Title: The Worst Boy in Town
Author: Habberton, John
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Worst Boy in Town" ***


generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)



      Images of the original pages are available through
      Internet Archive. See
      https://archive.org/details/worstboy00habbiala



Illustration: "A NAUTICAL EXPEDITION."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE WORST BOY IN TOWN

by

JOHN HABBERTON

Author of "Barton Experiment," "Other People's Children,"
etc., etc.



New York
G. P. Putnam's Sons,
182 Fifth Avenue
1880

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright by
G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1880.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                           TO VERY BAD BOYS,

                      AND TO THE FINE OLD FELLOWS

                  WHO ONCE WERE CALLED VERY BAD BOYS,

                 THIS BOOK IS SYMPATHETICALLY DEDICATED

                             BY THE AUTHOR.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                               CONTENTS.

                                -------


     CHAPTER

        I—A NAUTICAL EXPEDITION

       II—A CORNER IN WHISKEY

      III—INJURY AND RESTITUTION

       IV—SHARP AXES AND SHARPER WITS

        V—EXPERIMENTS IN GRAVITATION

       VI—THOUGHTS OF REFORM

      VII—IN TROUBLE AGAIN

     VIII—FUGITIVES FROM JUSTICE

       IX—THE STOOL OF REPENTANCE

        X—YOUNG AMERICA IN POLITICS

       XI—A QUIET LITTLE GAME

      XII—SWEET SOLACE

     XIII—THE BOY WHO WAS NOT AFRAID

      XIV—PAYING FOR A SPREE

       XV—RUNNING AWAY

      XVI—LOSING A REPUTATION

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                               CHAPTER I.

                         A NAUTICAL EXPEDITION.


"You're the worst boy in town!"

The speaker was Farmer Parkins, and the person addressed was Jack
Wittingham, only son of the most successful physician in Doveton.
Farmer Parkins had driven to town quite early in the morning to make
some necessary purchases, and he had been followed by his faithful
yellow dog, Sam, who had been improving the opportunity to make some
personal calls and tours of observation. One of these last-named
recreations carried him near the back door of a butcher shop to which
Jack had gone to deliver an order for his mother. Adjacent to the
butcher's place of business was the shop of the village tinman, and
behind this were strewn sundry kitchen utensils which had proved to be
too badly damaged to be mended. Jack had noticed the dog when that
animal first put in his appearance in search of a scrap of meat or
bone, and had thereafter observed his motions with that peculiar
interest which dogs seem always to inspire in boys. Then he happened
to see a very dilapidated tea-kettle behind the tin-shop, and when
dogs and tea-kettles become closely associated in the mind of a boy,
even if the boy himself be of excellent birth and breeding, and quite
tender-hearted beside, the juvenile traditions of many generations
have generally the effect of causing the dog and the kettle to enter
into an entangling alliance which the animal regards with accumulative
aversion, and about which the tea-kettle, whose expressions are
ordinarily so cheery, indulges in much unrythmical noise. Into such a
combination were Farmer Parkins' yellow dog Sam and an old kettle
forced very soon after Jack first beheld them both, and as yellow Sam
hurried down street in an honest attempt to rid himself of his
superfluous tin-ware, and as Jack followed him to note the results,
with a view to the more accurate affixing of tin kettles to the tails
of the dogs of the future, yellow Sam dropped exhausted in front of
his master's horses, and the dog's master came out of a store near by,
just as Jack, with a fragment of barrel-hoop, was trying to stimulate
the animal to renewed exertion. It was then that the farmer remarked,
with admirable vigor,

"You're the worst boy in town!"

Jack had heard this very expression so many times before that he was
half inclined to believe it true, yet how it could be a fact was a
something that bothered him greatly. He laughed when Farmer Parkins
said it, and he replied also, by several facial contortions, which
were as irritating as they were hideous; he stuck his hands into his
pockets, and bravely tried an ingratiating smile or two upon such
passers by as had overheard the farmer's remark, but as soon as he had
reached an alley down which to disappear, Jack suddenly became a very
chop-fallen, unhappy looking boy, and he murmured to himself,

"That's what everyone says. I don't see why. I don't swear, like Jimmy
Myers, nor steal, like Frank Balder, I don't tell lies—except when I
have to, and I go to Sunday-school every Sunday, while there are lots
of boys in town who spend the whole of that day in fishing. I didn't
mean to hurt old Parkin's yellow dog; I only wanted to see what he'd
do. And just didn't he travel?—oh, oh! But I don't see why I'm the
worst boy in town. I declare. If it isn't just the morning to go
fishing—warm, cloudy, worms easy to get. I wish't was Saturday, so
there wouldn't be any school, and I wish school teachers knew what fun
it is to go fishing; then they'd be easier on a fellow who played
hookey, and they'd ask him where he caught them, and how many, and how
big they were, instead of picking up their everlasting switches and
making themselves disagreeable. Perch would bite splendidly to-day,
and there are people in this town who'd be glad to have a good mess of
perch. I declare! I've just the idea; school or no school, whipping or
no whipping, it ought to be done. I'll go right away and see if Matt
can't go with me."

Jack moved rapidly through streets which crossed the main thoroughfare
of the town; then he approached a wood-pile where a boy of about his
own age was at work; before this boy's eyes Jack dangled two new
fish-lines and some hooks, and exclaimed—

"Come along, Matt!"

