPAPER STORY
+
+
+We had had so many office-boys before Gallegher came among us that they
+had begun to lose the characteristics of individuals, and became merged
+in a composite photograph of small boys, to whom we applied the generic
+title of "Here, you"; or "You, boy."
+
+We had had sleepy boys, and lazy boys, and bright, "smart" boys, who
+became so familiar on so short an acquaintance that we were forced to
+part with them to save our own self-respect.
+
+They generally graduated into district-messenger boys, and occasionally
+returned to us in blue coats with nickel-plated buttons, and patronized
+us.
+
+But Gallegher was something different from anything we had experienced
+before. Gallegher was short and broad in build, with a solid, muscular
+broadness, and not a fat and dumpy shortness. He wore perpetually on his
+face a happy and knowing smile, as if you and the world in general were
+not impressing him as seriously as you thought you were, and his eyes,
+which were very black and very bright, snapped intelligently at you like
+those of a little black-and-tan terrier.
+
+All Gallegher knew had been learnt on the streets; not a very good
+school in itself, but one that turns out very knowing scholars. And
+Gallegher had attended both morning and evening sessions. He could not
+tell you who the Pilgrim Fathers were, nor could he name the thirteen
+original States, but he knew all the officers of the twenty-second
+police district by name, and he could distinguish the clang of a
+fire-engine's gong from that of a patrol-wagon or an ambulance fully two
+blocks distant. It was Gallegher who rang the alarm when the Woolwich
+Mills caught fire, while the officer on the beat was asleep, and it was
+Gallegher who led the "Black Diamonds" against the "Wharf Rats," when
+they used to stone each other to their heart's content on the
+coal-wharves of Richmond.
+
+I am afraid, now that I see these facts written down, that Gallegher was
+not a reputable character; but he was so very young and so very old for
+his years that we all liked him very much nevertheless. He lived in the
+extreme northern part of Philadelphia, where the cotton and woollen
+mills run down to the river, and how he ever got home after leaving the
+_Press_ building at two in the morning, was one of the mysteries of
+the office. Sometimes he caught a night car, and sometimes he walked all
+the way, arriving at the little house, where his mother and himself
+lived alone, at four in the morning. Occasionally he was given a ride on
+an early milk-cart, or on one of the newspaper delivery wagons, with its
+high piles of papers still damp and sticky from the press. He knew
+several drivers of "night hawks"--those cabs that prowl the streets at
+night looking for belated passengers--and when it was a very cold
+morning he would not go home at all, but would crawl into one of these
+cabs and sleep, curled up on the cushions, until daylight.
+
+Besides being quick and cheerful, Gallegher possessed a power of amusing
+the _Press's_ young men to a degree seldom attained by the ordinary
+mortal. His clog-dancing on the city editor's desk, when that gentleman
+was up-stairs fighting for two more columns of space, was always a
+source of innocent joy to us, and his imitations of the comedians of the
+variety halls delighted even the dramatic critic, from whom the
+comedians themselves failed to force a smile.
+
+But Gallegher's chief characteristic was his love for that element of
+news generically classed as "crime."
+
+Not that he ever did anything criminal himself. On the contrary, his was
+rather the work of the criminal specialist, and his morbid interest in
+the doings of all queer characters, his knowledge of their methods,
+their present whereabouts, and their past deeds of transgression often
+rendered him a valuable ally to our police reporter, whose daily
+feuilletons were the only portion of the paper Gallegher deigned to
+read.
+
+In Gallegher the detective element was abnormally developed. He had
+shown this on several occasions, and to excellent purpose.
+
+Once the paper had sent him into a Home for Destitute Orphans which was
+believed to be grievously mismanaged, and Gallegher, while playing the
+part of a destitute orphan, kept his eyes open to what was going on
+around him so faithfully that the story he told of the treatment meted
+out to the real orphans was sufficient to rescue the unhappy little
+wretches from the individual who had them in charge, and to have the
+individual himself sent to jail.
+
+Gallegher's knowledge of the aliases, terms of imprisonment, and various
+misdoings of the leading criminals in Philadelphia was almost as
+thorough as that of the chief of police himself, and he could tell to an
+hour when "Dutchy Mack" was to be let out of prison, and could identify
+at a glance "Dick Oxford, confidence man," as "Gentleman Dan, petty
+thief."
+
+There were, at this time, only two pieces of news in any of the papers.
+The least important of the two was the big fight between the Champion of
+the United States and the Would-be Champion, arranged to take place near
+Philadelphia; the second was the Burrbank murder, which was filling
+space in newspapers all over the world, from New York to Bombay.
+
+Richard F. Burrbank was one of the most prominent of New York's railroad
+lawyers; he was also, as a matter of course, an owner of much railroad
+stock, and a very wealthy man. He had been spoken of as a political
+possibility for many high offices, and, as the counsel for a great
+railroad, was known even further than the great railroad itself had
+stretched its system.
+
+At six o'clock one morning he was found by his butler lying at the foot
+of the hall stairs with two pistol wounds above his heart. He was quite
+dead. His safe, to which only he and his secretary had the keys, was
+found open, and $200,000 in bonds, stocks, and money, which had been
+placed there only the night before, was found missing. The secretary was
+missing also. His name was Stephen S. Hade, and his name and his
+description had been telegraphed and cabled to all parts of the world.
+There was enough circumstantial evidence to show, beyond any question or
+possibility of mistake, that he was the murderer.
+
+It made an enormous amount of talk, and unhappy individuals were being
+arrested all over the country, and sent on to New York for
+identification. Three had been arrested at Liverpool, and one man just
+as he landed at Sydney, Australia. But so far the murderer had escaped.
+
+We were all talking about it one night, as everybody else was all over
+the country, in the local room, and the city editor said it was worth a
+fortune to any one who chanced to run across Hade and succeeded in
+handing him over to the police. Some of us thought Hade had taken
+passage from some one of the smaller seaports, and others were of the
+opinion that he had buried himself in some cheap lodging-house in New
+York, or in one of the smaller towns in New Jersey.
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised to meet him out walking, right here in
+Philadelphia," said one of the staff. "He'll be disguised, of course,
+but you could always tell him by the absence of the trigger finger on
+his right hand. It's missing, you know; shot off when he was a boy."
+
+"You want to look for a man dressed like a tough," said the city editor;
+"for as this fellow is to all appearances a gentleman, he will try to
+look as little like a gentleman as possible."
+
+"No, he won't," said Gallegher, with that calm impertinence that made
+him dear to us. "He'll dress just like a gentleman. Toughs don't wear
+gloves, and you see he's got to wear 'em. The first thing he thought of
+after doing for Burrbank was of that gone finger, and how he was to hide
+it. He stuffed the finger of that glove with cotton so's to make it look
+like a whole finger, and the first time he takes off that glove they've
+got him--see, and he knows it. So what youse want to do is to look for a
+man with gloves on. I've been a-doing it for two weeks now, and I can
+tell you it's hard work, for everybody wears gloves this kind of
+weather. But if you look long enough you'll find him. And when you think
+it's him, go up to him and hold out your hand in a friendly way, like a
+bunco-steerer, and shake his hand; and if you feel that his forefinger
+ain't real flesh, but just wadded cotton, then grip to it with your
+right and grab his throat with your left, and holler for help."
+
+There was an appreciative pause.
+
+"I see, gentlemen," said the city editor, dryly, "that Gallegher's
+reasoning has impressed you; and I also see that before the week is out
+all of my young men will be under bonds for assaulting innocent
+pedestrians whose only offense is that they wear gloves in midwinter."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was about a week after this that Detective Hefflefinger, of Inspector
+Byrnes's staff, came over to Philadelphia after a burglar, of whose
+whereabouts he had been misinformed by telegraph. He brought the
+warrant, requisition, and other necessary papers with him, but the
+burglar had flown. One of our reporters had worked on a New York paper,
+and knew Hefflefinger, and the detective came to the office to see if he
+could help him in his so far unsuccessful search.
+
+He gave Gallegher his card, and after Gallegher had read it, and had
+discovered who the visitor was, he became so demoralized that he was
+absolutely useless.
+
+"One of Byrnes's men" was a much more awe-inspiring individual to
+Gallegher than a member of the Cabinet. He accordingly seized his hat
+and overcoat, and leaving his duties to be looked after by others,
+hastened out after the object of his admiration, who found his
+suggestions and knowledge of the city so valuable, and his company so
+entertaining, that they became very intimate, and spent the rest of the
+day together.
+
+In the meanwhile the managing editor had instructed his subordinates to
+inform Gallegher, when he condescended to return, that his services were
+no longer needed. Gallegher had played truant once too often.
+Unconscious of this, he remained with his new friend until late the same
+evening, and started the next afternoon toward the _Press_ office.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I have said, Gallegher lived in the most distant part of the city,
+not many minutes' walk from the Kensington railroad station, where
+trains ran into the suburbs and on to New York.
+
+It was in front of this station that a smoothly shaven, well-dressed man
+brushed past Gallegher and hurried up the steps to the ticket office.
+
+He held a walking-stick in his right hand, and Gallegher, who now
+patiently scrutinized the hands of every one who wore gloves, saw that
+while three fingers of the man's hand were closed around the cane, the
+fourth stood out in almost a straight line with his palm.
+
+Gallegher stopped with a gasp and with a trembling all over his little
+body, and his brain asked with a throb if it could be possible. But
+possibilities and probabilities were to be discovered later. Now was the
+time for action.
+
+He was after the man in a moment, hanging at his heels and his eyes
+moist with excitement.
+
+He heard the man ask for a ticket to Torresdale, a little station just
+outside of Philadelphia, and when he was out of hearing, but not out of
+sight, purchased one for the same place.
+
+The stranger went into the smoking-car, and seated himself at one end
+toward the door. Gallegher took his place at the opposite end.
+
+He was trembling all over, and suffered from a slight feeling of nausea.
+He guessed it came from fright, not of any bodily harm that might come
+to him, but of the probability of failure in his adventure and of its
+most momentous possibilities.
+
+The stranger pulled his coat collar up around his ears, hiding the lower
+portion of his face, but not concealing the resemblance in his troubled
+eyes and close-shut lips to the likenesses of the murderer Hade.
+
+They reached Torresdale in half an hour, and the stranger, alighting
+quickly, struck off at a rapid pace down the country road leading to the
+station.
+
+Gallegher gave him a hundred yards' start, and then followed slowly
+after. The road ran between fields and past a few frame-houses set far
+from the road in kitchen gardens.
+
+Once or twice the man looked back over his shoulder, but he saw only a
+dreary length of road with a small boy splashing through the slush in
+the midst of it and stopping every now and again to throw snowballs at
+belated sparrows.
+
+After a ten minutes' walk the stranger turned into a side road which led
+to only one place, the Eagle Inn, an old roadside hostelry known now as
+the headquarters for pothunters from the Philadelphia game market and
+the battleground of many a cock-fight.
+
+Gallegher knew the place well. He and his young companions had often
+stopped there when out chestnutting on holidays in the autumn.
+
+The son of the man who kept it had often accompanied them on their
+excursions, and though the boys of the city streets considered him a
+dumb lout, they respected him somewhat owing to his inside knowledge of
+dog and cock-fights.
+
+The stranger entered the inn at a side door, and Gallegher, reaching it
+a few minutes later, let him go for the time being, and set about
+finding his occasional playmate, young Keppler.
+
+Keppler's offspring was found in the woodshed.
+
+"Tain't hard to guess what brings you out here," said the
+tavern-keeper's son, with a grin; "it's the fight."
+
+"What fight?" asked Gallegher, unguardedly.
+
+"What fight? Why, _the_ fight," returned his companion, with the
+slow contempt of superior knowledge. "It's to come off here to-night.
+You knew that as well as me; anyway your sportin' editor knows it. He
+got the tip last night, but that won't help you any. You needn't think
+there's any chance of your getting a peep at it. Why, tickets is two
+hundred and fifty apiece!"
+
+"Whew!" whistled Gallegher, "where's it to be?"
+
+"In the barn," whispered Keppler. "I helped 'em fix the ropes this
+morning, I did."
+
+"Gosh, but you're in luck," exclaimed Gallegher, with flattering envy.
+"Couldn't I jest get a peep at it?"
+
+"Maybe," said the gratified Keppler. "There's a winder with a wooden
+shutter at the back of the barn. You can get in by it, if you have some
+one to boost you up to the sill."
+
+"Sa-a-y," drawled Gallegher, as if something had but just that moment
+reminded him. "Who's that gent who come down the road just a bit ahead
+of me--him with the cape-coat! Has he got anything to do with the
+fight?"
+
+"Him?" repeated Keppler in tones of sincere disgust. "No-oh, he ain't no
+sport. He's queer, Dad thinks. He come here one day last week about ten
+in the morning, said his doctor told him to go out 'en the country for
+his health. He's stuck up and citified, and wears gloves, and takes his
+meals private in his room, and all that sort of ruck. They was saying in
+the saloon last night that they thought he was hiding from something,
+and Dad, just to try him, asks him last night if he was coming to see
+the fight. He looked sort of scared, and said he didn't want to see no
+fight. And then Dad says, 'I guess you mean you don't want no fighters
+to see you.' Dad didn't mean no harm by it, just passed it as a joke;
+but Mr. Carleton, as he calls himself, got white as a ghost an' says,
+'I'll go to the fight willing enough,' and begins to laugh and joke. And
+this morning he went right into the bar-room, where all the sports were
+setting, and said he was going into town to see some friends; and as he
+starts off he laughs an' says, 'This don't look as if I was afraid of
+seeing people, does it?' but Dad says it was just bluff that made him do
+it, and Dad thinks that if he hadn't said what he did, this Mr. Carleton
+wouldn't have left his room at all."
+
+Gallegher had got all he wanted, and much more than he had hoped for--so
+much more that his walk back to the station was in the nature of a
+triumphal march.
+
+He had twenty minutes to wait for the next train, and it seemed an hour.
+While waiting he sent a telegram to Hefflefinger at his hotel. It read:
+
+    Your man is near the Torresdale station, on Pennsylvania
+    Railroad; take cab, and meet me at station. Wait until I come.
+
+                                                        Gallegher.
+
+With the exception of one at midnight, no other train stopped at
+Torresdale that evening, hence the direction to take a cab.
+
+The train to the city seemed to Gallegher to drag itself by inches. It
+stopped and backed at purposeless intervals, waited for an express to
+precede it, and dallied at stations, and when, at last, it reached the
+terminus, Gallegher was out before it had stopped and was in the cab and
+off on his way to the home of the sporting editor.
+
+The sporting editor was at dinner and came out in the hall to see him,
+with his napkin in his hand. Gallegher explained breathlessly that he
+had located the murderer for whom the police of two continents were
+looking, and that he believed, in order to quiet the suspicions of the
+people with whom he was hiding, that he would be present at the fight
+that night.
+
+The sporting editor led Gallegher into his library and shut the door.
+"Now," he said, "go over all that again."
+
+Gallegher went over it again in detail, and added how he had sent for
+Hefflefinger to make the arrest in order that it might be kept from the
+knowledge of the local police and from the Philadelphia reporters.
+
+"What I want Hefflefinger to do is to arrest Hade with the warrant he
+has for the burglar," explained Gallegher; "and to take him on to New
+York on the owl train that passes Torresdale at one. It don't get to
+Jersey City until four o'clock, one hour after the morning papers go to
+press. Of course, we must fix Hefflefinger so's he'll keep quiet and not
+tell who his prisoner really is."
+
+The sporting editor reached his hand out to pat Gallegher on the head,
+but changed his mind and shook hands with him instead.
+
+"My boy," he said, "you are an infant phenomenon. If I can pull the rest
+of this thing off to-night it will mean the $5,000 reward and fame
+galore for you and the paper. Now, I'm going to write a note to the
+managing editor, and you can take it around to him and tell him what
+you've done and what I am going to do, and he'll take you back on the
+paper and raise your salary. Perhaps you didn't know you've been
+discharged?"
+
+"Do you think you ain't a-going to take me with you?" demanded
+Gallegher.
+
+"Why, certainly not. Why should I? It all lies with the detective and
+myself now. You've done your share, and done it well. If the man's
+caught, the reward's yours. But you'd only be in the way now. You'd
+better go to the office and make your peace with the chief."
+
+"If the paper can get along without me, I can get along without the old
+paper," said Gallegher, hotly. "And if I ain't a-going with you, you
+ain't neither, for I know where Hefflefinger is to be, and you don't,
+and I won't tell you."
+
+"Oh, very well, very well," replied the sporting editor, weakly
+capitulating. "I'll send the note by a messenger; only mind, if you lose
+your place, don't blame me."
+
+Gallegher wondered how this man could value a week's salary against the
+excitement of seeing a noted criminal run down, and of getting the news
+to the paper, and to that one paper alone.
+
+From that moment the sporting editor sank in Gallegher's estimation.
+
+Mr. Dwyer sat down at his desk and scribbled off the following note:
+
+    I have received reliable information that Hade, the Burrbank
+    murderer, will be present at the fight to-night. We have
+    arranged it so that he will be arrested quietly and in such a
+    manner that the fact may be kept from all other papers. I need
+    not point out to you that this will be the most important piece
+    of news in the country to-morrow. Yours, etc.,
+
+                                                   Michael E. Dwyer.
+
+The sporting editor stepped into the waiting cab, while Gallegher
+whispered the directions to the driver. He was told to go first to a
+district-messenger office, and from there up to the Ridge Avenue Road,
+out Broad Street, and on to the old Eagle Inn, near Torresdale.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a miserable night. The rain and snow were falling together, and
+freezing as they fell. The sporting editor got out to send his message
+to the _Press_ office, and then lighting a cigar, and turning up
+the collar of his great-coat, curled up in the corner of the cab.
+
+"Wake me when we get there, Gallegher," he said. He knew he had a long
+ride, and much rapid work before him, and he was preparing for the
+strain.
+
+To Gallegher the idea of going to sleep seemed almost criminal. From the
+dark corner of the cab his eyes shone with excitement, and with the
+awful joy of anticipation. He glanced every now and then to where the
+sporting editor's cigar shone in the darkness, and watched it as it
+gradually burnt more dimly and went out. The lights in the shop windows
+threw a broad glare across the ice on the pavements, and the lights from
+the lamp-posts tossed the distorted shadow of the cab, and the horse,
+and the motionless driver, sometimes before and sometimes behind them.
+
+After half an hour Gallegher slipped down to the bottom of the cab and
+dragged out a lap-robe, in which he wrapped himself. It was growing
+colder, and the damp, keen wind swept in through the cracks until the
+window-frames and woodwork were cold to the touch.
+
+An hour passed, and the cab was still moving more slowly over the rough
+surface of partly paved streets, and by single rows of new houses
+standing at different angles to each other in fields covered with
+ash-heaps and brick-kilns. Here and there the gaudy lights of a
+drug-store, and the forerunner of suburban civilization, shone from the
+end of a new block of houses, and the rubber cape of an occasional
+policeman showed in the light of the lamp-post that he hugged for
+comfort.