"I can't," said Matt, gazing hungrily at the new fishing tackle, "the
governor wouldn't like it at all."

"Oh, never mind the governor," said Jack, "I'll explain things to him
when we get back."

Matt seemed to be in some doubt as to whether the influence of his
tempter with the governor amounted to much, for the functionary
alluded to was master Matt Bolton's own father, a gentleman who held
quite firmly to the general opinion about Jack. Besides, Matt was
vigorously attacking the family wood-pile, his honest heart alive with
a sense of the need there was for him to do all in his power to
relieve his overworked father, and alive, too, with the conviction
that he would have to work industriously if he would chop and split a
day's supply before school-time. Besides, a fishing excursion implied
truancy, which, in turn, implied the certainty of a whipping in school
and the probability of punishment at home.

"Father would be very angry," said Matt, as he sighingly withdrew his
eyes from the new fishing tackle, "and he has already enough to bother
him, without having things made worse by me."

"But Matt, he won't feel bad when he knows what you did with the fish.
We'll give them to widow Batty. (This resolution of Jack's was newer
even than his tackle, for he had formed it while he talked). "She's
been sick, you know, and I heard your father say the other day that
she must have a hard enough time, at best, to feed that large family
of her's."

"But suppose we don't catch any?" suggested Matt.

"Then you can tell him what we meant to have done if we had caught
some. Besides, we can't help catching a lot at such a splendid
fish-hole as the mill-dam. I think it's awful that a whole family
should go hungry just because it hasn't got any father. Didn't your
governor ever read you out of the Bible of visiting the fatherless and
widows in their affliction?—mine has."

Boys are no more likely than adults to resist Satan when he appears as
an angel of light, so Matt speedily agreed to go as soon as he had
prepared a day's supply of firewood.

"Got another axe, and I'll help you," said Jack, and within five
minutes those two boys were making chips fly at a rate which would
have been the wonder of a hired wood-chopper, while Matt's mother, who
happened to glance through a window wondered why Jack's father could
accuse that boy of laziness. Then both boys carried the wood to the
kitchen door, unearthed some worms between sundry logs at the
wood-pile, and disappeared as stealthily as if in their benevolent
project they were animated by the scriptural injunction, to not let
the left hand know what the right hand was doing.

Reaching the brow of a little hill upon which the village was
situated, Jack exclaimed—

"I vow, if the river hasn't overflowed its banks."

"Umph," replied Matt, "I knew that a week ago."

"Well," said Jack, "so did I, but I forgot it. We can get to the dam
easily enough, though; it's only half a mile across the lowlands to
the river, and there are fences all the way. Riding rail fences is
bully fun. Wait till I get my rod; I've got two and I'll lend you
one."

Jack extracted two bamboo rods from the blackberry thicket where he
habitually kept them, lest they should occasion unpleasant questions,
as they certainly would have done had his frequent expeditions with
them begun at the house of his excellent father. Then both boys
mounted the fence, which was of rails, and their trip to the dam was
fairly begun.

Now to travel by fence-rail is a delightful method of passing time, as
all liberally educated boys know, if one is bound for no where in
particular, but when one is two, and both are boys, and are in quest
of fish, and the middle of the day is approaching, in which fish do
not bite, half a mile of rail fencing is a trip which consumes
patience with great rapidity. Had the adventurers been other than
boys, they would have turned back at once, but when a boy gets a
project clearly into his head he never gives any one an excuse to say
that the mule is the most obstinate of all living animals. Jack soon
grew impatient of his slow progress, and conceived a brilliant idea.
Raising himself to his feet on a rail of reasonable flatness (for a
fence rail) he steadied himself with his rod, and accomplished with
safety and celerity the trip to the angle where the rail terminated.

"Hurrah, Matt!" he shouted, "look here!" and he walked along another
rail.

Matt saw and was glad, and following Jack's example, he made some
excellent time himself.

"We'd never have learned that trick if it hadn't been for the
overflow. How glad I am that I came, and—Ow!" Jack's abrupt
termination was due to his own course having temporarily terminated,
for the third rail upon which he ventured, not having been designed
for the particular object which Jack had in view, had been split
triangularly, and one of Jack's shoes had slipped to one side, the
other slipping in an opposite direction, and the young man came down
astride the unyielding oak with a thud whose sound was something
inaudible when considered in the light of the anguish which it caused.
No new word presented itself for use just then; Jack continued to
remark "Ow," with a variety of long-drawn inflections, while Matt
precipitately lowered himself to a position of safety, and manifested
no inclination to go farther. After some moments devoted strictly to
facial contortion, Jack succeeded in changing his position so that
both legs hung upon the same side of the fence, then he examined the
rail closely, as if to see if the tip of his spine had not driven a
hole through it, and remarked,

"We'd better do this in our stockinged feet."

Matt thought so too, so both boys removed their shoes, tying them
together with the strings upon which the fish were to be strung, and
slinging them across their shoulders. Their progress thereafter was
considerably more rapid, but a sudden shriek and a splash of
voluminous sound and displacement announced that Matt had fallen
entirely from his rail, and when Jack came to view the scene, Matt was
swelling the flood with his own tears.

"I declare," exclaimed Jack, "that's too bad, old fellow! And you had
the worms in your pocket, too—I hope the water hasn't got into the box
and drowned them so they can't wiggle when they're on the hooks. Say,
its warm; your clothes will dry on you, before we reach the dam. Oh,
I'll tell you what,—we'll take them off and wring them out, and go
swimming at the same time."