+
+Then even the houses disappeared, and the cab dragged its way between
+truck farms, with desolate-looking glass-covered beds, and pools of
+water, half-caked with ice, and bare trees, and interminable fences.
+
+Once or twice the cab stopped altogether, and Gallegher could hear the
+driver swearing to himself, or at the horse, or the roads. At last they
+drew up before the station at Torresdale. It was quite deserted, and
+only a single light cut a swath in the darkness and showed a portion of
+the platform, the ties, and the rails glistening in the rain. They
+walked twice past the light before a figure stepped out of the shadow
+and greeted them cautiously.
+
+"I am Mr. Dwyer, of the _Press_," said the sporting editor,
+briskly. "You've heard of me, perhaps. Well, there shouldn't be any
+difficulty in our making a deal, should there? This boy here has found
+Hade, and we have reason to believe he will be among the spectators at
+the fight to-night. We want you to arrest him quietly, and as secretly
+as possible. You can do it with your papers and your badge easily
+enough. We want you to pretend that you believe he is this burglar you
+came over after. If you will do this, and take him away without any one
+so much as suspecting who he really is, and on the train that passes
+here at 1.20 for New York, we will give you $500 out of the $5,000
+reward. If, however, one other paper, either in New York or
+Philadelphia, or anywhere else, knows of the arrest, you won't get a
+cent. Now, what do you say?"
+
+The detective had a great deal to say. He wasn't at all sure the man
+Gallegher suspected was Hade; he feared he might get himself into
+trouble by making a false arrest, and if it should be the man, he was
+afraid the local police would interfere.
+
+"We've no time to argue or debate this matter," said Dwyer, warmly. "We
+agree to point Hade out to you in the crowd. After the fight is over you
+arrest him as we have directed, and you get the money and the credit of
+the arrest. If you don't like this, I will arrest the man myself, and
+have him driven to town, with a pistol for a warrant."
+
+Hefflefinger considered in silence and then agreed unconditionally. "As
+you say, Mr. Dwyer," he returned. "I've heard of you for a thoroughbred
+sport. I know you'll do what you say you'll do; and as for me I'll do
+what you say and just as you say, and it's a very pretty piece of work
+as it stands."
+
+They all stepped back into the cab, and then it was that they were met
+by a fresh difficulty, how to get the detective into the barn where the
+fight was to take place, for neither of the two men had $250 to pay for
+his admittance.
+
+But this was overcome when Gallegher remembered the window of which
+young Keppler had told him.
+
+In the event of Hade's losing courage and not daring to show himself in
+the crowd around the ring, it was agreed that Dwyer should come to the
+barn and warn Hefflefinger; but if he should come, Dwyer was merely to
+keep near him and to signify by a prearranged gesture which one of the
+crowd he was.
+
+They drew up before a great black shadow of a house, dark, forbidding,
+and apparently deserted. But at the sound of the wheels on the gravel
+the door opened, letting out a stream of warm, cheerful light, and a
+man's voice said, "Put out those lights. Don't youse know no better than
+that?" This was Keppler, and he welcomed Mr. Dwyer with effusive
+courtesy.
+
+The two men showed in the stream of light, and the door closed on them,
+leaving the house as it was at first, black and silent, save for the
+dripping of the rain and snow from the eaves.
+
+The detective and Gallegher put out the cab's lamps and led the horse
+toward a long, low shed in the rear of the yard, which they now noticed
+was almost filled with teams of many different makes, from the Hobson's
+choice of a livery stable to the brougham of the man about town.
+
+"No," said Gallegher, as the cabman stopped to hitch the horse beside
+the others, "we want it nearest that lower gate. When we newspaper men
+leave this place we'll leave it in a hurry, and the man who is nearest
+town is likely to get there first. You won't be a-following of no hearse
+when you make your return trip."
+
+Gallegher tied the horse to the very gate-post itself, leaving the gate
+open and allowing a clear road and a flying start for the prospective
+race to Newspaper Row.
+
+The driver disappeared under the shelter of the porch, and Gallegher and
+the detective moved off cautiously to the rear of the barn. "This must
+be the window," said Hefflefinger, pointing to a broad wooden shutter
+some feet from the ground.
+
+"Just you give me a boost once, and I'll get that open in a jiffy," said
+Gallegher.
+
+The detective placed his hands on his knees, and Gallegher stood upon
+his shoulders, and with the blade of his knife lifted the wooden button
+that fastened the window on the inside, and pulled the shutter open.
+
+Then he put one leg inside over the sill, and leaning down helped to
+draw his fellow-conspirator up to a level with the window. "I feel just
+like I was burglarizing a house," chuckled Gallegher, as he dropped
+noiselessly to the floor below and refastened the shutter. The barn was
+a large one, with a row of stalls on either side in which horses and
+cows were dozing. There was a haymow over each row of stalls, and at one
+end of the barn a number of fence-rails had been thrown across from one
+mow to the other. These rails were covered with hay.
+
+In the middle of the floor was the ring. It was not really a ring, but a
+square, with wooden posts at its four corners through which ran a heavy
+rope. The space enclosed by the rope was covered with sawdust.
+
+Gallegher could not resist stepping into the ring, and after stamping
+the sawdust once or twice, as if to assure himself that he was really
+there, began dancing around it, and indulging in such a remarkable
+series of fistic manoeuvres with an imaginary adversary that the
+unimaginative detective precipitately backed into a corner of the barn.
+
+"Now, then," said Gallegher, having apparently vanquished his foe, "you
+come with me." His companion followed quickly as Gallegher climbed to
+one of the hay-mows, and, crawling carefully out on the fence-rail,
+stretched himself at full length, face downward. In this position, by
+moving the straw a little, he could look down, without being himself
+seen, upon the heads of whomsoever stood below. "This is better'n a
+private box, ain't it?" said Gallegher.
+
+The boy from the newspaper office and the detective lay there in
+silence, biting at straws and tossing anxiously on their comfortable
+bed.
+
+It seemed fully two hours before they came. Gallegher had listened
+without breathing, and with every muscle on a strain, at least a dozen
+times, when some movement in the yard had led him to believe that they
+were at the door.
+
+And he had numerous doubts and fears. Sometimes it was that the police
+had learnt of the fight, and had raided Keppler's in his absence, and
+again it was that the fight had been postponed, or, worst of all, that
+it would be put off until so late that Mr. Dwyer could not get back in
+time for the last edition of the paper. Their coming, when at last they
+came, was heralded by an advance-guard of two sporting men, who
+stationed themselves at either side of the big door.
+
+"Hurry up, now, gents," one of the men said with a shiver, "don't keep
+this door open no longer'n is needful."
+
+It was not a very large crowd, but it was wonderfully well selected. It
+ran, in the majority of its component parts, to heavy white coats with
+pearl buttons. The white coats were shouldered by long blue coats with
+astrakhan fur trimmings, the wearers of which preserved a cliqueness not
+remarkable when one considers that they believed every one else present
+to be either a crook or a prize-fighter.
+
+There were well-fed, well-groomed club-men and brokers in the crowd, a
+politician or two, a popular comedian with his manager, amateur boxers
+from the athletic clubs, and quiet, close-mouthed sporting men from
+every city in the country. Their names if printed in the papers would
+have been as familiar as the types of the papers themselves.
+
+And among these men, whose only thought was of the brutal sport to come,
+was Hade, with Dwyer standing at ease at his shoulder--Hade, white, and
+visibly in deep anxiety, hiding his pale face beneath a cloth
+travelling-cap, and with his chin muffled in a woollen scarf. He had
+dared to come because he feared his danger from the already suspicious
+Keppler was less than if he stayed away. And so he was there, hovering
+restlessly on the border of the crowd, feeling his danger and sick with
+fear.
+
+When Hefflefinger first saw him he started up on his hands and elbows
+and made a movement forward as if he would leap down then and there and
+carry off his prisoner single-handed.
+
+"Lie down," growled Gallegher; "an officer of any sort wouldn't live
+three minutes in that crowd."
+
+The detective drew back slowly and buried himself again in the straw,
+but never once through the long fight which followed did his eyes leave
+the person of the murderer. The newspaper men took their places in the
+foremost row close around the ring, and kept looking at their watches
+and begging the master of ceremonies to "shake it up, do."
+
+There was a great deal of betting, and all of the men handled the great
+rolls of bills they wagered with a flippant recklessness which could
+only be accounted for in Gallegher's mind by temporary mental
+derangement. Some one pulled a box out into the ring and the master of
+ceremonies mounted it, and pointed out in forcible language that as they
+were almost all already under bonds to keep the peace, it behooved all
+to curb their excitement and to maintain a severe silence, unless they
+wanted to bring the police upon them and have themselves "sent down" for
+a year or two.
+
+Then two very disreputable-looking persons tossed their respective
+principals' high hats into the ring, and the crowd, recognizing in this
+relic of the days when brave knights threw down their gauntlets in the
+lists as only a sign that the fight was about to begin, cheered
+tumultuously.
+
+This was followed by a sudden surging forward, and a mutter of
+admiration much more flattering than the cheers had been, when the
+principals followed their hats and, slipping out of their great-coats,
+stood forth in all the physical beauty of the perfect brute.
+
+Their pink skin was as soft and healthy-looking as a baby's, and glowed
+in the lights of the lanterns like tinted ivory, and underneath this
+silken covering the great biceps and muscles moved in and out and looked
+like the coils of a snake around the branch of a tree.
+
+Gentleman and blackguard shouldered each other for a nearer view; the
+coachmen, whose metal buttons were unpleasantly suggestive of police,
+put their hands, in the excitement of the moment, on the shoulders of
+their masters; the perspiration stood out in great drops on the
+foreheads of the backers, and the newspaper men bit somewhat nervously
+at the ends of their pencils.
+
+And in the stalls the cows munched contentedly at their cuds and gazed
+with gentle curiosity at their two fellow-brutes, who stood waiting the
+signal to fall upon and kill each other, if need be, for the delectation
+of their brothers.
+
+"Take your places," commanded the master of ceremonies.
+
+In the moment in which the two men faced each other the crowd became so
+still that, save for the beating of the rain upon the shingled roof and
+the stamping of a horse in one of the stalls, the place was as silent as
+a church.
+
+"Time," shouted the master of ceremonies.
+
+The two men sprang into a posture of defense, which was lost as quickly
+as it was taken, one great arm shot out like a piston-rod; there was the
+sound of bare fists beating on naked flesh; there was an exultant
+indrawn gasp of savage pleasure and relief from the crowd, and the great
+fight had begun.
+
+How the fortunes of war rose and fell, and changed and rechanged that
+night, is an old story to those who listen to such stories; and those
+who do not will be glad to be spared the telling of it. It was, they
+say, one of the bitterest fights between two men that this country has
+ever known.
+
+But all that is of interest here is that after an hour of this
+desperate, brutal business the champion ceased to be the favorite; the
+man whom he had taunted and bullied, and for whom the public had but
+little sympathy, was proving himself a likely winner, and under his
+cruel blows, as sharp and clean as those from a cutlass, his opponent
+was rapidly giving way.
+
+The men about the ropes were past all control now; they drowned
+Keppler's petitions for silence with oaths and in inarticulate shouts of
+anger, as if the blows had fallen upon them, and in mad rejoicings. They
+swept from one end of the ring to the other, with every muscle leaping
+in unison with those of the man they favored, and when a New York
+correspondent muttered over his shoulder that this would be the biggest
+sporting surprise since the Heenan-Sayers fight, Mr. Dwyer nodded his
+head sympathetically in assent.
+
+In the excitement and tumult it is doubtful if any heard the three
+quickly repeated blows that fell heavily from the outside upon the big
+doors of the barn. If they did, it was already too late to mend matters,
+for the door fell, torn from its hinges, and as it fell a captain of
+police sprang into the light from out of the storm, with his lieutenants
+and their men crowding close at his shoulder.
+
+In the panic and stampede that followed, several of the men stood as
+helplessly immovable as though they had seen a ghost; others made a mad
+rush into the arms of the officers and were beaten back against the
+ropes of the ring; others dived headlong into the stalls, among the
+horses and cattle, and still others shoved the rolls of money they held
+into the hands of the police and begged like children to be allowed to
+escape.
+
+The instant the door fell and the raid was declared Hefflefinger slipped
+over the cross rails on which he had been lying, hung for an instant by
+his hands, and then dropped into the centre of the fighting mob on the
+floor. He was out of it in an instant with the agility of a pickpocket,
+was across the room and at Hade's throat like a dog. The murderer, for
+the moment, was the calmer man of the two.
+
+"Here," he panted, "hands off, now. There's no need for all this
+violence. There's no great harm in looking at a fight, is there? There's
+a hundred-dollar bill in my right hand; take it and let me slip out of
+this. No one is looking. Here."
+
+But the detective only held him the closer.
+
+"I want you for burglary," he whispered under his breath. "You've got to
+come with me now, and quick. The less fuss you make, the better for both
+of us. If you don't know who I am, you can feel my badge under my coat
+there. I've got the authority. It's all regular, and when we're out of
+this d--d row I'll show you the papers."
+
+He took one hand from Hade's throat and pulled a pair of handcuffs from
+his pocket.
+
+"It's a mistake. This is an outrage," gasped the murderer, white and
+trembling, but dreadfully alive and desperate for his liberty. "Let me
+go, I tell you! Take your hands off of me! Do I look like a burglar, you
+fool?"
+
+"I know who you look like," whispered the detective, with his face close
+to the face of his prisoner. "Now, will you go easy as a burglar, or
+shall I tell these men who you are and what I _do_ want you for?
+Shall I call out your real name or not? Shall I tell them? Quick, speak
+up; shall I?"
+
+There was something so exultant--something so unnecessarily savage in
+the officer's face that the man he held saw that the detective knew him
+for what he really was, and the hands that had held his throat slipped
+down around his shoulders, or he would have fallen. The man's eyes
+opened and closed again, and he swayed weakly backward and forward, and
+choked as if his throat were dry and burning. Even to such a hardened
+connoisseur in crime as Gallegher, who stood closely by, drinking it in,
+there was something so abject in the man's terror that he regarded him
+with what was almost a touch of pity.
+
+"For God's sake," Hade begged, "let me go. Come with me to my room and
+I'll give you half the money. I'll divide with you fairly. We can both
+get away. There's a fortune for both of us there. We both can get away.
+You'll be rich for life. Do you understand--for life!"
+
+But the detective, to his credit, only shut his lips the tighter.
+
+"That's enough," he whispered, in return. "That's more than I expected.
+You've sentenced yourself already. Come!"
+
+[Illustration: "For God's sake," Hade begged, "let me go."]
+
+Two officers in uniform barred their exit at the door, but Hefflefinger
+smiled easily and showed his badge.
+
+"One of Byrnes's men," he said, in explanation; "came over expressly to
+take this chap. He's a burglar; 'Arlie' Lane, _alias_ Carleton.
+I've shown the papers to the captain. It's all regular. I'm just going
+to get his traps at the hotel and walk him over to the station. I guess
+we'll push right on to New York to-night."
+
+The officers nodded and smiled their admiration for the representative
+of what is, perhaps, the best detective force in the world, and let him
+pass.
+
+Then Hefflefinger turned and spoke to Gallegher, who still stood as
+watchful as a dog at his side. "I'm going to his room to get the bonds
+and stuff," he whispered; "then I'll march him to the station and take
+that train. I've done my share; don't forget yours!"
+
+"Oh, you'll get your money right enough," said Gallegher. "And, sa-ay,"
+he added, with the appreciative nod of an expert, "do you know, you did
+it rather well."
+
+Mr. Dwyer had been writing while the raid was settling down, as he had
+been writing while waiting for the fight to begin. Now he walked over to
+where the other correspondents stood in angry conclave.
+
+The newspaper men had informed the officers who hemmed them in that they
+represented the principal papers of the country, and were expostulating
+vigorously with the captain, who had planned the raid, and who declared
+they were under arrest.
+
+"Don't be an ass, Scott," said Mr. Dwyer, who was too excited to be
+polite or politic. "You know our being here isn't a matter of choice. We
+came here on business, as you did, and you've no right to hold us."
+
+"If we don't get our stuff on the wire at once," protested a New York
+man, "we'll be too late for to-morrow's paper, and----"
+
+Captain Scott said he did not care a profanely small amount for
+to-morrow's paper, and that all he knew was that to the station-house
+the newspaper men would go. There they would have a hearing, and if the
+magistrate chose to let them off, that was the magistrate's business,
+but that his duty was to take them into custody.
+
+"But then it will be too late, don't you understand?" shouted Mr. Dwyer.
+"You've got to let us go _now_, at once."
+
+"I can't do it, Mr. Dwyer," said the captain, "and that's all there is
+to it. Why, haven't I just sent the president of the Junior Republican
+Club to the patrol-wagon, the man that put this coat on me, and do you
+think I can let you fellows go after that? You were all put under bonds
+to keep the peace not three days ago, and here you're at it--fighting
+like badgers. It's worth my place to let one of you off."
+
+What Mr. Dwyer said next was so uncomplimentary to the gallant Captain
+Scott that that overwrought individual seized the sporting editor by the
+shoulder, and shoved him into the hands of two of his men.
+
+This was more than the distinguished Mr. Dwyer could brook, and he
+excitedly raised his hand in resistance. But before he had time to do
+anything foolish his wrist was gripped by one strong little hand, and he
+was conscious that another was picking the pocket of his great-coat.
+
+He slapped his hands to his sides, and, looking down, saw Gallegher
+standing close behind him and holding him by the wrist. Mr. Dwyer had
+forgotten the boy's existence, and would have spoken sharply if
+something in Gallegher's innocent eyes had not stopped him.
+
+Gallegher's hand was still in that pocket in which Mr. Dwyer had shoved
+his notebook filled with what he had written of Gallegher's work and
+Hade's final capture, and with a running descriptive account of the
+fight. With his eyes fixed on Mr. Dwyer, Gallegher drew it out, and with
+a quick movement shoved it inside his waistcoat. Mr. Dwyer gave a nod of
+comprehension. Then glancing at his two guardsmen, and finding that they
+were still interested in the wordy battle of the correspondents with
+their chief, and had seen nothing, he stooped and whispered to
+Gallegher: "The forms are locked at twenty minutes to three. If you
+don't get there by that time it will be of no use, but if you're on time
+you'll beat the town--and the country too."
+
+Gallegher's eyes flashed significantly, and, nodding his head to show he
+understood, started boldly on a run toward the door. But the officers
+who guarded it brought him to an abrupt halt, and, much to Mr. Dwyer's
+astonishment, drew from him what was apparently a torrent of tears.
+
+"Let me go to me father. I want me father," the boy shrieked
+hysterically. "They've 'rested father. Oh, daddy, daddy. They're a-goin'
+to take you to prison."
+
+"Who is your father, sonny?" asked one of the guardians of the gate.
+
+"Keppler's me father," sobbed Gallegher. "They're a-goin' to lock him
+up, and I'll never see him no more."
+
+"Oh, yes, you will," said the officer, good-naturedly; "he's there in
+that first patrol-wagon. You can run over and say good night to him, and
+then you'd better get to bed. This ain't no place for kids of your age."
+
+"Thank you, sir," sniffed Gallegher, tearfully, as the two officers
+raised their clubs, and let him pass out into the darkness.
+
+The yard outside was in a tumult, horses were stamping, and plunging,
+and backing the carriages into one another; lights were flashing from
+every window of what had been apparently an uninhabited house, and the
+voices of the prisoners were still raised in angry expostulation.
+
+Three police patrol-wagons were moving about the yard, filled with
+unwilling passengers, who sat or stood, packed together like sheep and
+with no protection from the sleet and rain.
+
+Gallegher stole off into a dark corner, and watched the scene until his
+eyesight became familiar with the position of the land.
+
+Then with his eyes fixed fearfully on the swinging light of a lantern
+with which an officer was searching among the carriages, he groped his
+way between horses' hoofs and behind the wheels of carriages to the cab
+which he had himself placed at the furthermost gate. It was still there,
+and the horse, as he had left it, with its head turned toward the city.
+Gallegher opened the big gate noiselessly, and worked nervously at the
+hitching strap. The knot was covered with a thin coating of ice, and it
+was several minutes before he could loosen it. But his teeth finally
+pulled it apart, and with the reins in his hands he sprang upon the
+wheel. And as he stood so, a shock of fear ran down his back like an
+electric current, his breath left him, and he stood immovable, gazing
+with wide eyes into the darkness.
+
+The officer with the lantern had suddenly loomed up from behind a
+carriage not fifty feet distant, and was standing perfectly still, with
+his lantern held over his head, peering so directly toward Gallegher
+that the boy felt that he must see him. Gallegher stood with one foot on
+the hub of the wheel and with the other on the box waiting to spring. It
+seemed a minute before either of them moved, and then the officer took a
+step forward, and demanded sternly, "Who is that? What are you doing
+there?"
+
+There was no time for parley then. Gallegher felt that he had been taken
+in the act, and that his only chance lay in open flight. He leaped up on
+the box, pulling out the whip as he did so, and with a quick sweep
+lashed the horse across the head and back. The animal sprang forward
+with a snort, narrowly clearing the gate-post, and plunged off into the
+darkness.
+
+"Stop!" cried the officer.
+
+So many of Gallegher's acquaintances among the 'longshoremen and mill
+hands had been challenged in so much the same manner that Gallegher knew
+what would probably follow if the challenge was disregarded. So he
+slipped from his seat to the footboard below, and ducked his head.
+
+The three reports of a pistol, which rang out briskly from behind him,
+proved that his early training had given him a valuable fund of useful
+miscellaneous knowledge.
+
+"Don't you be scared," he said, reassuringly, to the horse; "he's firing
+in the air."
+
+The pistol-shots were answered by the impatient clangor of a
+patrol-wagon's gong, and glancing over his shoulder Gallegher saw its
+red and green lanterns tossing from side to side and looking in the
+darkness like the side-lights of a yacht plunging forward in a storm.
+
+"I hadn't bargained to race you against no patrol-wagons," said
+Gallegher to his animal; "but if they want a race, we'll give them a
+tough tussle for it, won't we?"
+
+Philadelphia, lying four miles to the south, sent up a faint yellow glow
+to the sky. It seemed very far away, and Gallegher's braggadocio grew
+cold within him at the loneliness of his adventure and the thought of
+the long ride before him.
+
+It was still bitterly cold.
+
+The rain and sleet beat through his clothes, and struck his skin with a
+sharp, chilling touch that set him trembling.
+
+Even the thought of the over-weighted patrol-wagon probably sticking in
+the mud some safe distance in the rear, failed to cheer him, and the
+excitement that had so far made him callous to the cold died out and
+left him weaker and nervous.
+
+But his horse was chilled with the long standing, and now leaped eagerly
+forward, only too willing to warm the half-frozen blood in its veins.
+
+"You're a good beast," said Gallegher, plaintively. "You've got more
+nerve than me. Don't you go back on me now. Mr. Dwyer says we've got to
+beat the town." Gallegher had no idea what time it was as he rode
+through the night, but he knew he would be able to find out from a big
+clock over a manufactory at a point nearly three-quarters of the
+distance from Keppler's to the goal.
+
+He was still in the open country and driving recklessly, for he knew the
+best part of his ride must be made outside the city limits.
+
+He raced between desolate-looking cornfields with bare stalks and
+patches of muddy earth rising above the thin covering of snow; truck
+farms and brick-yards fell behind him on either side. It was very lonely
+work, and once or twice the dogs ran yelping to the gates and barked
+after him.
+
+Part of his way lay parallel with the railroad tracks, and he drove for
+some time beside long lines of freight and coal cars as they stood
+resting for the night. The fantastic Queen Anne suburban stations were
+dark and deserted, but in one or two of the block-towers he could see
+the operators writing at their desks, and the sight in some way
+comforted him.
+
+Once he thought of stopping to get out the blanket in which he had
+wrapped himself on the first trip, but he feared to spare the time, and
+drove on with his teeth chattering and his shoulders shaking with the
+cold.
+
+He welcomed the first solitary row of darkened houses with a faint cheer
+of recognition. The scattered lamp-posts lightened his spirits, and even
+the badly paved streets rang under the beats of his horse's feet like
+music. Great mills and manufactories, with only a night-watchman's light
+in the lowest of their many stories, began to take the place of the
+gloomy farm-houses and gaunt trees that had startled him with their
+grotesque shapes. He had been driving nearly an hour, he calculated, and
+in that time the rain had changed to a wet snow, that fell heavily and
+clung to whatever it touched. He passed block after block of trim
+work-men's houses, as still and silent as the sleepers within them, and
+at last he turned the horse's head into Broad Street, the city's great
+thoroughfare, that stretches from its one end to the other and cuts it
+evenly in two.
+
+He was driving noiselessly over the snow and slush in the street, with
+his thoughts bent only on the clock-face he wished so much to see, when
+a hoarse voice challenged him from the sidewalk. "Hey, you, stop there,
+hold up!" said the voice.
+
+Gallegher turned his head, and though he saw that the voice came from
+under a policeman's helmet, his only answer was to hit his horse sharply
+over the head with his whip and to urge it into a gallop.
+
+This, on his part, was followed by a sharp, shrill whistle from the
+policeman. Another whistle answered it from a street-corner one block
+ahead of him. "Whoa," said Gallegher, pulling on the reins. "There's one
+too many of them," he added, in apologetic explanation. The horse
+stopped, and stood, breathing heavily, with great clouds of steam rising
+from its flanks.
+
+"Why in hell didn't you stop when I told you to?" demanded the voice,
+now close at the cab's side.
+
+"I didn't hear you," returned Gallegher, sweetly. "But I heard you
+whistle, and I heard your partner whistle, and I thought maybe it was me
+you wanted to speak to, so I just stopped."
+
+"You heard me well enough. Why aren't your lights lit?" demanded the
+voice.
+
+"Should I have 'em lit?" asked Gallegher, bending over and regarding
+them with sudden interest.
+
+"You know you should, and if you don't, you've no right to be driving
+that cab. I don't believe you're the regular driver, anyway. Where'd you
+get it?"
+
+"It ain't my cab, of course," said Gallegher, with an easy laugh. "It's
+Luke McGovern's. He left it outside Cronin's while he went in to get a
+drink, and he took too much, and me father told me to drive it round to
+the stable for him. I'm Cronin's son. McGovern ain't in no condition to
+drive. You can see yourself how he's been misusing the horse. He puts it
+up at Bachman's livery stable, and I was just going around there now."
+
+Gallegher's knowledge of the local celebrities of the district confused
+the zealous officer of the peace. He surveyed the boy with a steady
+stare that would have distressed a less skilful liar, but Gallegher only
+shrugged his shoulders slightly, as if from the cold, and waited with
+apparent indifference to what the officer would say next.
+
+In reality his heart was beating heavily against his side, and he felt
+that if he was kept on a strain much longer he would give way and break
+down. A second snow-covered form emerged suddenly from the shadow of the
+houses.
+
+"What is it, Reeder?" it asked.
+
+"Oh, nothing much," replied the first officer. "This kid hadn't any
+lamps lit, so I called to him to stop and he didn't do it, so I whistled
+to you. It's all right, though. He's just taking it round to Bachman's.
+Go ahead," he added, sulkily.
+
+"Get up!" chirped Gallegher. "Good night," he added, over his shoulder.
+
+Gallegher gave a hysterical little gasp of relief as he trotted away
+from the two policemen, and poured bitter maledictions on their heads
+for two meddling fools as he went.
+
+"They might as well kill a man as scare him to death," he said, with an
+attempt to get back to his customary flippancy. But the effort was
+somewhat pitiful, and he felt guiltily conscious that a salt, warm tear
+was creeping slowly down his face, and that a lump that would not keep
+down was rising in his throat.
+
+"Tain't no fair thing for the whole police force to keep worrying at a
+little boy like me," he said, in shame-faced apology. "I'm not doing
+nothing wrong, and I'm half froze to death, and yet they keep a-nagging
+at me."
+
+It was so cold that when the boy stamped his feet against the footboard
+to keep them warm, sharp pains shot up through his body, and when he
+beat his arms about his shoulders, as he had seen real cabmen do, the
+blood in his finger-tips tingled so acutely that he cried aloud with the
+pain.
+
+He had often been up that late before, but he had never felt so sleepy.
+It was as if some one was pressing a sponge heavy with chloroform near
+his face, and he could not fight off the drowsiness that lay hold of
+him.
+
+He saw, dimly hanging above his head, a round disk of light that seemed
+like a great moon, and which he finally guessed to be the clock-face for
+which he had been on the lookout. He had passed it before he realized
+this; but the fact stirred him into wakefulness again, and when his
+cab's wheels slipped around the City Hall corner, he remembered to look
+up at the other big clock-face that keeps awake over the railroad
+station and measures out the night.
+
+He gave a gasp of consternation when he saw that it was half-past two,
+and that there was but ten minutes left to him. This, and the many
+electric lights and the sight of the familiar pile of buildings,
+startled him into a semi-consciousness of where he was and how great was
+the necessity for haste.
+
+He rose in his seat and called on the horse, and urged it into a
+reckless gallop over the slippery asphalt. He considered nothing else
+but speed, and looking neither to the left nor right dashed off down
+Broad Street into Chestnut, where his course lay straight away to the
+office, now only seven blocks distant.
+
+Gallegher never knew how it began, but he was suddenly assaulted by
+shouts on either side, his horse was thrown back on its haunches, and he
+found two men in cabmen's livery hanging at its head, and patting its
+sides, and calling it by name. And the other cabmen who have their stand
+at the corner were swarming about the carriage, all of them talking and
+swearing at once, and gesticulating wildly with their whips.
+
+They said they knew the cab was McGovern's, and they wanted to know
+where he was, and why he wasn't on it; they wanted to know where
+Gallegher had stolen it, and why he had been such a fool as to drive it
+into the arms of its owner's friends; they said that it was about time
+that a cab-driver could get off his box to take a drink without having
+his cab run away with, and some of them called loudly for a policeman to
+take the young thief in charge.
+
+Gallagher felt as if he had been suddenly dragged into consciousness out
+of a bad dream, and stood for a second like a half-awakened
+somnambulist.
+
+They had stopped the cab under an electric light, and its glare shone
+coldly down upon the trampled snow and the faces of the men around him.
+
+Gallegher bent forward, and lashed savagely at the horse with his whip.
+
+"Let me go," he shouted, as he tugged impotently at the reins. "Let me
+go, I tell you. I haven't stole no cab, and you've got no right to stop
+me. I only want to take it to the _Press_ office," he begged.
+"They'll send it back to you all right. They'll pay you for the trip.
+I'm not running away with it. The driver's got the collar--he's
+'rested--and I'm only a-going to the _Press_ office. Do you hear
+me?" he cried, his voice rising and breaking in a shriek of passion and
+disappointment. "I tell you to let go those reins. Let me go, or I'll
+kill you. Do you hear me? I'll kill you." And leaning forward, the boy
+struck savagely with his long whip at the faces of the men about the
+horse's head.
+
+Some one in the crowd reached up and caught him by the ankles, and with
+a quick jerk pulled him off the box, and threw him on to the street. But
+he was up on his knees in a moment, and caught at the man's hand.
+
+"Don't let them stop me, mister," he cried, "please let me go. I didn't
+steal the cab, sir. S'help me, I didn't. I'm telling you the truth. Take
+me to the _Press_ office, and they'll prove it to you. They'll pay
+you anything you ask 'em. It's only such a little ways now, and I've
+come so far, sir. Please don't let them stop me," he sobbed, clasping
+the man about the knees. "For Heaven's sake, mister, let me go!"
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The managing editor of the _Press_ took up the india-rubber
+speaking-tube at his side, and answered, "Not yet," to an inquiry the
+night editor had already put to him five times within the last twenty
+minutes.
+
+Then he snapped the metal top of the tube impatiently, and went
+up-stairs. As he passed the door of the local room, he noticed that the
+reporters had not gone home, but were sitting about on the tables and
+chairs, waiting. They looked up inquiringly as he passed, and the city
+editor asked, "Any news yet?" and the managing editor shook his head.
+
+The compositors were standing idle in the composing-room, and their
+foreman was talking with the night editor.
+
+"Well," said that gentleman, tentatively.
+
+"Well," returned the managing editor, "I don't think we can wait; do
+you?"
+
+"It's a half-hour after time now," said the night editor, "and we'll
+miss the suburban trains if we hold the paper back any longer. We can't
+afford to wait for a purely hypothetical story. The chances are all
+against the fight's having taken place or this Hade's having been
+arrested."
+
+"But if we're beaten on it--" suggested the chief. "But I don't think
+that is possible. If there were any story to print, Dwyer would have had
+it here before now."
+
+The managing editor looked steadily down at the floor.
+
+"Very well," he said, slowly, "we won't wait any longer. Go ahead," he
+added, turning to the foreman with a sigh of reluctance. The foreman
+whirled himself about, and began to give his orders; but the two editors
+still looked at each other doubtfully.
+
+As they stood so, there came a sudden shout and the sound of people
+running to and fro in the reportorial rooms below. There was the tramp
+of many footsteps on the stairs, and above the confusion they heard the
+voice of the city editor telling some one to "run to Madden's and get
+some brandy, quick."
+
+No one in the composing-room said anything; but those compositors who
+had started to go home began slipping off their overcoats, and every one
+stood with his eyes fixed on the door.
+
+It was kicked open from the outside, and in the doorway stood a
+cab-driver and the city editor, supporting between them a pitiful little
+figure of a boy, wet and miserable, and with the snow melting on his
+clothes and running in little pools to the floor. "Why, it's Gallegher,"
+said the night editor, in a tone of the keenest disappointment.
+
+Gallegher shook himself free from his supporters, and took an unsteady
+step forward, his fingers fumbling stiffly with the buttons of his
+waistcoat.
+
+"Mr. Dwyer, sir," he began faintly, with his eyes fixed fearfully on the
+managing editor, "he got arrested--and I couldn't get here no sooner,
+'cause they kept a-stopping me, and they took me cab from under
+me--but--" he pulled the notebook from his breast and held it out with
+its covers damp and limp from the rain--"but we got Hade, and here's Mr.
+Dwyer's copy."
+
+And then he asked, with a queer note in his voice, partly of dread and
+partly of hope, "Am I in time, sir?"
+
+The managing editor took the book, and tossed it to the foreman, who
+ripped out its leaves and dealt them out to his men as rapidly as a
+gambler deals out cards.
+
+Then the managing editor stooped and picked Gallegher up in his arms,
+and, sitting down, began to unlace his wet and muddy shoes.
+
+Gallegher made a faint effort to resist this degradation of the
+managerial dignity; but his protest was a very feeble one, and his head
+fell back heavily oh the managing editor's shoulder.
+
+[Illustration: "Why, it's Gallegher," said the night editor.]
+
+To Gallegher the incandescent lights began to whirl about in circles,
+and to burn in different colors; the faces of the reporters kneeling
+before him and chafing his hands and feet grew dim and unfamiliar, and
+the roar and rumble of the great presses in the basement sounded far
+away, like the murmur of the sea.
+
+And then the place and the circumstances of it came back to him again
+sharply and with sudden vividness.
+
+Gallegher looked up, with a faint smile, into the managing editor's
+face. "You won't turn me off for running away, will you?" he whispered.
+
+The managing editor did not answer immediately. His head was bent, and
+he was thinking, for some reason or other, of a little boy of his own,
+at home in bed. Then he said quietly, "Not this time, Gallegher."
+
+Gallegher's head sank back comfortably on the older man's shoulder, and
+he smiled comprehensively at the faces of the young men crowded around
+him. "You hadn't ought to," he said, with a touch of his old impudence,
+'"cause--I beat the town."
+
+
+
+
+BLOOD WILL TELL
+
+
+David Greene was an employee of the Burdett Automatic Punch Company. The
+manufacturing plant of the company was at Bridgeport, but in the New
+York offices there were working samples of all the punches, from the
+little nickel-plated hand punch with which conductors squeezed holes in
+railroad tickets, to the big punch that could bite into an iron plate as
+easily as into a piece of pie. David's duty was to explain these
+different punches, and accordingly when Burdett Senior or one of the
+sons turned a customer over to David he spoke of him as a salesman. But
+David called himself a "demonstrator." For a short time he even
+succeeded in persuading the other salesmen to speak of themselves as
+demonstrators, but the shipping clerks and bookkeepers laughed them out
+of it. They could not laugh David out of it. This was so, partly because
+he had no sense of humor, and partly because he had a
+great-great-grandfather. Among the salesmen on lower Broadway, to
+possess a great-great-grandfather is unusual, even a great-grandfather
+is a rarity, and either is considered superfluous. But to David the
+possession of a great-great-grandfather was a precious and open delight.
+He had possessed him only for a short time. Undoubtedly he always had
+existed, but it was not until David's sister Anne married a doctor in
+Bordentown, New Jersey, and became socially ambitious, that David
+emerged as a Son of Washington.
+
+It was sister Anne, anxious to "get in" as a "Daughter" and wear a
+distaff pin in her shirt-waist, who discovered the revolutionary
+ancestor. She unearthed him, or rather ran him to earth, in the
+graveyard of the Presbyterian church at Bordentown. He was no less a
+person than General Hiram Greene, and he had fought with Washington at
+Trenton and at Princeton. Of this there was no doubt. That, later, on
+moving to New York, his descendants became peace-loving salesmen did not
+affect his record. To enter a society founded on heredity, the important
+thing is first to catch your ancestor, and having made sure of him,
+David entered the Society of the Sons of Washington with flying colors.