At the prospect of an unlooked for sport, Matt dried his tears, and a
broad flat rail having been found the boys disrobed and took whatever
comfort could be found in water eighteen inches deep with a field of
corn stubble at the bottom of it. Matt's clothes seemed rather clammy
as he again resumed his normal position inside them, but Jack
described so delightfully the assortment of fish which he wished to
catch, that damp clothing became a mere thing of the forgotten past.
Started again, Jack moved rapidly for some moments, but suddenly
stopped and shouted,

"Hurry up, Matt; here's the splendidest thing that ever was!"

Matt obeyed orders, and while yet twenty rail lengths behind he heard
Jack shout,

"Here's a bridge that floated away from one of the little brooks;
we'll just make a raft of it and reach the dam in less than no time."

Matt eyed the bridge with manifest favor; it was simply two logs,—mud
sills—connected by three cross-ties, upon which the planking was laid.

"Won't the current trouble us when we reach the river road?" he asked.

"We won't go that way," said Jack. "We'll go through the fields and
then along a wood road that goes through the timber. It's half a mile
the shorter way, besides being the safer. Come ahead; we'll use our
rods for poles to push the raft with."

"Then we've got to knock down fences," said Matt.

"Well," said Jack, who had a conscience in hiding somewhere about him,
"we'll come back in a few days, when the flood has gone down, and put
them up again. And we'll play the raft is a ram—a regular Merrimac,
you know,—and the fences are an enemy's fleet, or a chain stretched
across the river. Let's back out and get a good start."

The bridge, which did not draw a foot of water, was backed across the
road, one boy stood at each side, and at a signal from Jack it was
driven against the fence, through which it crashed most gloriously,
sprinkling a dozen fence-rails about the surface of the water.

"Hooray!" shouted Jack, "now for the next one! The Union forever!" and
then Jack, while _en route_ for the next fence, finding himself
unequal to the task of extemporizing a stirring address to his
command, began to quote from "Rolla's Address to the Peruvians," which
was considered the gem of that much used book, "The Comprehensive
School Speaker"—"My brave associates, partners of my toils, my
feelings and my fame, can Rolla's words add fresh vigor to the——"

Just then the raft struck the fence, but this latter being of the
"staked and ridered"[1] pattern, the result was that the raft came to
a sudden standstill, and the crew were thrown flat upon it, their
respective heads hanging somewhat astern and in danger of being
water-soaked.

Footnote 1:

  A rail fence across the angles of which two rails meet in X shape,
  their lowest ends driven into the grounds a little way and a rail
  lying in the upper angle of the X.


"Blazes!" exclaimed Jack wrathfully, as he endeavored to staunch a
bleeding nose, "what did a man need to have a staked and ridered fence
just here for? Well, we'll have to push down a couple of stakes and
break our way through."

The commanding officer's plan was speedily acted upon, and the raft
went on swimmingly until it seemed to slide upon some obstruction,
then it came to a dead stop.

"Grounded on an old corn hill, I suppose," said Jack. "Well, 'starn
all,' as old Barnstable says in the Fourth Reader."

But no amount of pushing availed to move the raft, and the sudden
breaking of Jack's rod gave affairs a new and discouraging aspect.

"We can't both fish with one rod," said Jack, after descending into
and emerging from the depths of his mind. "I'll tell you what let's
do, we'll take off our clothes, make them into a bundle, and carry
them ashore on our heads, as explorers sometimes do when they ford
rivers."

"What!" asked Matt, "and not get any fish for poor Mrs. Batty and her
children?"

"That _is_ a pity," said Jack, with some signs of embarrassment, and
the gathering together of the loose and fleeting ends of previous
plans and resolutions. "But, you see, it must be nearly eleven
o'clock; we've used up an awful lot of time, and we've got to get
ashore yet, and be back home by the time school is out, else the
folks'll know we've been playing hookey. I wonder if we couldn't get
the poor old woman some blackberries? It's only June now, though, and
I never saw a ripe blackberry before the first of July. Perhaps
there's some early cherries in Milman's orchard."

With this slight salve for the consciences whose wounds had begun to
smart, the boys stripped once more, waded ashore through a corn-field
in which the hills of sharp cut stalks seemed omnipresent, dressed
themselves, and sneaked into the Milman orchard, where they made wry
faces while discussing the probable value to the widow Battay of the
few pale pink cherries they found. Dinner was reached and, eaten,
somehow with less appetites than was usual after a morning spent in
school, and then the boys, each by himself, made hasty search for
whatever suitable material might be soonest found to insert between
shirts and jackets, to break the force of what, in the memory of many
old fellows who once were school-boys, was the inevitable penalty of
truancy.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                              CHAPTER II.

                          A CORNER IN WHISKEY.


"You're the worst boy in town!"

For several days after their unsuccessful fishing expedition, Jack and
Matt were extremely obedient and undemonstrative. Village school
teachers, in that country, were not unfrequently the stout-armed sons
of farmers, and when they plied the rod, any memory of the occasion
was not likely soon to become dimmed. It was perhaps for this reason
that even when Matt or Jack amused himself by whistling, the airs
selected were sure to have been written on minor keys, and that both
boys sought earnestly, each by himself, for some method of setting
some positive moral success against their late failure at benevolence.