+He was not unlike the man who had been speaking prose for forty years
+without knowing it. He was not unlike the other man who woke to find
+himself famous. He had gone to bed a timid, near-sighted, underpaid
+salesman without a relative in the world, except a married sister in
+Bordentown, and he awoke to find he was a direct descendant of "Neck or
+Nothing" Greene, a revolutionary hero, a friend of Washington, a man
+whose portrait hung in the State House at Trenton. David's life had
+lacked color. The day he carried his certificate of membership to the
+big jewelry store uptown and purchased two rosettes, one for each of his
+two coats, was the proudest of his life.
+
+The other men in the Broadway office took a different view. As Wyckoff,
+one of Burdett's flying squadron of travelling salesmen, said, "All
+grandfathers look alike to me, whether they're great, or
+great-great-great. Each one is as dead as the other. I'd rather have a
+live cousin who could loan me a five, or slip me a drink. What did your
+great-great dad ever do for _you_?"
+
+"Well, for one thing," said David stiffly, "he fought in the War of the
+Revolution. He saved us from the shackles of monarchical England; he
+made it possible for me and you to enjoy the liberties of a free
+republic."
+
+"Don't try to tell _me_ your grandfather did all that," protested
+Wyckoff, "because I know better. There were a lot of others helped. I
+read about it in a book."
+
+"I am not grudging glory to others," returned David; "I am only saying I
+am proud that I am a descendant of a revolutionist."
+
+Wyckoff dived into his inner pocket and produced a leather photograph
+frame that folded like a concertina.
+
+"I don't want to be a descendant," he said; "I'd rather be an ancestor.
+Look at those." Proudly he exhibited photographs of Mrs. Wyckoff with
+the baby and of three other little Wyckoffs. David looked with envy at
+the children.
+
+"When I'm married," he stammered, and at the words he blushed, "I hope
+to be an ancestor."
+
+"If you're thinking of getting married," said Wyckoff, "you'd better
+hope for a raise in salary."
+
+The other clerks were as unsympathetic as Wyckoff. At first when David
+showed them his parchment certificate, and his silver gilt insignia with
+on one side a portrait of Washington, and on the other a Continental
+soldier, they admitted it was dead swell. They even envied him, not the
+grandfather, but the fact that owing to that distinguished relative
+David was constantly receiving beautifully engraved invitations to
+attend the monthly meetings of the society; to subscribe to a fund to
+erect monuments on battle-fields to mark neglected graves; to join in
+joyous excursions to the tomb of Washington or of John Paul Jones; to
+inspect West Point, Annapolis, and Bunker Hill; to be among those
+present at the annual "banquet" at Delmonico's. In order that when he
+opened these letters he might have an audience, he had given the society
+his office address.
+
+In these communications he was always addressed as "Dear Compatriot,"
+and never did the words fail to give him a thrill. They seemed to lift
+him out of Burdett's salesrooms and Broadway, and place him next to
+things uncommercial, untainted, high, and noble. He did not quite know
+what an aristocrat was, but he believed being a compatriot made him an
+aristocrat. When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was
+overbearing, this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and
+he would smile and say to himself: "If they knew the meaning of the blue
+rosette in my button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How
+easily with a word could I crush them!"
+
+But few of the customers recognized the significance of the button. They
+thought it meant that David belonged to the Y. M. C. A. or was a
+teetotaler. David, with his gentle manners and pale, ascetic face, was
+liable to give that impression.
+
+When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was because,
+although no one in the office suspected it, he wished to marry the
+person in whom the office took the greatest pride. This was Miss Emily
+Anthony, one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most efficient, and
+prettiest stenographers, and although David did not cut as dashing a
+figure as did some of the firm's travelling men, Miss Anthony had found
+something in him so greatly to admire that she had, out of office hours,
+accepted his devotion, his theatre tickets, and an engagement ring.
+Indeed, so far had matters progressed, that it had been almost decided
+when in a few months they would go upon their vacations they also would
+go upon their honeymoon. And then a cloud had come between them, and
+from a quarter from which David had expected only sunshine.
+
+The trouble befell when David discovered he had a
+great-great-grandfather. With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost
+as pleased as was David himself, but while he was content to bask in
+another's glory, Miss Anthony saw in his inheritance only an incentive
+to achieve glory for himself.
+
+From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from a
+descendant of a national hero she expected other things. She was a
+determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious young
+person. She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was disappointed.
+The great-great-grandfather had opened up a new horizon--had, in a way,
+raised the standard. She was as fond of David as always, but his tales
+of past wars and battles, his accounts of present banquets at which he
+sat shoulder to shoulder with men of whom even Burdett and Sons spoke
+with awe, touched her imagination.
+
+"You shouldn't be content to just wear a button," she urged. "If you're
+a Son of Washington, you ought to act like one."
+
+"I know I'm not worthy of you," David sighed.
+
+"I don't mean that, and you know I don't," Emily replied indignantly.
+"It has nothing to do with me! I want you to be worthy of yourself, of
+your grandpa Hiram!"
+
+"But _how_?" complained David. "What chance has a twenty-five
+dollar a week clerk----"
+
+It was a year before the Spanish-American War, while the patriots of
+Cuba were fighting the mother country for their independence.
+
+"If I were a Son of the Revolution," said Emily, "I'd go to Cuba and
+help free it."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," cried David. "If I did that I'd lose my job, and
+we'd never be able to marry. Besides, what's Cuba done for me? All I
+know about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and it made me ill."
+
+"Did Lafayette talk like that?" demanded Emily. "Did he ask what have
+the American rebels ever done for me?"
+
+"If I were in Lafayette's class," sighed David, "I wouldn't be selling
+automatic punches."
+
+"There's your trouble," declared Emily. "You lack self-confidence.
+You're too humble, you've got fighting blood and you ought to keep
+saying to yourself, 'Blood will tell,' and the first thing you know, it
+_will_ tell! You might begin by going into politics in your ward.
+Or, you could join the militia. That takes only one night a week, and
+then, if we _did_ go to war with Spain, you'd get a commission, and
+come back a captain!"
+
+Emily's eyes were beautiful with delight. But the sight gave David no
+pleasure. In genuine distress, he shook his head.
+
+"Emily," he said, "you're going to be awfully disappointed in me."
+
+Emily's eyes closed as though they shied at some mental picture. But
+when she opened them they were bright, and her smile was kind and eager.
+
+"No, I'm not," she protested; "only I want a husband with a career, and
+one who'll tell me to keep quiet when I try to run it for him."
+
+"I've often wished you would," said David.
+
+"Would what? Run your career for you?"
+
+"No, keep quiet. Only it didn't seem polite to tell you so."
+
+"Maybe I'd like you better," said Emily, "if you weren't so darned
+polite."
+
+A week later, early in the spring of 1897, the unexpected happened, and
+David was promoted into the flying squadron. He now was a travelling
+salesman, with a rise in salary and a commission on orders. It was a
+step forward, but as going on the road meant absence from Emily, David
+was not elated. Nor did it satisfy Emily. It was not money she wanted.
+Her ambition for David could not be silenced with a raise in wages. She
+did not say this, but David knew that in him she still found something
+lacking, and when they said good-by they both were ill at ease and
+completely unhappy. Formerly, each day when Emily in passing David in
+the office said good-morning, she used to add the number of the days
+that still separated them from the vacation which also was to be their
+honeymoon. But, for the last month she had stopped counting the days--at
+least she did not count them aloud.
+
+David did not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And, sooner than
+learn the truth that she had decided not to marry him, or that she was
+even considering not marrying him, he asked no questions, but in
+ignorance of her present feelings set forth on his travels. Absence from
+Emily hurt just as much as he had feared it would. He missed her, needed
+her, longed for her. In numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to
+the frequency with which he moved, her letters never caught up with him.
+It was almost a relief. He did not care to think of what they might tell
+him.
+
+The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him close
+to the Atlantic seaboard. In obtaining orders he was not unsuccessful,
+and at the end of the first month received from the firm a telegram of
+congratulation. This was of importance chiefly because it might please
+Emily. But he knew that in her eyes the great-great-grandson of Hiram
+Greene could not rest content with a telegram from Burdett and Sons. A
+year before she would have considered it a high honor, a cause for
+celebration. Now, he could see her press her pretty lips together and
+shake her pretty head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish
+more. He began to hate his great-great-grandfather. He began to wish
+Hiram Greene had lived and died a bachelor.
+
+And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and spanked
+him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made him her favorite
+son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary
+manner.
+
+On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled to
+leave the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same minute, and
+they left exactly on time. As never before in the history of any
+Southern railroad has this miracle occurred, it shows that when Dame
+Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent. She placed David on the train
+to Miami as the train he wanted drew out for Tampa, and an hour later,
+when the conductor looked at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and
+dumped David over the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked
+back along the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would
+find a flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going north.
+In an hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.
+
+There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by
+fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled forward, at one moment
+he would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be
+encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkness. He made his way from
+tie to tie only by feeling with his foot. After an hour he came to a
+shed. Whether it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in
+mind, he did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot,
+and too disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat down
+under the open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for the train or
+daylight. So far as he could see, on every side of him stretched a
+swamp, silent, dismal, interminable. From its black water rose dead
+trees, naked of bark and hung with streamers of funereal moss. There was
+not a sound or sign of human habitation. The silence was the silence of
+the ocean at night. David remembered the berth reserved for him on the
+train to Tampa and of the loathing with which he had considered placing
+himself between its sheets. But now how gladly would he welcome it! For,
+in the sleeping-car, ill-smelling, close and stuffy, he at least would
+have been surrounded by fellow-sufferers of his own species. Here his
+companions were owls, water-snakes, and sleeping buzzards.
+
+"I am alone," he told himself, "on a railroad embankment, entirely
+surrounded by alligators."
+
+And then he found he was not alone.
+
+In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from him
+there flashed suddenly the face of a man. Then the match went out and
+the face with it. David noted that it had appeared at some height above
+the level of the swamp, at an elevation higher even than that of the
+embankment. It was as though the man had been sitting on the limb of a
+tree. David crossed the tracks and found that on the side of the
+embankment opposite the shed there was solid ground and what once had
+been a wharf. He advanced over this cautiously, and as he did so the
+clouds disappeared, and in the full light of the moon he saw a bayou
+broadening into a river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf
+an ocean-going tug. It was from her deck that the man, in lighting his
+pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the
+company of his fellow-creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure. He
+advanced quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug,
+something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No
+lights showed from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks
+were empty. But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from her
+funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood
+uncertainly, questioning whether to make his presence known or return to
+the loneliness of the shed. The question was decided for him. He had not
+considered that standing in the moonlight he was a conspicuous figure.
+The planks of the wharf creaked and a man came toward him. As one who
+means to attack, or who fears attack, he approached warily. He wore high
+boots, riding breeches, and a sombrero. He was a little man, but his
+movements were alert and active. To David he seemed unnecessarily
+excited. He thrust himself close against David.
+
+"Who the devil are you?" demanded the man from the tug. "How'd you get
+here?"
+
+"I walked," said David.
+
+"Walked?" the man snorted incredulously.
+
+"I took the wrong train," explained David pleasantly. "They put me off
+about a mile below here. I walked back to this flag station. I'm going
+to wait here for the next train north."
+
+The little man laughed mockingly.
+
+"Oh, no you're not," he said. "If you walked here, you can just walk
+away again!" With a sweep of his arm, he made a vigorous and peremptory
+gesture.
+
+"You walk!" he commanded.
+
+"I'll do just as I please about that," said David.
+
+As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily toward the
+tug.
+
+"I'll find some one who'll make you walk!" he called. "You _wait_,
+that's all, you _wait_!"
+
+David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private
+property and he had been trespassing. In any case, at the flag station
+the rights of all men were equal, and if he were in for a fight he
+judged it best to choose his own battleground. He recrossed the tracks
+and sat down on his suit case in a dark corner of the shed. Himself
+hidden in the shadows he could see in the moonlight the approach of any
+other person.
+
+"They're river pirates," said David to himself, "or smugglers. They're
+certainly up to some mischief, or why should they object to the presence
+of a perfectly harmless stranger?"
+
+Partly with cold, partly with nervousness, David shivered.
+
+"I wish that train would come," he sighed. And instantly, as though in
+answer to his wish, from only a short distance down the track he heard
+the rumble and creak of approaching cars. In a flash David planned his
+course of action.
+
+The thought of spending the night in a swamp infested by alligators and
+smugglers had become intolerable. He must escape, and he must escape by
+the train now approaching. To that end the train must be stopped. His
+plan was simple. The train was moving very, very slowly, and though he
+had no lantern to wave, in order to bring it to a halt he need only
+stand on the track exposed to the glare of the headlight and wave his
+arms. David sprang between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in
+amazement his arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred
+yards distant and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no
+headlight, and though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it
+blew no whistle, tolled no bell. Even the passenger coaches in the rear
+of the sightless engine were wrapped in darkness. It was a ghost of a
+train, a Flying Dutchman of a train, a nightmare of a train. It was as
+unreal as the black swamp, as the moss on the dead trees, as the ghostly
+tug-boat tied to the rotting wharf.
+
+"Is the place haunted!" exclaimed David.
+
+He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming to a
+sharp halt. And instantly from every side men fell from it to the
+ground, and the silence of the night was broken by a confusion of calls
+and eager greeting and questions and sharp words of command.
+
+So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and in her
+mysterious passengers that, until they confronted him, he did not note
+the equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these one was the little
+man from the tug. With him was a fat, red-faced Irish-American. He wore
+no coat and his shirt-sleeves were drawn away from his hands by garters
+of pink elastic, his derby hat was balanced behind his ears, upon his
+right hand flashed an enormous diamond. He looked as though but at that
+moment he had stopped sliding glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man
+carried the outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the tallest
+man he had ever beheld, but equally remarkable with his height was his
+beard and hair, which were of a fierce brick-dust red. Even in the mild
+moonlight it flamed like a torch.
+
+"What's your business?" demanded the man with the flamboyant hair.
+
+"I came here," began David, "to wait for a train-----"
+
+The tall man bellowed with indignant rage.
+
+"Yes," he shouted; "this is the sort of place any one would pick out to
+wait for a train!"
+
+In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher's glove.
+"Don't you lie to _me_!" he bullied. "Do you know who I am? Do you
+know _who_ you're up against? I'm----"
+
+The barkeeper person interrupted.
+
+"Never mind who you are," he said. "We know that. Find out who _he_
+is."
+
+David turned appealingly to the barkeeper.
+
+"Do you suppose I'd come here on purpose?" he protested. "I'm a
+travelling man----"
+
+"You won't travel any to-night," mocked the red-haired one. "You've seen
+what you came to see, and all you want now is to get to a Western Union
+wire. Well, you don't do it. You don't leave here to-night!"
+
+As though he thought he had been neglected, the little man in
+riding-boots pushed forward importantly.
+
+"Tie him to a tree!" he suggested.
+
+"Better take him on board," said the barkeeper, "and send him back by
+the pilot. When we're once at sea, he can't hurt us any."
+
+[Illustration: In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a
+catcher's glove.]
+
+"What makes you think I want to hurt you?" demanded David. "Who do you
+think I am?"
+
+"We know who you are," shouted the fiery-headed one. "You're a
+blanketty-blank spy! You're a government spy or a Spanish spy, and
+whichever you are you don't get away to-night!"
+
+David had not the faintest idea what the man meant, but he knew his
+self-respect was being ill-treated, and his self-respect rebelled.
+
+"You have made a very serious mistake," he said, "and whether you like
+it or not, I _am_ leaving here to-night, and _you_ can go to
+the devil!"
+
+Turning his back David started with great dignity to walk away. It was a
+short walk. Something hit him below the ear and he found himself curling
+up comfortably on the ties. He had a strong desire to sleep, but was
+conscious that a bed on a railroad track, on account of trains wanting
+to pass, was unsafe. This doubt did not long disturb him. His head
+rolled against the steel rail, his limbs relaxed. From a great distance,
+and in a strange sing-song he heard the voice of the barkeeper saying,
+"Nine--ten--and _out_!"
+
+When David came to his senses his head was resting on a coil of rope. In
+his ears was the steady throb of an engine, and in his eyes the glare of
+a lantern. The lantern was held by a pleasant-faced youth in a golf cap
+who was smiling sympathetically. David rose on his elbow and gazed
+wildly about him. He was in the bow of the ocean-going tug, and he saw
+that from where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed
+with men. She was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either side
+the gray light that comes before the dawn showed low banks studded with
+stunted palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar of the surf.
+
+"Sorry to disturb you," said the youth in the golf cap, "but we drop the
+pilot in a few minutes and you're going with him."
+
+David moved his aching head gingerly, and was conscious of a bump as
+large as a tennis ball behind his right ear.
+
+"What happened to me?" he demanded.
+
+"You were sort of kidnapped, I guess," laughed the young man. "It was a
+raw deal, but they couldn't take any chances. The pilot will land you at
+Okra Point. You can hire a rig there to take you to the railroad."
+
+"But why?" demanded David indignantly. "Why was I kidnapped? What had I
+done? Who were those men who----"
+
+From the pilot-house there was a sharp jangle of bells to the
+engine-room, and the speed of the tug slackened.
+
+"Come on," commanded the young man briskly. "The pilot's going ashore.
+Here's your grip, here's your hat. The ladder's on the port side. Look
+where you're stepping. We can't show any lights, and it's dark as----"
+
+But, even as he spoke, like a flash of powder, as swiftly as one throws
+an electric switch, as blindingly as a train leaps from the tunnel into
+the glaring sun, the darkness vanished and the tug was swept by the
+fierce, blatant radiance of a search-light.
+
+It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams, oaths,
+prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by the blind rush of many men
+scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the ringing orders of one
+man. Above the tumult this one voice rose like the warning strokes of a
+fire-gong, and looking up to the pilot-house from whence the voice came,
+David saw the barkeeper still in his shirt-sleeves and with his derby
+hat pushed back behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph
+to the engine-room, with the other holding the spoke of the wheel.
+
+David felt the tug, like a hunter taking a fence, rise in a great leap.
+Her bow sank and rose, tossing the water from her in black, oily waves,
+the smoke poured from her funnel, from below her engines sobbed and
+quivered, and like a hound freed from a leash she raced for the open
+sea. But swiftly as she fled, as a thief is held in the circle of a
+policeman's bull's-eye, the shaft of light followed and exposed her and
+held her in its grip. The youth in the golf cap was clutching David by
+the arm. With his free hand he pointed down the shaft of light. So great
+was the tumult that to be heard he brought his lips close to David's
+ear.
+
+"That's the revenue cutter!" he shouted. "She's been laying for us for
+three weeks, and now," he shrieked exultingly, "the old man's going to
+give her a race for it."
+
+From excitement, from cold, from alarm, David's nerves were getting
+beyond his control.
+
+"But how," he demanded, "how do I get ashore?"