The opportunity did not linger long. Matt was sitting in the house one
evening, wondering whether to go to bed at once, or wrestle again with
an exasperating problem in cube root, the answer to which, as printed
in the book, he felt thrice assured was wrong, when a long whistle of
peculiar volume and inflection informed him that Jack was outside and
had something to communicate. Matt sprang to his feet, for only a
matter of extreme importance would have brought Jack across town at so
late an hour. The worst boy in town was found by Matt to be hanging
across the garden gate and so powerfully charged with virtuous
indignation that he was unable to contain it all.

"Look here, Matt," said he, "you know what an awful thing whiskey is,
don't you?"

"I should think I did," replied Matt, "Havn't I been to every
temperance meeting that's been held?"

"So you have," said Jack, "Well what do you think? There's Hoccamine,
the corner storekeeper, gone and bought seven barrels."

"Isn't that dreadful!" exclaimed Matt. "If he starts a rum-shop here,
it'll spoil the custom of his store."

"He isn't going to have a bar," explained Jack, "he's going to sell by
the gallon. But what's the difference?—rum is rum, and it does harm,
no matter in what way it is sold."

"It's perfectly awful," said Matt.

"All right," said Jack, "Now I'll tell you what I propose. It wasn't
brought up to the store until after dark—I suppose they were
ashamed—and it is on the sidewalk beside their store, to be put down
cellar as soon as the clerks come in the morning." Then Jack put his
lips down to Matt's ear, and whispered, "Let's spill it for them?"

"Gracious!" whispered Matt, "how can we?"

"Easily enough," said Jack. "We'll bore a gimlet hole in each barrel,
and it'll have all night to run. I've got a gimlet. You slip out of
the house about twelve o'clock, and so will I; we'll meet at the
church steps, and then unchain the demon only to destroy him forever."
(Jack's last clause was quoted verbatim from a temperance address to
which he had lately listened.)

"I'm your man," said Matt.

"I knew you would be," Jack replied; "I could have done it alone, but I
was sure you'd enjoy helping, and I'm not the sort of fellow that goes
back on a friend, you know. Twelve o'clock sure,—does your clock
strike the hours?"

"Yes."

"So does ours. Can you keep awake until then? If you can't I'll give
you half of my cloves to eat. I've saved them the past few Sunday
nights when I havn't been sleepy in church."

Matt accepted the proffered assistance, and Jack departed, while Matt
went into the house and to bed with the firm conviction that he was
too excited to sleep any for a week to come. It was nine when he
retired, and at the stroke of ten he had not had occasion to touch the
cloves except to nibble the blossom end from one, just to have a
pleasant taste in his mouth. It was many hours, apparently before the
clock struck eleven; had it not been for the loud persistent ticking
Matt would have believed the old timepiece had stopped. As it was, he
had fully made up his mind that the striking weight had not been
wound, when suddenly the hammer rattled off eleven. Between eleven and
twelve, Matt ate all the cloves, pinched himself nearly black and
blue, pulled his hair, rubbed his ears, and did everything else he had
ever heard of as an antidote to sleepiness. Finally he dressed himself
and descended, intending to be at the front door when the clock should
strike. As he stepped from the last stair his foot fell upon the
family cat, who habitually reposed upon a rug lying just there, and
the cry which that cat uttered was more appalling to Matt than the
roar of a royal Bengal tiger would have been. Matt's parents, however,
had clear consciences, so the agonized scream did not seem to awaken
them. Then Matt's heart beat so violently that he began to wonder why
the sound of its throbs did not shake the house. He tiptoed to the
door, but his shoes squeaked, and though he experimented, by setting
down his feet, heel first, by walking on the outer edge of his shoes,
and then upon the inner, the squeak continued. Then he sat upon the
floor and removed his shoes, when, to his great relief, the clock
struck twelve. Why that clock did not rouse him with its clamor every
night and every time it struck was a great mystery to him as he softly
opened the door, closed it, sped away in his stockinged feet, and
determined to smuggle a bit of soap out of the house and settle with
those stockings before they went to the family washtub.

Reaching the church, Matt was sure he saw a shadow hold up a gaunt
forefinger by way of warning, but this speedily resolved itself into
Jack, who was elevating the gimlet, and who approached and whispered—

"In hoc signo vinces," as old Constantine says in the "Universal
School History."

Both boys hugged every fence and wall until they reached the offending
barrels; then Matt's heart began pumping again, receiving some
sympathy from that of Jack. The last-named youth suddenly whispered,

"Want to strike the first blow?"

"I guess not," said Matt, flattening himself as closely as possible
against the wall of the store. "You thought of it first."

Jack knelt before one of the barrels, bored a hole as low as possible,
and a small stream of liquid and a strong smell of whiskey appeared
instantly and at the same time. Then another hole was bored at the
top, to admit air, and the industry of the stream increased suddenly,
as Jack learned by a jet which struck his own trowsers and made itself
felt on the skin beneath. Matt operated upon the second barrel, Jack
unlocked the demon in the third, and so the boys proceeded
alternately, until while over the sixth barrel Matt's enthusiasm
interfered with his steadiness of hand and he broke the gimlet.

"That's too bad," whispered Jack. "I guess we'd better leave, but old
Hoccamine won't find five empty barrels a very small hint to stop
outraging the sentiments of the inhabitants of this town."

Both boys made haste to depart, wasting no time in formal adieux. As
soon as they had reached the church and cemetery, in neither of which
they feared listeners, Jack exclaimed in a low tone

"This is a proud day for Doveton, Matt; can't you make some excuse to
come up town in the morning to hear Hoccamine swear when he learns
about it?"