+
+"You don't!"
+
+"When he drops the pilot, don't I----"
+
+"How can he drop the pilot?" yelled the youth. "The pilot's got to stick
+by the boat. So have you."
+
+David clutched the young man and swung him so that they stood face to
+face.
+
+"Stick by what boat?" yelled David. "Who are these men? Who are you?
+What boat is this?"
+
+In the glare of the search-light David saw the eyes of the youth staring
+at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a madman. Wrenching
+himself free, the youth pointed at the pilot-house. Above it on a blue
+board in letters of gold-leaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As
+David read it his breath left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down
+his spine. The name he read was _The Three Friends_.
+
+"_The Three Friends!_" shrieked David. "She's a filibuster! She's a
+pirate! Where're we going?"
+
+"To Cuba!"
+
+David emitted a howl of anguish, rage, and protest.
+
+"What for?" he shrieked.
+
+The young man regarded him coldly.
+
+"To pick bananas," he said.
+
+"I won't go to Cuba," shouted David. "I've got to work! I'm paid to sell
+machinery. I demand to be put ashore. I'll lose my job if I'm not put
+ashore. I'll sue you! I'll have the law----"
+
+David found himself suddenly upon his knees. His first thought was that
+the ship had struck a rock, and then that she was bumping herself over a
+succession of coral reefs. She dipped, dived, reared, and plunged. Like
+a hooked fish, she flung herself in the air, quivering from bow to
+stern. No longer was David of a mind to sue the filibusters if they did
+not put him ashore. If only they had put him ashore, in gratitude he
+would have crawled on his knees. What followed was of no interest to
+David, nor to many of the filibusters, nor to any of the Cuban patriots.
+Their groans of self-pity, their prayers and curses in eloquent Spanish,
+rose high above the crash of broken crockery and the pounding of the
+waves. Even when the search-light gave way to a brilliant sunlight the
+circumstance was unobserved by David. Nor was he concerned in the
+tidings brought forward by the youth in the golf cap, who raced the
+slippery decks and vaulted the prostrate forms as sure-footedly as a
+hurdler on a cinder track. To David, in whom he seemed to think he had
+found a congenial spirit, he shouted joyfully, "She's fired two blanks
+at us!" he cried; "now she's firing cannon-balls!"
+
+"Thank God," whispered David; "perhaps she'll sink us!"
+
+But _The Three Friends_ showed her heels to the revenue cutter, and
+so far as David knew hours passed into days and days into weeks. It was
+like those nightmares in which in a minute one is whirled through
+centuries of fear and torment. Sometimes, regardless of nausea, of his
+aching head, of the hard deck, of the waves that splashed and smothered
+him, David fell into broken slumber. Sometimes he woke to a dull
+consciousness of his position. At such moments he added to his misery by
+speculating upon the other misfortunes that might have befallen him on
+shore. Emily, he decided, had given him up for lost and
+married--probably a navy officer in command of a battle-ship. Burdett
+and Sons had cast him off forever. Possibly his disappearance had caused
+them to suspect him; even now they might be regarding him as a
+defaulter, as a fugitive from justice. His accounts, no doubt, were
+being carefully overhauled. In actual time, two days and two nights had
+passed; to David it seemed many ages.
+
+On the third day he crawled to the stern, where there seemed less
+motion, and finding a boat's cushion threw it in the lee scupper and
+fell upon it. From time to time the youth in the golf cap had brought
+him food and drink, and he now appeared from the cook's galley bearing a
+bowl of smoking soup.
+
+David considered it a doubtful attention.
+
+But he said, "You're very kind. How did a fellow like you come to mix up
+with these pirates?"
+
+The youth laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"They're not pirates, they're patriots," he said, "and I'm not mixed up
+with them. My name is Henry Carr and I'm a guest of Jimmy Doyle, the
+captain."
+
+"The barkeeper with the derby hat?" said David.
+
+"He's not a barkeeper, he's a teetotaler," Carr corrected, "and he's the
+greatest filibuster alive. He knows these waters as you know Broadway,
+and he's the salt of the earth. I did him a favor once; sort of
+mouse-helping-the-lion idea. Just through dumb luck I found out about
+this expedition. The government agents in New York found out I'd found
+out and sent for me to tell. But I didn't, and I didn't write the story
+either. Doyle heard about that. So, he asked me to come as his guest,
+and he's promised that after he's landed the expedition and the arms I
+can write as much about it as I darn please."
+
+"Then you're a reporter?" said David.
+
+"I'm what we call a cub reporter," laughed Carr. "You see, I've always
+dreamed of being a war correspondent. The men in the office say I dream
+too much. They're always guying me about it. But, haven't you noticed,
+it's the ones who dream who find their dreams come true. Now this isn't
+real war, but it's a near war, and when the real thing breaks loose, I
+can tell the managing editor I served as a war correspondent in the
+Cuban-Spanish campaign. And he may give me a real job!"
+
+"And you _like_ this?" groaned David.
+
+"I wouldn't, if I were as sick as you are," said Carr, "but I've a
+stomach like a Harlem goat." He stooped and lowered his voice. "Now,
+here are two fake filibusters," he whispered. "The men you read about in
+the newspapers. If a man's a _real_ filibuster, nobody knows it!"
+
+Coming toward them was the tall man who had knocked David out, and the
+little one who had wanted to tie him to a tree.
+
+"All they ask," whispered Carr, "is money and advertisement. If they
+knew I was a reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall man calls
+himself Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a lighthouse on the Florida
+coast, and that's as near to the sea as he ever got. The other one is a
+daredevil calling himself Colonel Beamish. He says he's an English
+officer, and a soldier of fortune, and that he's been in eighteen
+battles. Jimmy says he's never been near enough to a battle to see the
+red-cross flags on the base hospital. But they've fooled these Cubans.
+The Junta thinks they're great fighters, and it's sent them down here to
+work the machine guns. But I'm afraid the only fighting they will do
+will be in the sporting columns, and not in the ring."
+
+A half dozen sea-sick Cubans were carrying a heavy, oblong box. They
+dropped it not two yards from where David lay, and with a screw-driver
+Lighthouse Harry proceeded to open the lid.
+
+Carr explained to David that _The Three Friends_ was approaching
+that part of the coast of Cuba on which she had arranged to land her
+expedition, and that in case she was surprised by one of the Spanish
+patrol boats she was preparing to defend herself.
+
+"They've got an automatic gun in that crate," said Carr, "and they're
+going to assemble it. You'd better move; they'll be tramping all over
+you."
+
+David shook his head feebly.
+
+"I can't move!" he protested. "I wouldn't move if it would free Cuba."
+
+For several hours with very languid interest David watched Lighthouse
+Harry and Colonel Beamish screw a heavy tripod to the deck and balance
+above it a quick-firing one-pounder. They worked very slowly, and to
+David, watching them from the lee scupper, they appeared extremely
+unintelligent.
+
+"I don't believe either of those thugs put an automatic gun together in
+his life," he whispered to Carr. "I never did, either, but I've put
+hundreds of automatic punches together, and I bet that gun won't work."
+
+"What's wrong with it?" said Carr.
+
+Before David could summon sufficient energy to answer, the attention of
+all on board was diverted, and by a single word.
+
+Whether the word is whispered apologetically by the smoking-room steward
+to those deep in bridge, or shrieked from the tops of a sinking ship it
+never quite fails of its effect. A sweating stoker from the engine-room
+saw it first.
+
+"Land!" he hailed.
+
+The sea-sick Cubans raised themselves and swung their hats; their voices
+rose in a fierce chorus.
+
+"Cuba libre!" they yelled.
+
+The sun piercing the morning mists had uncovered a coast-line broken
+with bays and inlets. Above it towered green hills, the peak of each
+topped by a squat block-house; in the valleys and water courses like
+columns of marble rose the royal palms.
+
+"You _must_ look!" Carr entreated David. "It's just as it is in the
+pictures!"
+
+"Then I don't have to look," groaned David.
+
+_The Three Friends_ was making for a point of land that curved like
+a sickle. On the inside of the sickle was Nipe Bay. On the opposite
+shore of that broad harbor at the place of rendezvous a little band of
+Cubans waited to receive the filibusters. The goal was in sight. The
+dreadful voyage was done. Joy and excitement thrilled the ship's
+company. Cuban patriots appeared in uniforms with Cuban flags pinned in
+the brims of their straw sombreros. From the hold came boxes of
+small-arm ammunition, of Mausers, rifles, machetes, and saddles. To
+protect the landing a box of shells was placed in readiness beside the
+one-pounder.
+
+"In two hours, if we have smooth water," shouted Lighthouse Harry, "we
+ought to get all of this on shore. And then, all I ask," he cried
+mightily, "is for some one to kindly show me a Spaniard!"
+
+His heart's desire was instantly granted. He was shown not only one
+Spaniard, but several Spaniards. They were on the deck of one of the
+fastest gun-boats of the Spanish navy. Not a mile from _The Three
+Friends_ she sprang from the cover of a narrow inlet. She did not
+signal questions or extend courtesies. For her the name of the
+ocean-going tug was sufficient introduction. Throwing ahead of her a
+solid shell, she raced in pursuit, and as _The Three Friends_
+leaped to full speed there came from the gun-boat the sharp dry crackle
+of Mausers.
+
+With an explosion of terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell
+into the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he
+tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and
+gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship
+was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like squeaks of fear.
+
+Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a hundred
+feet splashed into a wave.
+
+From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was far
+removed from any of the greater emotions.
+
+"It's no use!" he protested. "They can't do! It's not connected!"
+
+"_What's_ not connected?" yelled Carr. He fell upon David. He
+half-lifted, half-dragged him to his feet.
+
+"If you know what's wrong with that gun, you fix it! Fix it," he
+shouted, "or I'll----"
+
+David was not concerned with the vengeance Carr threatened. For, on the
+instant a miracle had taken place. With the swift insidiousness of
+morphine, peace ran through his veins, soothed his racked body, his
+jangled nerves. _The Three Friends_ had made the harbor, and was
+gliding through water flat as a pond. But David did not know why the
+change had come. He knew only that his soul and body were at rest, that
+the sun was shining, that he had passed through the valley of the
+shadow, and once more was a sane, sound young man.
+
+With a savage thrust of the shoulder he sent Lighthouse Harry sprawling
+from the gun. With swift, practised fingers he fell upon its mechanism.
+He wrenched it apart. He lifted it, reset, readjusted it.
+
+Ignorant themselves, those about him saw that he understood, saw that
+his work was good.
+
+They raised a joyous, defiant cheer. But a shower of bullets drove them
+to cover, bullets that ripped the deck, splintered the superstructure,
+smashed the glass in the air ports, like angry wasps sang in a
+continuous whining chorus. Intent only on the gun, David worked
+feverishly. He swung to the breech, locked it, and dragged it open,
+pulled on the trigger and found it gave before his forefinger.
+
+He shouted with delight.
+
+"I've got it working," he yelled.
+
+He turned to his audience, but his audience had fled. From beneath one
+of the life-boats protruded the riding-boots of Colonel Beamish, the
+tall form of Lighthouse Harry was doubled behind a water butt. A shell
+splashed to port, a shell splashed to starboard. For an instant David
+stood staring wide-eyed at the greyhound of a boat that ate up the
+distance between them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that
+sprang from her bow, at the figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing
+in volleys.
+
+To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had lived it
+all before, and something like raw poison stirred in David, something
+leaped to his throat and choked him, something rose in his brain and
+made him see scarlet. He felt rather than saw young Carr kneeling at the
+box of ammunition, and holding a shell toward him. He heard the click as
+the breech shut, felt the rubber tire of the brace give against the
+weight of his shoulder, down a long shining tube saw the pursuing
+gun-boat, saw her again and many times disappear behind a flash of
+flame. A bullet gashed his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his
+forearm, but he did not heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the
+engines, with the roar of the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking
+unceasingly:
+
+"Cuba libre!" it yelled. "To hell with Spain!" and he found that the
+voice was his own.
+
+The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.
+
+"And the best of it is," he exclaimed joyfully, "it's true!"
+
+For a Spanish gun-boat _had_ been crippled and forced to run
+herself aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single
+gun served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first
+sea-fight of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into
+the limelight a cub reporter had projected a new "hero," a ready-made,
+warranted-not-to-run, popular idol.
+
+They were seated in the pilot-house, "Jimmy" Doyle, Carr, and David, the
+patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon the coast of Cuba,
+and _The_ _Three Friends_ was gliding swiftly and, having
+caught the Florida straits napping, smoothly toward Key West. Carr had
+just finished reading aloud his account of the engagement.
+
+"You will tell the story just as I have written it," commanded the proud
+author. "Your being South as a travelling salesman was only a blind. You
+came to volunteer for this expedition. Before you could explain your
+wish you were mistaken for a secret-service man, and hustled on board.
+That was just where you wanted to be, and when the moment arrived you
+took command of the ship and single-handed won the naval battle of Nipe
+Bay."
+
+Jimmy Doyle nodded his head approvingly. "You certainly did, Dave,"
+protested the great man, "I seen you when you done it!"
+
+At Key West Carr filed his story and while the hospital surgeons kept
+David there over one steamer, to dress his wounds, his fame and features
+spread across the map of the United States.
+
+Burdett and Sons basked in reflected glory. Reporters besieged their
+office. At the Merchants Down-Town Club the business men of lower
+Broadway tendered congratulations.
+
+"Of course, it's a great surprise to us," Burdett and Sons would protest
+and wink heavily. "Of course, when the boy asked to be sent South we'd
+no idea he was planning to fight for Cuba! Or we wouldn't have let him
+go, would we?" Then again they would wink heavily. "I suppose you know,"
+they would say, "that he's a direct descendant of General Hiram Greene,
+who won the battle of Trenton. What I say is, 'Blood will tell!'" And
+then in a body every one in the club would move against the bar and
+exclaim: "Here's to Cuba libre!"
+
+When the _Olivette_ from Key West reached Tampa Bay every Cuban in
+the Tampa cigar factories was at the dock. There were thousands of them
+and all of the Junta, in high hats, to read David an address of welcome.
+
+[Illustration: She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder.]
+
+And, when they saw him at the top of the gang-plank with his head in a
+bandage and his arm in a sling, like a mob of maniacs they howled and
+surged toward him. But before they could reach their hero the courteous
+Junta forced them back, and cleared a pathway for a young girl. She was
+travel-worn and pale, her shirt-waist was disgracefully wrinkled, her
+best hat was a wreck. No one on Broadway would have recognized her as
+Burdett and Sons' most immaculate and beautiful stenographer.
+
+She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder, and clung to him.
+"David!" she sobbed, "promise me you'll never, never do it again!"
+
+
+
+
+THE BAR SINISTER
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+When this story first appeared, the writer received letters of two
+kinds, one asking a question and the other making a statement. The
+question was, whether there was any foundation of truth in the story;
+the statement challenged him to say that there was. The letters seemed
+to show that a large proportion of readers prefer their dose of fiction
+with a sweetening of fact. This is written to furnish that condiment,
+and to answer the question and the statement.
+
+In the dog world, the original of the bull-terrier in the story is known
+as Edgewood Cold Steel and to his intimates as "Kid." His father was
+Lord Minto, a thoroughbred bull-terrier, well known in Canada, but the
+story of Kid's life is that his mother was a black-and-tan named Vic.
+She was a lady of doubtful pedigree. Among her offspring by Lord Minto,
+so I have been often informed by many Canadian dog-fanciers, breeders,
+and exhibitors, was the only white puppy, Kid, in a litter of
+black-and-tans. He made his first appearance in the show world in 1900
+in Toronto, where, under the judging of Mr. Charles H. Mason, he was
+easily first. During that year, when he came to our kennels, and in the
+two years following, he carried off many blue ribbons and cups at nearly
+every first-class show in the country. The other dog, "Jimmy Jocks," who
+in the book was his friend and mentor, was in real life his friend and
+companion, Woodcote Jumbo, or "Jaggers," an aristocratic son of a long
+line of English champions. He has gone to that place where some day all
+good dogs must go.
+
+In this autobiography I have tried to describe Kid as he really is, and
+this year, when he again strives for blue ribbons, I trust, should the
+gentle reader see him at any of the bench-shows, he will give him a
+friendly pat and make his acquaintance. He will find his advances met
+with a polite and gentle courtesy.
+
+                                                            The Author.
+
+
+PART I
+
+The Master was walking most unsteady, his legs tripping each other.
+After the fifth or sixth round, my legs often go the same way.
+
+But even when the Master's legs bend and twist a bit, you mustn't think
+he can't reach you. Indeed, that is the time he kicks most frequent. So
+I kept behind him in the shadow, or ran in the middle of the street. He
+stopped at many public houses with swinging doors, those doors that are
+cut so high from the sidewalk that you can look in under them, and see
+if the Master is inside. At night, when I peep beneath them, the man at
+the counter will see me first and say, "Here's the Kid, Jerry, come to
+take you home. Get a move on you"; and the Master will stumble out and
+follow me. It's lucky for us I'm so white, for, no matter how dark the
+night, he can always see me ahead, just out of reach of his boot. At
+night the Master certainly does see most amazing. Sometimes he sees two
+or four of me, and walks in a circle, so that I have to take him by the
+leg of his trousers and lead him into the right road. One night, when he
+was very nasty-tempered and I was coaxing him along, two men passed us,
+and one of them says, "Look at that brute!" and the other asks, "Which?"
+and they both laugh. The Master he cursed them good and proper.
+
+But this night, whenever we stopped at a public house, the Master's pals
+left it and went on with us to the next. They spoke quite civil to me,
+and when the Master tried a flying kick, they gives him a shove. "Do you
+want us to lose our money?" says the pals.
+
+I had had nothing to eat for a day and a night, and just before we set
+out the Master gives me a wash under the hydrant. Whenever I am locked
+up until all the slop-pans in our alley are empty, and made to take a
+bath, and the Master's pals speak civil and feel my ribs, I know
+something is going to happen. And that night, when every time they see a
+policeman under a lamp-post, they dodged across the street, and when at
+the last one of them picked me up and hid me under his jacket, I began
+to tremble; for I knew what it meant. It meant that I was to fight again
+for the Master.
+
+I don't fight because I like fighting. I fight because if I didn't the
+other dog would find my throat, and the Master would lose his stakes,
+and I would be very sorry for him, and ashamed. Dogs can pass me and I
+can pass dogs, and I'd never pick a fight with none of them. When I see
+two dogs standing on their hind legs in the streets, clawing each
+other's ears, and snapping for each other's wind-pipes, or howling and
+swearing and rolling in the mud, I feel sorry they should act so, and
+pretend not to notice. If he'd let me, I'd like to pass the time of day
+with every dog I meet. But there's something about me that no nice dog
+can abide. When I trot up to nice dogs, nodding and grinning, to make
+friends, they always tell me to be off. "Go to the devil!" they bark at
+me. "Get out!" And when I walk away they shout "Mongrel!" and
+"Gutter-dog!" and sometimes, after my back is turned, they rush me. I
+could kill most of them with three shakes, breaking the backbone of the
+little ones and squeezing the throat of the big ones. But what's the
+good? They _are_ nice dogs; that's why I try to make up to them:
+and, though it's not for them to say it, I _am_ a street-dog, and
+if I try to push into the company of my betters, I suppose it's their
+right to teach me my place.
+
+Of course they don't know I'm the best fighting bull-terrier of my
+weight in Montreal. That's why it wouldn't be fair for me to take notice
+of what they shout. They don't know that if I once locked my jaws on
+them I'd carry away whatever I touched. The night I fought Kelley's
+White Rat, I wouldn't loosen up until the Master made a noose in my
+leash and strangled me; and, as for that Ottawa dog, if the handlers
+hadn't thrown red pepper down my nose I _never_ would have let go
+of him. I don't think the handlers treated me quite right that time, but
+maybe they didn't know the Ottawa dog was dead. I did.
+
+I learned my fighting from my mother when I was very young. We slept in
+a lumber-yard on the river-front, and by day hunted for food along the
+wharves. When we got it, the other tramp-dogs would try to take it off
+us, and then it was wonderful to see mother fly at them and drive them
+away. All I know of fighting I learned from mother, watching her picking
+the ash-heaps for me when I was too little to fight for myself. No one
+ever was so good to me as mother. When it snowed and the ice was in the
+St. Lawrence, she used to hunt alone, and bring me back new bones, and
+she'd sit and laugh to see me trying to swallow 'em whole. I was just a
+puppy then; my teeth was falling out. When I was able to fight we kept
+the whole river-range to ourselves. I had the genuine long "punishing"
+jaw, so mother said, and there wasn't a man or a dog that dared worry
+us. Those were happy days, those were; and we lived well, share and
+share alike, and when we wanted a bit of fun, we chased the fat old
+wharf-rats! My, how they would squeal!
+
+Then the trouble came. It was no trouble to me. I was too young to care
+then. But mother took it so to heart that she grew ailing, and wouldn't
+go abroad with me by day. It was the same old scandal that they're
+always bringing up against me. I was so young then that I didn't know. I
+couldn't see any difference between mother--and other mothers.
+
+But one day a pack of curs we drove off snarled back some new names at
+her, and mother dropped her head and ran, just as though they had
+whipped us. After that she wouldn't go out with me except in the dark,
+and one day she went away and never came back, and, though I hunted for
+her in every court and alley and back street of Montreal, I never found
+her.
+
+One night, a month after mother ran away, I asked Guardian, the old
+blind mastiff, whose Master is the night watchman on our slip, what it
+all meant. And he told me.
+
+"Every dog in Montreal knows," he says, "except you; and every Master
+knows. So I think it's time you knew."
+
+Then he tells me that my father, who had treated mother so bad, was a
+great and noble gentleman from London. "Your father had twenty-two
+registered ancestors, had your father," old Guardian says, "and in him
+was the best bull-terrier blood of England, the most ancientest, the
+most royal; the winning 'blue-ribbon' blood, that breeds champions. He
+had sleepy pink eyes and thin pink lips, and he was as white all over as
+his own white teeth, and under his white skin you could see his muscles,
+hard and smooth, like the links of a steel chain. When your father stood
+still, and tipped his nose in the air, it was just as though he was
+saying, 'Oh, yes, you common dogs and men, you may well stare. It must
+be a rare treat for you colonials to see real English royalty.' He
+certainly was pleased with hisself, was your father. He looked just as
+proud and haughty as one of them stone dogs in Victoria Park--them as is
+cut out of white marble. And you're like him," says the old mastiff--"by
+that, of course, meaning you're white, same as him. That's the only
+likeness. But, you see, the trouble is, Kid--well, you see, Kid, the
+trouble is--your mother----"
+
+"That will do," I said, for then I understood without his telling me,
+and I got up and walked away, holding my head and tail high in the air.
+
+But I was, oh, so miserable, and I wanted to see mother that very
+minute, and tell her that I didn't care.
+
+Mother is what I am, a street-dog; there's no royal blood in mother's
+veins, nor is she like that father of mine, nor--and that's the
+worst--she's not even like me. For while I, when I'm washed for a fight,
+am as white as clean snow, she--and this is our trouble--she, my mother,
+is a black-and-tan.
+
+When mother hid herself from me, I was twelve months old and able to
+take care of myself, and as, after mother left me, the wharves were
+never the same, I moved uptown and met the Master. Before he came, lots
+of other men-folks had tried to make up to me, and to whistle me home.
+But they either tried patting me or coaxing me with a piece of meat; so
+I didn't take to 'em. But one day the Master pulled me out of a
+street-fight by the hind legs, and kicked me good.
+
+"You want to fight, do you?" says he. "I'll give you all the
+_fighting_ you want!" he says, and he kicks me again. So I knew he
+was my Master, and I followed him home. Since that day I've pulled off
+many fights for him, and they've brought dogs from all over the province
+to have a go at me; but up to that night none, under thirty pounds, had
+ever downed me.
+
+But that night, so soon as they carried me into the ring, I saw the dog
+was overweight, and that I was no match for him. It was asking too much
+of a puppy. The Master should have known I couldn't do it. Not that I
+mean to blame the Master, for when sober, which he sometimes was--though
+not, as you might say, his habit--he was most kind to me, and let me out
+to find food, if I could get it, and only kicked me when I didn't pick
+him up at night and lead him home.
+
+But kicks will stiffen the muscles, and starving a dog so as to get him
+ugly-tempered for a fight may make him nasty, but it's weakening to his
+insides, and it causes the legs to wobble.
+
+The ring was in a hall back of a public house. There was a red-hot
+whitewashed stove in one corner, and the ring in the other. I lay in the
+Master's lap, wrapped in my blanket, and, spite of the stove, shivering
+awful; but I always shiver before a fight: I can't help gettin' excited.
+While the men-folks were a-flashing their money and taking their last
+drink at the bar, a little Irish groom in gaiters came up to me and give
+me the back of his hand to smell, and scratched me behind the ears.
+
+"You poor little pup," says he; "you haven't no show," he says. "That
+brute in the tap-room he'll eat your heart out."
+
+"That's what _you_ think," says the Master, snarling. "I'll lay you
+a quid the Kid chews him up."
+
+The groom he shook his head, but kept looking at me so sorry-like that I
+begun to get a bit sad myself. He seemed like he couldn't bear to leave
+off a-patting of me, and he says, speaking low just like he would to a
+man-folk, "Well, good luck to you, little pup," which I thought so civil
+of him that I reached up and licked his hand. I don't do that to many
+men. And the Master he knew I didn't, and took on dreadful.
+
+"What 'ave you got on the back of your hand?" says he, jumping up.
+
+"Soap!" says the groom, quick as a rat. "That's more than you've got on
+yours. Do you want to smell of it?" and he sticks his fist under the
+Master's nose. But the pals pushed in between 'em.
+
+"He tried to poison the Kid!" shouts the Master.
+
+"Oh, one fight at a time," says the referee. "Get into the ring, Jerry.
+We're waiting." So we went into the ring.
+
+I never could just remember what did happen in that ring. He give me no
+time to spring. He fell on me like a horse. I couldn't keep my feet
+against him, and though, as I saw, he could get his hold when he liked,
+he wanted to chew me over a bit first. I was wondering if they'd be able
+to pry him off me, when, in the third round, he took his hold; and I
+begun to drown, just as I did when I fell into the river off the Red C
+slip. He closed deeper and deeper on my throat, and everything went
+black and red and bursting; and then, when I were sure I were dead, the
+handlers pulled him off, and the Master give me a kick that brought me
+to. But I couldn't move none, or even wink, both eyes being shut with
+lumps.
+
+"He's a cur!" yells the Master, "a sneaking, cowardly cur! He lost the
+fight for me," says he, "because he's a ---- ---- ---- cowardly cur."
+And he kicks me again in the lower ribs, so that I go sliding across the
+sawdust. "There's gratitude fer yer," yells the Master. "I've fed that
+dog, and nussed that dog and housed him like a prince; and now he puts
+his tail between his legs and sells me out, he does. He's a coward! I've
+done with him, I am. I'd sell him for a pipeful of tobacco." He picked
+me up by the tail, and swung me for the men-folks to see. "Does any
+gentleman here want to buy a dog," he says, "to make into sausage-meat?"
+he says. "That's all he's good for."
+
+Then I heard the little Irish groom say, "I'll give you ten bob for the
+dog."
+
+And another voice says, "Ah, don't you do it; the dog's same as
+dead--mebbe he is dead."
+
+"Ten shillings!" says the Master, and his voice sobers a bit; "make it
+two pounds and he's yours."
+
+But the pals rushed in again.
+
+"Don't you be a fool, Jerry," they say. "You'll be sorry for this when
+you're sober. The Kid's worth a fiver."
+
+One of my eyes was not so swelled up as the other, and as I hung by my
+tail, I opened it, and saw one of the pals take the groom by the
+shoulder.
+
+"You ought to give 'im five pounds for that dog, mate," he says; "that's
+no ordinary dog. That dog's got good blood in him, that dog has. Why,
+his father--that very dog's father----"
+
+I thought he never would go on. He waited like he wanted to be sure the
+groom was listening.
+
+[Illustration: "He's a coward, I've done with him."]
+
+"That very dog's father," says the pal, "is Regent Royal, son of
+Champion Regent Monarch, champion bull-terrier of England for four
+years."
+
+I was sore, and torn, and chewed most awful, but what the pal said
+sounded so fine that I wanted to wag my tail, only couldn't, owing to my
+hanging from it.
+
+But the Master calls out: "Yes, his father was Regent Royal; who's
+saying he wasn't? but the pup's a cowardly cur, that's what his pup is.
+And why? I'll tell you why: because his mother was a black-and-tan
+street-dog, that's why!"
+
+I don't see how I got the strength, but, someway, I threw myself out of
+the Master's grip and fell at his feet, and turned over and fastened all
+my teeth in his ankle, just across the bone.
+
+When I woke, after the pals had kicked me off him, I was in the
+smoking-car of a railroad-train, lying in the lap of the little groom,
+and he was rubbing my open wounds with a greasy yellow stuff, exquisite
+to the smell and most agreeable to lick off.
+
+
+PART II
+
+"Well, what's your name--Nolan? Well, Nolan, these references are
+satisfactory," said the young gentleman my new Master called "Mr.
+Wyndham, sir." "I'll take you on as second man. You can begin to-day."
+
+My new Master shuffled his feet and put his finger to his forehead.
+"Thank you, sir," says he. Then he choked like he had swallowed a
+fish-bone. "I have a little dawg, sir," says he.
+
+"You can't keep him," says "Mr. Wyndham, sir," very short.
+
+"'E's only a puppy, sir," says my new Master; "'e wouldn't go outside
+the stables, sir."
+
+"It's not that," says "Mr. Wyndham, sir." "I have a large kennel of very
+fine dogs; they're the best of their breed in America. I don't allow
+strange dogs on the premises."
+
+The Master shakes his head, and motions me with his cap, and I crept out
+from behind the door. "I'm sorry, sir," says the Master. "Then I can't
+take the place. I can't get along without the dawg, sir."
+
+"Mr. Wyndham, sir," looked at me that fierce that I guessed he was going
+to whip me, so I turned over on my back and begged with my legs and
+tail.
+
+"Why, you beat him!" says "Mr. Wyndham, sir," very stern.
+
+"No fear!" the Master says, getting very red. "The party I bought him
+off taught him that. He never learnt that from me!" He picked me up in
+his arms, and to show "Mr. Wyndham, sir," how well I loved the Master, I
+bit his chin and hands.
+
+"Mr. Wyndham, sir," turned over the letters the Master had given him.
+"Well, these references certainly are very strong," he says. "I guess
+I'll let the dog stay. Only see you keep him away from the kennels--or
+you'll both go."
+
+"Thank you, sir," says the Master, grinning like a cat when she's safe
+behind the area railing.
+
+"He's not a bad bull-terrier," says "Mr. Wyndham, sir," feeling my head.
+"Not that I know much about the smooth-coated breeds. My dogs are St.
+Bernards." He stopped patting me and held up my nose. "What's the matter
+with his ears?" he says. "They're chewed to pieces. Is this a fighting
+dog?" he asks, quick and rough-like.
+
+I could have laughed. If he hadn't been holding my nose, I certainly
+would have had a good grin at him. Me the best under thirty pounds in
+the Province of Quebec, and him asking if I was a fighting dog! I ran to
+the Master and hung down my head modest-like, waiting for him to tell my
+list of battles; but the Master he coughs in his cap most painful.
+"Fightin' dawg, sir!" he cries. "Lor' bless you, sir, the Kid don't know
+the word. 'E's just a puppy, sir, same as you see; a pet dog, so to
+speak. 'E's a regular old lady's lap-dog, the Kid is."
+
+"Well, you keep him away from my St. Bernards," says "Mr. Wyndham, sir,"
+"or they might make a mouthful of him."
+
+"Yes, sir; that they might," says the Master. But when we gets outside
+he slaps his knee and laughs inside hisself, and winks at me most
+sociable.
+
+The Master's new home was in the country, in a province they called Long
+Island. There was a high stone wall about his home with big iron gates
+to it, same as Godfrey's brewery; and there was a house with five red
+roofs; and the stables, where I lived, was cleaner than the aërated
+bakery-shop. And then there was the kennels; but they was like nothing
+else in this world that ever I see. For the first days I couldn't sleep
+of nights for fear some one would catch me lying in such a cleaned-up
+place, and would chase me out of it; and when I did fall to sleep I'd
+dream I was back in the old Master's attic, shivering under the rusty
+stove, which never had no coals in it, with the Master flat on his back
+on the cold floor, with his clothes on. And I'd wake up scared and
+whimpering, and find myself on the new Master's cot with his hand on the
+quilt beside me; and I'd see the glow of the big stove, and hear the
+high-quality horses below-stairs stamping in their straw-lined boxes,
+and I'd snoop the sweet smell of hay and harness-soap and go to sleep
+again.
+
+The stables was my jail, so the Master said, but I don't ask no better
+home than that jail.
+
+"Now, Kid," says he, sitting on the top of a bucket upside down, "you've
+got to understand this. When I whistle it means you're not to go out of
+this 'ere yard. These stables is your jail. If you leave 'em I'll have
+to leave 'em too, and over the seas, in the County Mayo, an old mother
+will 'ave to leave her bit of a cottage. For two pounds I must be
+sending her every month, or she'll have naught to eat, nor no thatch
+over 'er head. I can't lose my place, Kid, so see you don't lose it for
+me. You must keep away from the kennels," says he; "they're not for the
+likes of you. The kennels are for the quality. I wouldn't take a litter
+of them woolly dogs for one wag of your tail, Kid, but for all that they
+are your betters, same as the gentry up in the big house are my betters.
+I know my place and keep away from the gentry, and you keep away from
+the champions."
+
+So I never goes out of the stables. All day I just lay in the sun on the
+stone flags, licking my jaws, and watching the grooms wash down the
+carriages, and the only care I had was to see they didn't get gay and
+turn the hose on me. There wasn't even a single rat to plague me. Such
+stables I never did see.
+
+"Nolan," says the head groom, "some day that dog of yours will give you
+the slip. You can't keep a street-dog tied up all his life. It's against
+his natur'." The head groom is a nice old gentleman, but he doesn't know
+everything. Just as though I'd been a street-dog because I liked it! As
+if I'd rather poke for my vittles in ash-heaps than have 'em handed me
+in a wash-basin, and would sooner bite and fight than be polite and
+sociable. If I'd had mother there I couldn't have asked for nothing
+more. But I'd think of her snooping in the gutters, or freezing of
+nights under the bridges, or, what's worst of all, running through the
+hot streets with her tongue down, so wild and crazy for a drink that the
+people would shout "mad dog" at her and stone her. Water's so good that
+I don't blame the men-folks for locking it up inside their houses; but
+when the hot days come, I think they might remember that those are the
+dog-days, and leave a little water outside in a trough, like they do for
+the horses. Then we wouldn't go mad, and the policemen wouldn't shoot
+us. I had so much of everything I wanted that it made me think a lot of
+the days when I hadn't nothing, and if I could have given what I had to
+mother, as she used to share with me, I'd have been the happiest dog in
+the land. Not that I wasn't happy then, and most grateful to the Master,
+too, and if I'd only minded him, the trouble wouldn't have come again.
+
+But one day the coachman says that the little lady they called Miss
+Dorothy had come back from school, and that same morning she runs over
+to the stables to pat her ponies, and she sees me.
+
+"Oh, what a nice little, white little dog!" said she. "Whose little dog
+are you?" says she.
+
+"That's my dog, miss," says the Master. "'Is name is Kid." And I ran up
+to her most polite, and licks her fingers, for I never see so pretty and
+kind a lady.
+
+"You must come with me and call on my new puppies," says she, picking me
+up in her arms and starting off with me.
+
+"Oh, but please, miss," cries Nolan, "Mr. Wyndham give orders that the
+Kid's not to go to the kennels."
+
+"That'll be all right," says the little lady; "they're my kennels too.
+And the puppies will like to play with him."
+
+You wouldn't believe me if I was to tell you of the style of them
+quality-dogs. If I hadn't seen it myself I wouldn't have believed it
+neither. The Viceroy of Canada don't live no better. There was forty of
+them, but each one had his own house and a yard--most exclusive--and a
+cot and a drinking-basin all to hisself. They had servants standing
+round waiting to feed 'em when they was hungry, and valets to wash 'em;
+and they had their hair combed and brushed like the grooms must when
+they go out on the box. Even the puppies had overcoats with their names
+on 'em in blue letters, and the name of each of those they called
+champions was painted up fine over his front door just like it was a
+public house or a veterinary's. They were the biggest St. Bernards I
+ever did see. I could have walked under them if they'd have let me. But
+they were very proud and haughty dogs, and looked only once at me, and
+then sniffed in the air. The little lady's own dog was an old gentleman
+bull-dog. He'd come along with us, and when he notices how taken aback I
+was with all I see, 'e turned quite kind and affable and showed me
+about.
+
+"Jimmy Jocks," Miss Dorothy called him, but, owing to his weight, he
+walked most dignified and slow, waddling like a duck, as you might say,
+and looked much too proud and handsome for such a silly name.
+
+"That's the runway, and that's the trophy-house," says he to me, "and
+that over there is the hospital, where you have to go if you get
+distemper, and the vet gives you beastly medicine."
+
+"And which of these is your 'ouse, sir?" asks I, wishing to be
+respectful. But he looked that hurt and haughty. "I don't live in the
+kennels," says he, most contemptuous. "I am a house-dog. I sleep in Miss
+Dorothy's room. And at lunch I'm let in with the family, if the visitors
+don't mind. They 'most always do, but they're too polite to say so.