"I'll ask mother if she doesn't need something from some store," said
Matt; "good night."

The boys went their separate ways, each unconsciously carrying the
smell of whiskey in the shoe soles which had several times been wet
with it, as they moved about the sidewalk, so when Mr. and Mrs. Bolton
awoke in the morning, it was not strange that the lady exclaimed—

"Where can that strong smell of whiskey come from? I didn't know there
was a drop in the house."

"Nor I," said Mr. Bolton. The odor could not be attributed to the
servant, for she lived elsewhere, and had not yet come to her daily
labor. Mrs. Bolton was not superior to the ordinary human interest in
mystery, so she continued,

"Where can it be? Oh, husband, it can't be that Matt, our only darling
boy, is getting into bad ways?"

Mr. Bolton sprang from his bed and hurried to Matt's room; there were
too many other fourteen-year old boys in Doveton who had already
trifled with liquor, and Matt's father had at once become suspicious.
But he returned in a moment saying,

"Thank God, it isn't that; the blessed scamp's breath is as sweet as
it was when he was a baby. But what can it be?"

Mr. Bolton quickly dressed himself and went through the house, but
soon hurried back exclaiming—

"Thieves! The front door is ajar."

Both householders took part in a hasty search, but Mrs. Bolton found
her silver spoons safe though they had been in plain view in a
dining-room closet. Mr. Bolton found no clothing missing, nor could
the subsequent search prove that anything whatever had been taken.

"I have it!" exclaimed Mrs. Bolton suddenly. "I heard the cat scream
terribly in the night. It is plain that the rascal stepped upon her,
and then ran away, supposing her noise would arouse the house. What a
narrow escape!"

Matt slept throughout the excitement like one who has a conscience
which was not only void of offense, but had the additional peace which
comes of virtuous deeds successfully accomplished. It was only after
considerable effort, indeed, that he could be roused at breakfast
time. As for Jack, he was up long before the lark, and on his way to
the market (which was opposite Hoccamine's store) to purchase some
scraps of meat for a mythical dog. He meekly stood outside with his
package, for what seemed to him centuries, awaiting the opening of
Hoccamine's store. Then he hurried home, ate the merest excuse for a
breakfast, and cooled his heels at Matt's wood-pile for at least an
hour, and when his companion finally appeared, yawning profoundly,
Jack shouted—

"Oh, Matt, 'twas worth a million dollars. Hurry up, can't you?"

Matt quickly roused himself to consciousness that life was real, life
was earnest, and joined Jack, who exclaimed—

"Fun? why there was oceans of it, with hundreds of lakes and ponds
thrown in. First there came along old Burt, on his way to market, and
as soon as he saw the stuff in little puddles by the curbstone, and
smelt what it was, he just lay down on his stomach and began to drink.
He signed the pledge at the last temperance meeting, too; isn't it
awful? Then Captain Sands came along, and stopped to look, and so did
Squire Jones and Joe, the barber, and everybody that came to market
saw the crowd and went over, so I thought 'twas safe to go over
myself. All of a sudden over came Hoccamine, who had been to market,
and then—well, you never heard such swearing at a fight. He declared
that somebody had been stealing it, and Squire Jones told him it was a
righteous judgment on him, and then Hoccamine swore some more and
called the Squire names, and the Squire said he'd never buy another
penny's worth from a man who had abused him in that way, and Hoccamine
told him to take his infernal pennies and buy of—of the old fellow
down below, you know, if he chose. Then Hoccamine opened the store and
got out some pails and scoop-shovels, and tried to save some of the
liquor out of the gutter. Oh, it was just glorious." And Jack, unable
to express his feelings in any other way, danced about madly and
jumped over several logs of wood.

Then Matt, who has listened with considerable interest, yet with a
pre-occupied air, told the story of the attempted burglary, but
explained away the supposition that the thief was scared off by the
cat.

"That shows," said Jack, briskly, "how necessary the work was that we
did last night. Whiskey made that thief, you see—I shouldn't wonder if
what you were about at the same time had something to do with his
being influenced to go away. Don't you know how these things happen in
books sometimes? I once read—"

Jack suddenly ceased talking, but burst out laughing, and finally
dropped upon the chips and rolled about in a perfect convulsion of
laughter, while Matt looked on in mute astonishment.

"Oh, Matt," he exclaimed finally, "don't you understand? That smell of
whiskey was on you somewhere—I smell it now. And you were so excited
when you went in, that you forgot to latch the door—I've done the same
thing, once or twice. Oh, oh, oh, that's too rich. I'll die if I can't
tell somebody."

Matt immediately swore his companion to strict secresy, but later in
the day, which happened to be Saturday, he became so uncomfortable at
hearing his father discuss the attempted burglary with everyone who
entered the store that he confessed the whole affair to Mr. Bolton.
That gentleman made a valiant effort at reproof, but he did not love
Hoccamine more than business rivals usually love each other, and he
was an earnest advocate of total abstinence, so he made some excuse to
get at his account books, and for the remainder of the day he was
subject to violent fits of laughter whenever he was not trying to
truthfully modify his story of the burglary to the many acquaintances
who came in to enquire about it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                              CHAPTER III.

                        INJURY AND RESTITUTION.