+Besides," says he, smiling most condescending, "visitors are always
+afraid of me. It's because I'm so ugly," says he. "I suppose," says he,
+screwing up his wrinkles and speaking very slow and impressive, "I
+suppose I'm the ugliest bull-dog in America"; and as he seemed to be so
+pleased to think hisself so, I said, "Yes, sir; you certainly are the
+ugliest ever I see," at which he nodded his head most approving.
+
+"But I couldn't hurt 'em, as you say," he goes on, though I hadn't said
+nothing like that, being too polite. "I'm too old," he says; "I haven't
+any teeth. The last time one of those grizzly bears," said he, glaring
+at the big St. Bernards, "took a hold of me, he nearly was my death,"
+says he. I thought his eyes would pop out of his head, he seemed so
+wrought up about it. "He rolled me around in the dirt, he did," says
+Jimmy Jocks, "an' I couldn't get up. It was low," says Jimmy Jocks,
+making a face like he had a bad taste in his mouth. "Low, that's what I
+call it--bad form, you understand, young man, not done in my
+set--and--and low." He growled 'way down in his stomach, and puffed
+hisself out, panting and blowing like he had been on a run.
+
+"I'm not a street fighter," he says, scowling at a St. Bernard marked
+"Champion." "And when my rheumatism is not troubling me," he says, "I
+endeavor to be civil to all dogs, so long as they are gentlemen."
+
+"Yes, sir," said I, for even to me he had been most affable.
+
+At this we had come to a little house off by itself, and Jimmy Jocks
+invites me in. "This is their trophy-room," he says, "where they keep
+their prizes. Mine," he says, rather grand-like, "are on the sideboard."
+Not knowing what a sideboard might be, I said, "Indeed, sir, that must
+be very gratifying." But he only wrinkled up his chops as much as to
+say, "It is my right."
+
+The trophy-room was as wonderful as any public house I ever see. On the
+walls was pictures of nothing but beautiful St. Bernard dogs, and rows
+and rows of blue and red and yellow ribbons; and when I asked Jimmy
+Jocks why they was so many more of blue than of the others, he laughs
+and says, "Because these kennels always win." And there was many shining
+cups on the shelves, which Jimmy Jocks told me were prizes won by the
+champions.
+
+"Now, sir, might I ask you, sir," says I, "wot is a champion?"
+
+At that he panted and breathed so hard I thought he would bust hisself.
+"My dear young friend!" says he, "wherever have you been educated? A
+champion is a--a champion," he says. "He must win nine blue ribbons in
+the 'open' class. You follow me--that is--against all comers. Then he
+has the title before his name, and they put his photograph in the
+sporting papers. You know, of course, that I am a champion," says he. "I
+am Champion Woodstock Wizard III, and the two other Woodstock Wizards,
+my father and uncle, were both champions."
+
+"But I thought your name was Jimmy Jocks," I said.
+
+He laughs right out at that.
+
+"That's my kennel name, not my registered name," he says. "Why,
+certainly you know that every dog has two names. Now, for instance,
+what's your registered name and number?" says he.
+
+"I've got only one name," I says. "Just Kid."
+
+Woodstock Wizard puffs at that and wrinkles up his forehead and pops out
+his eyes.
+
+"Who are your people?" says he. "Where is your home?"
+
+"At the stable, sir," I said. "My Master is the second groom."
+
+At that Woodstock Wizard III looks at me for quite a bit without
+winking, and stares all around the room over my head.
+
+"Oh, well," says he at last, "you're a very civil young dog," says he,
+"and I blame no one for what he can't help," which I thought most fair
+and liberal. "And I have known many bull-terriers that were champions,"
+says he, "though as a rule they mostly run with fire-engines and to
+fighting. For me, I wouldn't care to run through the streets after a
+hose-cart, nor to fight," says he; "but each to his taste."
+
+I could not help thinking that if Woodstock Wizard III tried to follow a
+fire-engine he would die of apoplexy, and seeing he'd lost his teeth, it
+was lucky he had no taste for fighting; but, after his being so
+condescending, I didn't say nothing.
+
+"Anyway," says he, "every smooth-coated dog is better than any hairy old
+camel like those St. Bernards, and if ever you're hungry down at the
+stables, young man, come up to the house and I'll give you a bone. I
+can't eat them myself, but I bury them around the garden from force of
+habit and in case a friend should drop in. Ah, I see my mistress
+coming," he says, "and I bid you good day. I regret," he says, "that our
+different social position prevents our meeting frequent, for you're a
+worthy young dog with a proper respect for your betters, and in this
+country there's precious few of them have that." Then he waddles off,
+leaving me alone and very sad, for he was the first dog in many days
+that had spoke to me. But since he showed, seeing that I was a
+stable-dog, he didn't want my company, I waited for him to get well
+away. It was not a cheerful place to wait, the trophy-house. The
+pictures of the champions seemed to scowl at me, and ask what right such
+as I had even to admire them, and the blue and gold ribbons and the
+silver cups made me very miserable. I had never won no blue ribbons or
+silver cups, only stakes for the old Master to spend in the publics; and
+I hadn't won them for being a beautiful high-quality dog, but just for
+fighting--which, of course, as Woodstock Wizard III says, is low. So I
+started for the stables, with my head down and my tail between my legs,
+feeling sorry I had ever left the Master. But I had more reason to be
+sorry before I got back to him.
+
+The trophy-house was quite a bit from the kennels, and as I left it I
+see Miss Dorothy and Woodstock Wizard III walking back toward them, and,
+also, that a big St. Bernard, his name was Champion Red Elfberg, had
+broke his chain and was running their way. When he reaches old Jimmy
+Jocks he lets out a roar like a grain-steamer in a fog, and he makes
+three leaps for him. Old Jimmy Jocks was about a fourth his size; but he
+plants his feet and curves his back, and his hair goes up around his
+neck like a collar. But he never had no show at no time, for the grizzly
+bear, as Jimmy Jocks had called him, lights on old Jimmy's back and
+tries to break it, and old Jimmy Jocks snaps his gums and claws the
+grass, panting and groaning awful. But he can't do nothing, and the
+grizzly bear just rolls him under him, biting and tearing cruel. The
+odds was all that Woodstock Wizard III was going to be killed; I had
+fought enough to see that: but not knowing the rules of the game among
+champions, I didn't like to interfere between two gentlemen who might be
+settling a private affair, and, as it were, take it as presuming of me.
+So I stood by, though I was shaking terrible, and holding myself in like
+I was on a leash. But at that Woodstock Wizard III, who was underneath,
+sees me through the dust, and calls very faint, "Help, you!" he says.
+"Take him in the hind leg," he says. "He's murdering me," he says. And
+then the little Miss Dorothy, who was crying, and calling to the
+kennel-men, catches at the Red Elfberg's hind legs to pull him off, and
+the brute, keeping his front pats well in Jimmy's stomach, turns his big
+head and snaps at her. So that was all I asked for, thank you. I went up
+under him. It was really nothing. He stood so high that I had only to
+take off about three feet from him and come in from the side, and my
+long "punishing jaw," as mother was always talking about, locked on his
+woolly throat, and my back teeth met. I couldn't shake him, but I shook
+myself, and every time I shook myself there was thirty pounds of weight
+tore at his wind-pipes. I couldn't see nothing for his long hair, but I
+heard Jimmy Jocks puffing and blowing on one side, and munching the
+brute's leg with his old gums. Jimmy was an old sport that day, was
+Jimmy, or Woodstock Wizard III, as I should say. When the Red Elfberg
+was out and down I had to run, or those kennel-men would have had my
+life. They chased me right into the stables; and from under the hay I
+watched the head groom take down a carriage-whip and order them to the
+right about. Luckily Master and the young grooms were out, or that day
+there'd have been fighting for everybody.
+
+Well, it nearly did for me and the Master. "Mr. Wyndham, sir," comes
+raging to the stables. I'd half killed his best prize-winner, he says,
+and had oughter be shot, and he gives the Master his notice. But Miss
+Dorothy she follows him, and says it was his Red Elfberg what began the
+fight, and that I'd saved Jimmy's life, and that old Jimmy Jocks was
+worth more to her than all the St. Bernards in the Swiss
+mountains--wherever they may be. And that I was her champion, anyway.
+Then, she cried over me most beautiful, and over Jimmy Jocks, too, who
+was that tied up in bandages he couldn't even waddle. So when he heard
+that side of it, "Mr. Wyndham, sir," told us that if Nolan put me on a
+chain we could stay. So it came out all right for everybody but me. I
+was glad the Master kept his place, but I'd never worn a chain before,
+and it disheartened me. But that was the least of it. For the
+quality-dogs couldn't forgive my whipping their champion, and they came
+to the fence between the kennels and the stables, and laughed through
+the bars, barking most cruel words at me. I couldn't understand how they
+found it out, but they knew. After the fight Jimmy Jocks was most
+condescending to me, and he said the grooms had boasted to the
+kennel-men that I was a son of Regent Royal, and that when the
+kennel-men asked who was my mother they had had to tell them that too.
+Perhaps that was the way of it, but, however, the scandal got out, and
+every one of the quality-dogs knew that I was a street-dog and the son
+of a black-and-tan.
+
+"These misalliances will occur," said Jimmy Jocks, in his old-fashioned
+way; "but no well-bred dog," says he, looking most scornful at the St.
+Bernards, who were howling behind the palings, "would refer to your
+misfortune before you, certainly not cast it in your face. I myself
+remember your father's father, when he made his début at the Crystal
+Palace. He took four blue ribbons and three specials."
+
+But no sooner than Jimmy would leave me the St. Bernards would take to
+howling again, insulting mother and insulting me. And when I tore at my
+chain, they, seeing they were safe, would howl the more. It was never
+the same after that; the laughs and the jeers cut into my heart, and the
+chain bore heavy on my spirit. I was so sad that sometimes I wished I
+was back in the gutter again, where no one was better than me, and some
+nights I wished I was dead. If it hadn't been for the Master being so
+kind, and that it would have looked like I was blaming mother, I would
+have twisted my leash and hanged myself.
+
+About a month after my fight, the word was passed through the kennels
+that the New York Show was coming, and such goings on as followed I
+never did see. If each of them had been matched to fight for a thousand
+pounds and the gate, they couldn't have trained more conscientious. But
+perhaps that's just my envy. The kennel-men rubbed 'em and scrubbed 'em,
+and trims their hair and curls and combs it, and some dogs they fatted
+and some they starved. No one talked of nothing but the Show, and the
+chances "our kennels" had against the other kennels, and if this one of
+our champions would win over that one, and whether them as hoped to be
+champions had better show in the "open" or the "limit" class, and
+whether this dog would beat his own dad, or whether his little puppy
+sister couldn't beat the two of 'em. Even the grooms had their money up,
+and day or night you heard nothing but praises of "our" dogs, until I,
+being so far out of it, couldn't have felt meaner if I had been running
+the streets with a can to my tail. I knew shows were not for such as me,
+and so all day I lay stretched at the end of my chain, pretending I was
+asleep, and only too glad that they had something so important to think
+of that they could leave me alone.
+
+But one day, before the Show opened, Miss Dorothy came to the stables
+with "Mr. Wyndham, sir," and seeing me chained up and so miserable, she
+takes me in her arms.
+
+"You poor little tyke!" says she. "It's cruel to tie him up so; he's
+eating his heart out, Nolan," she says. "I don't know nothing about
+bull-terriers," says she, "but I think Kid's got good points," says she,
+"and you ought to show him. Jimmy Jocks has three legs on the Rensselaer
+Cup now, and I'm going to show him this time, so that he can get the
+fourth; and, if you wish, I'll enter your dog too. How would you like
+that, Kid?" says she. "How would you like to see the most beautiful dogs
+in the world? Maybe you'd meet a pal or two," says she. "It would cheer
+you up, wouldn't it, Kid?" says she. But I was so upset I could only wag
+my tail most violent. "He says it would!" says she, though, being that
+excited, I hadn't said nothing.
+
+So "Mr. Wyndham, sir," laughs, and takes out a piece of blue paper and
+sits down at the head groom's table.
+
+"What's the name of the father of your dog, Nolan?" says he. And Nolan
+says: "The man I got him off told me he was a son of Champion Regent
+Royal, sir. But it don't seem likely, does it?" says Nolan.
+
+"It does not!" says "Mr. Wyndham, sir," short-like.
+
+"Aren't you sure, Nolan?" says Miss Dorothy.
+
+"No, miss," says the Master.
+
+"Sire unknown," says "Mr. Wyndham, sir," and writes it down.
+
+"Date of birth?" asks "Mr. Wyndham, sir."
+
+"I--I--unknown, sir," says Nolan. And "Mr. Wyndham, sir," writes it
+down.
+
+"Breeder?" says "Mr. Wyndham, sir."
+
+"Unknown," says Nolan, getting very red around the jaws, and I drops my
+head and tail. And "Mr. Wyndham, sir," writes that down.
+
+"Mother's name?" says "Mr. Wyndham, sir."
+
+"She was a--unknown," says the Master. And I licks his hand.
+
+"Dam unknown," says "Mr. Wyndham, sir," and writes it down. Then he
+takes the paper and reads out loud: "'Sire unknown, dam unknown, breeder
+unknown, date of birth unknown.' You'd better call him the 'Great
+Unknown,'" says he. "Who's paying his entrance fee?"
+
+"I am," says Miss Dorothy.
+
+Two weeks after we all got on a train for New York, Jimmy Jocks and me
+following Nolan in the smoking-car, and twenty-two of the St. Bernards
+in boxes and crates and on chains and leashes. Such a barking and
+howling I never did hear; and when they sees me going, too, they laughs
+fit to kill.
+
+"Wot is this--a circus?" says the railroad man.
+
+But I had no heart in it. I hated to go. I knew I was no "show" dog,
+even though Miss Dorothy and the Master did their best to keep me from
+shaming them. For before we set out Miss Dorothy brings a man from town
+who scrubbed and rubbed me, and sandpapered my tail, which hurt most
+awful, and shaved my ears with the Master's razor, so you could 'most
+see clear through 'em, and sprinkles me over with pipe-clay, till I
+shines like a Tommy's cross-belts.
+
+"Upon my word!" says Jimmy Jocks when he first sees me. "Wot a swell you
+are! You're the image of your grand-dad when he made his début at the
+Crystal Palace. He took four firsts and three specials." But I knew he
+was only trying to throw heart into me. They might scrub, and they might
+rub, and they might pipe-clay, but they couldn't pipe-clay the insides
+of me, and they was black-and-tan.
+
+Then we came to a garden, which it was not, but the biggest hall in the
+world. Inside there was lines of benches a few miles long, and on them
+sat every dog in America. If all the dog snatchers in Montreal had
+worked night and day for a year, they couldn't have caught so many dogs.
+And they was all shouting and barking and howling so vicious that my
+heart stopped beating. For at first I thought they was all enraged at my
+presuming to intrude. But after I got in my place they kept at it just
+the same, barking at every dog as he come in: daring him to fight, and
+ordering him out, and asking him what breed of dog he thought he was,
+anyway. Jimmy Jocks was chained just behind me, and he said he never see
+so fine a show. "That's a hot class you're in, my lad," he says, looking
+over into my street, where there were thirty bull terriers. They was all
+as white as cream, and each so beautiful that if I could have broke my
+chain I would have run all the way home and hid myself under the horse
+trough.
+
+All night long they talked and sang, and passed greetings with old pals,
+and the homesick puppies howled dismal. Them that couldn't sleep
+wouldn't let no others sleep, and all the electric lights burned in the
+roof, and in my eyes. I could hear Jimmy Jocks snoring peaceful, but I
+could only doze by jerks, and when I dozed I dreamed horrible. All the
+dogs in the hall seemed coming at me for daring to intrude, with their
+jaws red and open, and their eyes blazing like the lights in the roof.
+"You're a street dog! Get out, you street dog!" they yells. And as they
+drives me out, the pipe clay drops off me, and they laugh and shriek;
+and when I looks down I see that I have turned into a black-and-tan.
+
+They was most awful dreams, and next morning, when Miss Dorothy comes
+and gives me water in a pan, I begs and begs her to take me home; but
+she can't understand. "How well Kid is!" she says. And when I jumps into
+the Master's arms and pulls to break my chain, he says, "If he knew all
+as he had against him, miss, he wouldn't be so gay." And from a book
+they reads out the names of the beautiful high-bred terriers which I
+have got to meet. And I can't make 'em understand that I only want to
+run away and hide myself where no one will see me.
+
+Then suddenly men comes hurrying down our street and begins to brush the
+beautiful bull-terriers; and the Master rubs me with a towel so excited
+that his hands trembles awful, and Miss Dorothy tweaks my ears between
+her gloves, so that the blood runs to 'em, and they turn pink and stand
+up straight and sharp.
+
+"Now, then, Nolan," says she, her voice shaking just like his fingers,
+"keep his head up--and never let the judge lose sight of him." When I
+hears that my legs breaks under me, for I knows all about judges. Twice
+the old Master goes up before the judge for fighting me with other dogs,
+and the judge promises him if he ever does it again he'll chain him up
+in jail. I knew he'd find me out. A judge can't be fooled by no
+pipe-clay. He can see right through you, and he reads your insides.
+
+The judging-ring, which is where the judge holds out, was so like a
+fighting-pit that when I come in it, and find six other dogs there, I
+springs into position, so that when they lets us go I can defend myself.
+But the Master smooths down my hair and whispers, "Hold 'ard, Kid, hold
+'ard. This ain't a fight," says he. "Look your prettiest," he whispers.
+"Please, Kid, look your prettiest"; and he pulls my leash so tight that
+I can't touch my pats to the sawdust, and my nose goes up in the air.
+There was millions of people a-watching us from the railings, and three
+of our kennel-men, too, making fun of the Master and me, and Miss
+Dorothy with her chin just reaching to the rail, and her eyes so big
+that I thought she was a-going to cry. It was awful to think that when
+the judge stood up and exposed me, all those people, and Miss Dorothy,
+would be there to see me driven from the Show.
+
+The judge he was a fierce-looking man with specs on his nose, and a red
+beard. When I first come in he didn't see me, owing to my being too
+quick for him and dodging behind the Master. But when the Master drags
+me round and I pulls at the sawdust to keep back, the judge looks at us
+careless-like, and then stops and glares through his specs, and I knew
+it was all up with me.
+
+"Are there any more?" asks the judge to the gentleman at the gate, but
+never taking his specs from me.
+
+The man at the gate looks in his book. "Seven in the novice class," says
+he. "They're all here. You can go ahead," and he shuts the gate.