Dr. Wittingham, whose only son Jack was, sat in his office one morning
compounding a complicated and consequently a favorite prescription of
his own, and at the same time pondering upon the equally complicated
character of his boy. The doctor had been a boy himself, a third of a
century before, and an extremely lively one, if the traditions of his
native village had been correctly handed down, but a man's memory is
not in the habit of going backward half a lifetime, unless in search
of old sweethearts, so the doctor owned to himself that Jack was
without exception the most mischievous boy he had ever known or heard
of.

"It passes all explanation, too," said the doctor, sitting down and
watching his prescription as it filtered slowly into a glass beneath
it. "I'm a man of good behavior if ever there was one, his mother was
a lady born and bred, he knows the Bible better than our minister
does, and there's nothing good but what the boy seems to take a lively
interest in. I was going to write a book upon heredity, basing it upon
the development of that boy's character as inherited from his parents
and modified by such teachings as I have imparted, to improve the
original stock. But bless me! I'm sometimes unable to find the
original stock at all, and as for the improvements I intend to make in
it, well, they're as invisible as the ailments of some of my rich
patients. Whatever I say to him seems to filter through him more
rapidly than that mixture is doing through the paper, and leaves not
even a sediment behind, while whatever he shouldn't hear seems to
stick to him like an adhesive plaster. Before he goes to school, he
recites his lessons to me in the most perfect manner; when he comes
home he brings a written complaint from the teacher, who has found him
outrageously mischievous all day long; and when his mother takes any
of his torn jackets and trowsers in hand, she is certain to find two
or three more documents of the same kind which Jack has kindly
forgotten to deliver, perhaps out of regard for my feelings. He will
chop wood all day Saturday for the Widow Batty or some other needy
person, until I determine he's growing to be too good to live; then my
own dinner comes up underdone because he hasn't considered that
wood-chopping, like charity, should begin at home. I've heard no
complaints of him for nearly a week; there must be a terrible shower
of them brewing somewhere."

There was a knock at the door, and the town supervisor of roads
entered.

"Ah, good morning," said the doctor, briskly. "Who's under the weather
now?"

"Wa'al," drawled the supervisor, "nobody, I reckon 'less its you.
Here's a little bill I'm sorry to have to bring to you, but its had to
be done."

The doctor took the paper from the Supervisor's hand and read as
follows:

"Dr. Andrew Wittingham to town of Doveton, Dr. One-half cost of
replacing Second Brook Bridge, $11.62."

"What on earth does this mean?" exclaimed the doctor after reading the
bill several times.

"Bolton has paid the other half," said the supervisor; "its for that
bridge that Jack and Matt hooked, you know, and left in the middle of
Prewitt's corn field half a mile from where it belonged."

"Hooked a bridge?" exclaimed the doctor, "I don't understand. Jack
never said anything to me about it."

"Didn't he?" asked the supervisor with an ironical grin. "Wa'al, like
enough he didn't; 'twas during the June freshet, you know, an' the
boys found it loose, an' went raftin' around on it. Like enough they'd
have fetched it back, but they rammed it through one fence after
another, an' at last they got it aground. We tried to get it under a
log wagon an' haul it back, but 'twas no go, an' we havn't put the
hire of the wagon into the bill, for the man wasn't to charge anything
if he didn't get it through. Shouldn't wonder, though, if Prewitt
brought in a bill for damages, he says it'll do him out of twenty
hills of corn, besides being a nuisance to plough around. An' he and
the next man are out about a dozen fence rails each."

The doctor recognized the inevitable, yet remarked that the price
seemed a large one for a bridge in a country where lumber was so
cheap.

"Just what it cost," remarked the supervisor, "the whole thing came to
$23.25, an' in dividin' I threw the odd cent on to Bolton, for I think
the medical profession ought to be encouraged."

The doctor paid the bill, and bade his visitor a rather curt good
morning. Then he went to the door and shouted "Jack!" in tones which
would have been heard by the young man if he had been at school, which
he was not.

"Jack," said the doctor, sternly, when the youth appeared, "I've just
had to pay for a bridge which you stole in June."

"I didn't," promptly answered the boy.

"It amounted to the same thing, in dollars and cents, as stealing,"
said the doctor. "How many hours of fun did you have that day?"

Jack thought profoundly for a minute or two, and replied, meekly,

"About two, I suppose."

"And to pay for those I have had to lose the receipts of about a day
of hard, disgusting work. Do you consider that the fair thing, for one
who is doing everything he can for your good?"

"No, sir," replied Jack, honestly contrite in the presence of this new
view of the case.

"Then why did you do it?"

"Because."

"Because what?"

"Because."

"Because you're an ungrateful scamp, and don't care for anything but
your own pleasure."

"Yes I do, father," said Jack, beginning to cry, "I"——

"Don't make excuses, sir," interrupted the doctor; "you shall do extra
work, at whatever a laborer would be paid, to make up the cost of that
bridge, and do it on your holidays and Saturdays, too. Now I want you
to go and burn that old bridge, or I'll have to pay for the annoyance
it will give Prewitt."