+
+The judge he doesn't hesitate a moment. He just waves his hand toward
+the corner of the ring. "Take him away," he says to the Master, "over
+there, and keep him away"; and he turns and looks most solemn at the six
+beautiful bull-terriers. I don't know how I crawled to that corner. I
+wanted to scratch under the sawdust and dig myself a grave. The
+kennel-men they slapped the rail with their hands and laughed at the
+Master like they would fall over. They pointed at me in the corner, and
+their sides just shaked. But little Miss Dorothy she presses her lips
+tight against the rail, and I see tears rolling from her eyes. The
+Master he hangs his head like he had been whipped. I felt most sorry for
+him than all. He was so red, and he was letting on not to see the
+kennel-men, and blinking his eyes. If the judge had ordered me right out
+it wouldn't have disgraced us so, but it was keeping me there while he
+was judging the high-bred dogs that hurt so hard. With all those people
+staring, too. And his doing it so quick, without no doubt nor questions.
+You can't fool the judges. They see inside you.
+
+But he couldn't make up his mind about them high-bred dogs. He scowls at
+'em, and he glares at 'em, first with his head on the one side and then
+on the other. And he feels of 'em, and orders 'em to run about. And
+Nolan leans against the rails, with his head hung down, and pats me. And
+Miss Dorothy comes over beside him, but don't say nothing, only wipes
+her eye with her finger. A man on the other side of the rail he says to
+the Master, "The judge don't like your dog?"
+
+"No," says the Master.
+
+"Have you ever shown him before?" says the man.
+
+"No," says the Master, "and I'll never show him again. He's my dog,"
+says the Master, "and he suits me! And I don't care what no judges
+think." And when he says them kind words, I licks his hand most
+grateful.
+
+The judge had two of the six dogs on a little platform in the middle of
+the ring, and he had chased the four other dogs into the corners, where
+they was licking their chops, and letting on they didn't care, same as
+Nolan was.
+
+The two dogs on the platform was so beautiful that the judge hisself
+couldn't tell which was the best of 'em, even when he stoops down and
+holds their heads together. But at last he gives a sigh, and brushes the
+sawdust off his knees, and goes to the table in the ring, where there
+was a man keeping score, and heaps and heaps of blue and gold and red
+and yellow ribbons. And the judge picks up a bunch of 'em and walks to
+the two gentlemen who was holding the beautiful dogs, and he says to
+each, "What's his number?" and he hands each gentleman a ribbon. And
+then he turned sharp and comes straight at the Master.
+
+"What's his number?" says the judge. And Master was so scared that he
+couldn't make no answer.
+
+But Miss Dorothy claps her hands and cries out like she was laughing,
+"Three twenty-six," and the judge writes it down and shoves Master the
+blue ribbon.
+
+I bit the Master, and I jumps and bit Miss Dorothy, and I waggled so
+hard that the Master couldn't hold me. When I get to the gate Miss
+Dorothy snatches me up and kisses me between the ears, right before
+millions of people, and they both hold me so tight that I didn't know
+which of them was carrying of me. But one thing I knew, for I listened
+hard, as it was the judge hisself as said it.
+
+"Did you see that puppy I gave first to?" says the judge to the
+gentleman at the gate.
+
+"I did. He was a bit out of his class," says the gate gentleman.
+
+"He certainly was!" says the judge, and they both laughed.
+
+But I didn't care. They couldn't hurt me then, not with Nolan holding
+the blue ribbon and Miss Dorothy hugging my ears, and the kennel-men
+sneaking away, each looking like he'd been caught with his nose under
+the lid of the slop-can.
+
+We sat down together, and we all three just talked as fast as we could.
+They was so pleased that I couldn't help feeling proud myself, and I
+barked and leaped about so gay that all the bull-terriers in our street
+stretched on their chains and howled at me.
+
+"Just look at him!" says one of those I had beat. "What's he giving
+hisself airs about?"
+
+"Because he's got one blue ribbon!" says another of 'em. "Why, when I
+was a puppy I used to eat 'em, and if that judge could ever learn to
+know a toy from a mastiff, I'd have had this one."
+
+But Jimmy Jocks he leaned over from his bench and says, "Well done, Kid.
+Didn't I tell you so?" What he 'ad told me was that I might get a
+"commended," but I didn't remind him.
+
+"Didn't I tell you," says Jimmy Jocks, "that I saw your grandfather make
+his début at the Crystal--"
+
+"Yes, sir, you did, sir," says I, for I have no love for the men of my
+family.
+
+A gentleman with a showing-leash around his neck comes up just then and
+looks at me very critical. "Nice dog you've got, Miss Wyndham," says he;
+"would you care to sell him?"
+
+"He's not my dog," says Miss Dorothy, holding me tight. "I wish he
+were."
+
+"He's not for sale, sir," says the Master, and I was _that_ glad.
+
+"Oh, he's yours, is he?" says the gentleman, looking hard at Nolan.
+"Well, I'll give you a hundred dollars for him," says he, careless-like.
+
+"Thank you, sir; he's not for sale," says Nolan, but his eyes get very
+big. The gentleman he walked away; but I watches him, and he talks to a
+man in a golf-cap, and by and by the man comes along our street, looking
+at all the dogs, and stops in front of me.
+
+"This your dog?" says he to Nolan. "Pity he's so leggy," says he. "If he
+had a good tail, and a longer stop, and his ears were set higher, he'd
+be a good dog. As he is, I'll give you fifty dollars for him."
+
+But before the Master could speak, Miss Dorothy laughs and says: "You're
+Mr. Polk's kennel-man, I believe. Well, you tell Mr. Polk from me that
+the dog's not for sale now any more than he was five minutes ago, and
+that when he is, he'll have to bid against me for him."
+
+The man looks foolish at that, but he turns to Nolan quick-like. "I'll
+give you three hundred for him," he says.
+
+"Oh, indeed!" whispers Miss Dorothy, like she was talking to herself.
+"That's it, is it?" And she turns and looks at me just as though she had
+never seen me before. Nolan he was a-gaping, too, with his mouth open.
+But he holds me tight.
+
+"He's not for sale," he growls, like he was frightened; and the man
+looks black and walks away.
+
+"Why, Nolan!" cries Miss Dorothy, "Mr. Polk knows more about
+bull-terriers than any amateur in America. What can he mean? Why, Kid is
+no more than a puppy! Three hundred dollars for a puppy!"
+
+"And he ain't no thoroughbred, neither!" cries the Master. "He's
+'Unknown,' ain't he? Kid can't help it, of course, but his mother,
+miss--"
+
+I dropped my head. I couldn't bear he should tell Miss Dorothy. I
+couldn't bear she should know I had stolen my blue ribbon.
+
+But the Master never told, for at that a gentleman runs up, calling,
+"Three twenty-six, three twenty-six!" And Miss Dorothy says, "Here he
+is; what is it?"
+
+"The Winners' class," says the gentleman. "Hurry, please; the judge is
+waiting for him."
+
+Nolan tries to get me off the chain on to a showing-leash, but he shakes
+so, he only chokes me. "What is it, miss?" he says. "What is it?"
+
+"The Winners' class," says Miss Dorothy. "The judge wants him with the
+winners of the other classes--to decide which is the best. It's only a
+form," says she. "He has the champions against him now."
+
+"Yes," says the gentleman, as he hurries us to the ring. "I'm afraid
+it's only a form for your dog, but the judge wants all the winners,
+puppy class even."
+
+We had got to the gate, and the gentleman there was writing down my
+number.
+
+"Who won the open?" asks Miss Dorothy.
+
+"Oh, who would?" laughs the gentleman. "The old champion, of course.
+He's won for three years now. There he is. Isn't he wonderful?" says he;
+and he points to a dog that's standing proud and haughty on the platform
+in the middle of the ring.
+
+I never see so beautiful a dog--so fine and clean and noble, so white
+like he had rolled hisself in flour, holding his nose up and his eyes
+shut, same as though no one was worth looking at. Aside of him we other
+dogs, even though we had a blue ribbon apiece, seemed like lumps of mud.
+He was a royal gentleman, a king, he was. His master didn't have to hold
+his head with no leash. He held it hisself, standing as still as an iron
+dog on a lawn, like he knew all the people was looking at him. And so
+they was, and no one around the ring pointed at no other dog but him.
+
+"Oh, what a picture!" cried Miss Dorothy. "He's like a marble figure by
+a great artist--one who loved dogs. Who is he?" says she, looking in her
+book. "I don't keep up with terriers."
+
+"Oh, you know him," says the gentleman. "He is the champion of
+champions, Regent Royal."
+
+The Master's face went red.
+
+"And this is Regent Royal's son," cries he, and he pulls me quick into
+the ring, and plants me on the platform next my father.
+
+I trembled so that I near fell. My legs twisted like a leash. But my
+father he never looked at me. He only smiled the same sleepy smile, and
+he still kept his eyes half shut, like as no one, no, not even his own
+son, was worth his lookin' at.
+
+The judge he didn't let me stay beside my father, but, one by one, he
+placed the other dogs next to him and measured and felt and pulled at
+them. And each one he put down, but he never put my father down. And
+then he comes over and picks up me and sets me back on the platform,
+shoulder to shoulder with the Champion Regent Royal, and goes down on
+his knees, and looks into our eyes.
+
+The gentleman with my father he laughs, and says to the judge, "Thinking
+of keeping us here all day, John?" But the judge he doesn't hear him,
+and goes behind us and runs his hand down my side, and holds back my
+ears, and takes my jaws between his fingers. The crowd around the ring
+is very deep now, and nobody says nothing. The gentleman at the
+score-table, he is leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees and his
+eyes very wide, and the gentleman at the gate is whispering quick to
+Miss Dorothy, who has turned white. I stood as stiff as stone. I didn't
+even breathe. But out of the corner of my eye I could see my father
+licking his pink chops, and yawning just a little, like he was bored.
+
+The judge he had stopped looking fierce and was looking solemn.
+Something inside him seemed a-troubling him awful. The more he stares at
+us now, the more solemn he gets, and when he touches us he does it
+gentle, like he was patting us. For a long time he kneels in the
+sawdust, looking at my father and at me, and no one around the ring says
+nothing to nobody.
+
+Then the judge takes a breath and touches me sudden. "It's his," he
+says. But he lays his hand just as quick on my father. "I'm sorry," says
+he.
+
+The gentleman holding my father cries:
+
+"Do you mean to tell me--"
+
+And the judge he answers, "I mean the other is the better dog." He takes
+my father's head between his hands and looks down at him most sorrowful.
+"The king is dead," says he. "Long live the king! Good-by, Regent," he
+says.
+
+The crowd around the railings clapped their hands, and some laughed
+scornful, and every one talks fast, and I start for the gate, so dizzy
+that I can't see my way. But my father pushes in front of me, walking
+very daintily, and smiling sleepy, same as he had just been waked, with
+his head high and his eyes shut, looking at nobody.
+
+[Illustration: For a long time he kneels in the sawdust.]
+
+So that is how I "came by my inheritance," as Miss Dorothy calls it; and
+just for that, though I couldn't feel where I was any different, the
+crowd follows me to my bench, and pats me, and coos at me, like I was a
+baby in a baby-carriage. And the handlers have to hold 'em back so that
+the gentlemen from the papers can make pictures of me, and Nolan walks
+me up and down so proud, and the men shake their heads and says, "He
+certainly is the true type, he is!" And the pretty ladies ask Miss
+Dorothy, who sits beside me letting me lick her gloves to show the crowd
+what friends we is, "Aren't you afraid he'll bite you?" And Jimmy Jocks
+calls to me, "Didn't I tell you so? I always knew you were one of us.
+Blood will out, Kid; blood will out. I saw your grandfather," says he,
+"make his début at the Crystal Palace. But he was never the dog you
+are!"
+
+After that, if I could have asked for it, there was nothing I couldn't
+get. You might have thought I was a snow-dog, and they was afeard I'd
+melt. If I wet my pats, Nolan gave me a hot bath and chained me to the
+stove; if I couldn't eat my food, being stuffed full by the cook--for I
+am a house-dog now, and let in to lunch, whether there is visitors or
+not,--Nolan would run to bring the vet. It was all tommy rot, as Jimmy
+says, but meant most kind. I couldn't scratch myself comfortable,
+without Nolan giving me nasty drinks, and rubbing me outside till it
+burnt awful; and I wasn't let to eat bones for fear of spoiling my
+"beautiful" mouth, what mother used to call my "punishing jaw"; and my
+food was cooked special on a gas-stove; and Miss Dorothy gives me an
+overcoat, cut very stylish like the champions', to wear when we goes out
+carriage-driving.
+
+After the next Show, where I takes three blue ribbons, four silver cups,
+two medals, and brings home forty-five dollars for Nolan, they gives me
+a "registered" name, same as Jimmy's. Miss Dorothy wanted to call me
+"Regent Heir Apparent"; but I was _that_ glad when Nolan says, "No;
+Kid don't owe nothing to his father, only to you and hisself. So, if you
+please, miss, we'll call him Wyndham Kid." And so they did, and you can
+see it on my overcoat in blue letters, and painted top of my kennel. It
+was all too hard to understand. For days I just sat and wondered if I
+was really me, and how it all come about, and why everybody was so kind.
+But oh, it was so good they was, for if they hadn't been I'd never have
+got the thing I most wished after. But, because they was kind, and not
+liking to deny me nothing, they gave it me, and it was more to me than
+anything in the world.
+
+It came about one day when we was out driving. We was in the cart they
+calls the dog-cart because it's the one Miss Dorothy keeps to take Jimmy
+and me for an airing. Nolan was up behind, and me, in my new overcoat,
+was sitting beside Miss Dorothy. I was admiring the view, and thinking
+how good it was to have a horse pull you about so that you needn't get
+yourself splashed and have to be washed, when I hears a dog calling loud
+for help, and I pricks up my ears and looks over the horse's head. And I
+sees something that makes me tremble down to my toes. In the road before
+us three big dogs was chasing a little old lady-dog. She had a string to
+her tail, where some boys had tied a can, and she was dirty with mud and
+ashes, and torn most awful. She was too far done up to get away, and too
+old to help herself, but she was making a fight for her life, snapping
+her old gums savage, and dying game. All this I see in a wink, and then
+the three dogs pinned her down, and I can't stand it no longer, and
+clears the wheel and lands in the road on my head. It was my stylish
+overcoat done that, and I cursed it proper, but I gets my pats again
+quick, and makes a rush for the fighting. Behind me I hear Miss Dorothy
+cry: "They'll kill that old dog. Wait, take my whip. Beat them off her!
+The Kid can take care of himself"; and I hear Nolan fall into the road,
+and the horse come to a stop. The old lady-dog was down, and the three
+was eating her vicious; but as I come up, scattering the pebbles, she
+hears, and thinking it's one more of them, she lifts her head, and my
+heart breaks open like some one had sunk his teeth in it. For, under the
+ashes and the dirt and the blood, I can see who it is, and I know that
+my mother has come back to me.
+
+I gives a yell that throws them three dogs off their legs.
+
+"Mother!" I cries. "I'm the Kid," I cries. "I'm coming to you. Mother,
+I'm coming!"
+
+And I shoots over her at the throat of the big dog, and the other two
+they sinks their teeth into that stylish overcoat and tears it off me,
+and that sets me free, and I lets them have it. I never had so fine a
+fight as that! What with mother being there to see, and not having been
+let to mix up in no fights since I become a prize-winner, it just
+naturally did me good, and it wasn't three shakes before I had 'em
+yelping. Quick as a wink, mother she jumps in to help me, and I just
+laughed to see her. It was so like old times. And Nolan he made me
+laugh, too. He was like a hen on a bank, shaking the butt of his whip,
+but not daring to cut in for fear of hitting me.
+
+"Stop it, Kid," he says, "stop it. Do you want to be all torn up?" says
+he. "Think of the Boston Show," says he. "Think of Chicago. Think of
+Danbury. Don't you never want to be a champion?" How was I to think of
+all them places when I had three dogs to cut up at the same time? But in
+a minute two of 'em begs for mercy, and mother and me lets 'em run away.
+The big one he ain't able to run away. Then mother and me we dances and
+jumps, and barks and laughs, and bites each other and rolls each other
+in the road. There never was two dogs so happy as we. And Nolan he
+whistles and calls and begs me to come to him; but I just laugh and play
+larks with mother.
+
+"Now, you come with me," says I, "to my new home, and never try to run
+away again." And I shows her our house with the five red roofs, set on
+the top of the hill. But mother trembles awful, and says: "They'd never
+let me in such a place. Does the Viceroy live there, Kid?" says she. And
+I laugh at her. "No; I do," I says. "And if they won't let you live
+there, too, you and me will go back to the streets together, for we must
+never be parted no more." So we trots up the hill side by side, with
+Nolan trying to catch me, and Miss Dorothy laughing at him from the
+cart.
+
+"The Kid's made friends with the poor old dog," says she. "Maybe he knew
+her long ago when he ran the streets himself. Put her in here beside me,
+and see if he doesn't follow."
+
+So when I hears that I tells mother to go with Nolan and sit in the
+cart; but she says no--that she'd soil the pretty lady's frock; but I
+tells her to do as I say, and so Nolan lifts her, trembling still, into
+the cart, and I runs alongside, barking joyful.
+
+When we drives into the stables I takes mother to my kennel, and tells
+her to go inside it and make herself at home. "Oh, but he won't let me!"
+says she.
+
+"Who won't let you?" says I, keeping my eye on Nolan, and growling a bit
+nasty, just to show I was meaning to have my way.
+
+"Why, Wyndham Kid," says she, looking up at the name on my kennel.
+
+"But I'm Wyndham Kid!" says I.
+
+"You!" cries mother. "You! Is my little Kid the great Wyndham Kid the
+dogs all talk about?" And at that, she being very old, and sick, and
+nervous, as mothers are, just drops down in the straw and weeps bitter.
+
+Well, there ain't much more than that to tell. Miss Dorothy she settled
+it.
+
+"If the Kid wants the poor old thing in the stables," says she, "let her
+stay."
+
+"You see," says she, "she's a black-and-tan, and his mother was a
+black-and-tan, and maybe that's what makes Kid feel so friendly toward
+her," says she.
+
+"Indeed, for me," says Nolan, "she can have the best there is. I'd never
+drive out no dog that asks for a crust nor a shelter," he says. "But
+what will Mr. Wyndham do?"
+
+"He'll do what I say," says Miss Dorothy, "and if I say she's to stay,
+she will stay, and I say--she's to stay!"
+
+And so mother and Nolan and me found a home. Mother was scared at
+first--not being used to kind people; but she was so gentle and loving
+that the grooms got fonder of her than of me, and tried to make me
+jealous by patting of her and giving her the pick of the vittles. But
+that was the wrong way to hurt my feelings. That's all, I think. Mother
+is so happy here that I tell her we ought to call it the Happy Hunting
+Grounds, because no one hunts you, and there is nothing to hunt; it just
+all comes to you. And so we live in peace, mother sleeping all day in
+the sun, or behind the stove in the head groom's office, being fed twice
+a day regular by Nolan, and all the day by the other grooms most
+irregular. And as for me, I go hurrying around the country to the
+bench-shows, winning money and cups for Nolan, and taking the blue
+ribbons away from father.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Boy Scout and Other Stories for
+Boys, by Richard Harding Davis
+
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