Jack lingered for a moment, as bad boys often do on such occasions,
longing to say something which he could not put into words, and to
hear some recognition of what he felt was good within him. Had the
doctor used a mere tithe of the patience and love that Heaven had been
compelled to display in reforming him, he might have attached Jack to
him by that love which is the best of all educators in things wise and
thoughtful. But the doctor, like the boy, lived first, though
unconsciously, for himself, and so with an impatient gesture he drove
Jack from the door. The boy filled a pocket with matches and lounged
off, muttering to himself,

"It'll be bully fun to burn the old bridge, anyhow, I shouldn't wonder
if it would take a couple of days, and there'll be that much school
time gone, but I say—Matt ought to be made to help—oh, wouldn't that
be jolly! I'll go ask his father right away—everybody calls him an
honest man, and he oughtn't to see me paying Matt's debts."

Jack hurried at once to Mr. Bolton's store; as he entered, the
proprietor, who was alone, picked up a hoe-handle, and exclaimed—

"You young scoundrel, I've a good mind to break every bone in your
rascally body. Don't you ever dare to coax my boy to go anywhere with
you again, or I'll half kill you. You're the worst boy in town."

Rightly assuming that the opportunity for presenting his request was
not a promising one, Jack departed at once, and hung about the
schoolhouse until the mid-morning intermission; then he seized Matt
and announced the situation, taking care to omit mention of his
interview with Bolton senior. Matt at once volunteered assistance, and
an hour later the boys had burning upon the bridge a glorious fire of
dead boughs and broken rails. When the boards had burned in two, the
boys pried the two logs toward each other, and thereafter they
adjusted the logs several times, getting each time some smut upon
their clothes as well as occasional burns upon their hands. When at
length the logs seemed able to take care of themselves the boys
strewed some green twigs upon the ground to lie on, and as they were
stretched upon them, chatting in the desultory manner peculiar to
every one who lies down about a fire, Jack remarked,

"Say Matt, do you know that people in this world are awfully unfair to
boys?"

"I guess I do," replied Matt, "but what made you think of it just
now?"

"Why, my govenor gave me fits this morning about this bridge, and
called me ungrateful and all sorts of things. I s'pose he thought he
told the truth, but I know better. I'd do anything for him—I'd die for
him. Why, one day that big mulatto Ijam, that he can never collect his
bills of, came in looking awful ugly, and blazing about being sued,
and I was sure he meant to hurt father; I just got a hatchet and stood
outside the door, ready to rush in and tomahawk him if he did the
least thing. It made me late at school, and I got licked for that, but
I didn't care, and the teacher wrote a note home about it and I got
scolded, but I didn't tell what I'd done."

"My father's the same way, sometimes," said Matt.

"I know he is," said Jack, hastily debating (with decision in the
negative) whether he should tell of his own morning experience with
Mr. Bolton.

"Now," continued Jack, "I've got to work all my holidays at something,
I don't know what, until I earn enough money to pay my share of that
bridge—you know the two govenors have had to settle for a new one?"

"Mercy, no!" exclaimed Matt.

"They have, this morning," said Jack. "I shouldn't wonder if you'd
catch it when you go home, but there's some bully mullein leaves under
the hill that you can put inside the back of your jacket."

Matt devoted some moments of disagreeable reflection to this topic;
then his sense of companionship came to the surface, and he said—

"I'll help you, Jack—unless father punishes me in the same way. What
do you suppose you'll have to do?"

"I don't know yet," said Jack, "but I've got a splendid idea. The
govenor has just bought his winter's supply of wood, as he generally
does in June, and he always has it cut while its green because it
costs only a dollar and a quarter a cord, while the men charge a
dollar and a half when its seasoned. I'll ask him to let me work it
out in that way."

"Why, Jack," remonstrated Matt, "it will take you more than half a
year of holidays."

"No, it won't," said Jack, "I can chop nearly a cord a day when I work
hard. Besides, I've got an idea worth more than my own industry. I'm
going to blow at school, and around among the boys, about what a
splendid wood-chopper I am."

"I'll say the same thing about you," said Matt.

"All right; we'll both talk of my particular swing with the axe until
the whole crowd will be mad enough to take the conceit out of me at
any price. Then I'll offer a bet of something worth having—a half
dollar against half a dime, say—that I can chop and split more in a
single day than any other boy in town. Lots of them will take up the
bet, we'll appoint a day, the place to be our wood, pile, and every
boy to bring his own axe. You shall be umpire, so you won't have to do
anything but walk about and egg the others up to business."

This brilliant device took complete possession of Matt, and as for
Jack, within a week there was not a boy in town who could pass him
without making a face at him, and scarcely a mother dependant upon her
own boys for fuel but had an abundant supply without having to beg for
it. Many indignant boys offered indefinite bets in favor of their own
skill with the axe, but the sagacious Jack declined them all on the
ground that he could not honorably bet on what he called a sure thing.
When finally he offered his own wager, it was accepted by acclamation
by nearly the whole of his own arithmetic class, numbering
twenty-nine. The boys from the other school hoped they were not to be
excluded just because they lived in a different part of the town, and
Matt went on a special mission to them to assure them that this was to
be, figuratively speaking, an international contest, in which all
territorial lines were to be as if they existed not. Some other boys
who never went to school, hardened young rowdies, who, as a rule did
nothing, and accumulated a large stock of vitality which was not
always expended in proper ways, heard of the approaching match, swore
by all sorts of persons, places and things that they only wished they
might "take a whack at that game," and were cordially invited to
participate. Then the would-be contestants met in convention, and Jack
formally deposited his half dollar in the hands of Matt, who was to be
stake-holder. There being some difficulty in deciding how the bets
against Jack were to be held, the challenger magnanimously declined to
accept any bet, if the crowd would agree, each for himself, that the
man who cut least, and he alone, should be loser of a half dime in
case of Jack's triumph.

After a fair canvass of conflicting interests as to date, which
involved the withdrawal of several boys who had agreed to go fishing
or shooting, or berrying, or visiting, it was decided that the ensuing
Saturday morning would be the most available time, particularly as
Jack explained that his father who, he was sure, would stop the whole
thing if he heard of it in advance, would start before daylight that
morning to attend a consultation miles away by rail. The idea that the
proceeding would be displeasing to any adult silenced at once the
objections of all who had preferred another date, and it even brought
back the boys who had pleaded prior engagements.

As for Dr. Wittingham, he was completely astounded and wonderfully
pleased when Jack, with a frank business-like air, proposed to cut the
ten cords of winter wood as an offset to the bridge bill of eleven
dollars and sixty-two cents. The doctor patted Jack's head, called him
a noble fellow, gave him a stick of licorice, and promised him a
dollar for himself on the completion of the work.

"Now," said the doctor, when Jack had left his presence, "I think I've
a good hard point for that work on heredity; Impose a rational penalty
for offense, and its manifest justice will improve both the reasoning
and moral nature of the offender."

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                              CHAPTER IV.

                      SHARP AXES AND SHARPER WITS.


During the week preceding the great contest with axes there was very
little truancy, fighting or bad hours to be complained of by the
parents of the boys of Doveton. The excitement natural to an
approaching struggle was sufficient even for the nerves of the most
irrepressible juvenile natures in town. Most of the boys went into
training at their respective family wood-piles, and those who had no
uncut wood on hand resorted to the unprecedented operation of
requesting permission to work at that of somebody else. The story of
the bet became noised abroad, beyond the limits of the town, and
several sturdy country boys having signified their desire to earn
fifty cents by a half day's work, the crowd allowed them to enter for
the contest, for anything was more endurable than Jack Wittingham's
conceit; Jack himself welcomed them, of course, in the most hearty
manner in the world. Toward the last of the week the sound of the
grindstone was heard in the land, and as several boys had asked and
received permission to use saws instead of axes, the melodious voice
of the hand saw file arose to stimulate in nervous persons of
religious tendencies an increased appreciation of the promised peace
of Heaven. Then every carpenter who owned a boy of wood-chopping age
suddenly missed his best oil stone, and sundry axes had their edges
dressed so keenly that no one denied their owner's assertions that a
man might shave himself with those axes and not know but they were
rabbit paws or puff balls. The juvenile rowdies, who treasured old
copies of sporting papers, read up on the training of prize-fighters,
with the result that they indulged in ablutions with unhabitual
frequency, and took an amount and variety of exercise which threatened
to exorcise the demon which inhabits the juvenile loafer.

The morn of the eventful day dawned at last, and, early as it was when
Doctor Wittingham had to start for the railway station, there was
already approaching his wood-pile fat Billy Barker, who was so
treacherous a sleeper that he had remained awake all night so as to be
on hand in time in the morning. Then one of the loafers, whose family
owned no timepiece, lounged up, and made Billy very uncomfortable with
prophecies that a certain boy would hardly escape melting on such a
warm day as that particular Saturday promised to be, and that only a
pair of leg boots could be trusted to save enough of the remains to
justify a full sized funeral. Then one of the country boys appeared,
riding bareback upon an ancient mare, and his extreme taciturnity
became as annoying to Billy as the chaffing of the loafer had been,
while the loafer himself visibly abated his arrogance by a degree or
two. Then the Pinkshaw twins approached, each with an axe in one hand
and a piece of bread and butter in the other. Matt Bolton came next,
quite out of breath, for though he had half an hour to spare, a sense
of his official responsibility had somehow impelled him to run every
step of the way from his own home. Lame Joey Wilson staggered in soon
after, with his heavy "saw horse" and saw, and close behind him came a
country boy whose family had brought him as far as the main street in
the farm wagon. Then two loafers, successful catchers of occasional
saw logs and drift wood, lounged up from the river. Several boys from
the neighborhood known as the other side of town, approached in a
body, led by big Frank Parker, who was the largest boy in school and
who it was always considered a privilege to follow. Then as the hour
for business came nearer, boys approached from all directions so
rapidly that they could scarcely be catalogued, and when Matt drew his
sister's watch from his pocket for the twentieth time and announced
that it was ten minutes of eight, there were present forty-three boys,
five horses (belonging to the delegation from the country), besides
three unemployed men who had come to look on. The stalwart appearance
of some of the larger contestants terrified certain small, weak and
lazy boys into determining to throw up the sponge in advance, but when
the challenger, the boastful Jack himself, sauntered out from the
house with an axe on his shoulder, a toothpick in his mouth and an
intolerable air of self-sufficiency in his face, the nerves of the
most timid boy grew suddenly as fine as steel, and he determined to
drop dead on his axe rather than let that bragging Jack crow over him
any longer.

Suddenly Matt mounted the wood-pile, consulted his sister's watch, and
exclaimed—

"Only five minutes more. Now, fellows, this is to be a fair fight, you
know. Every man picks his own place, carries wood to it from the pile,
cuts each stick into three equal lengths, and throws in front of him
whatever he chops. If at twelve o'clock there's any doubt who has done
most, the biggest piles are to be laid up straight against a stake,
and carefully measured. Nobody need split his wood. When it's time to
begin, I'll holloa 'One, two, three—go!' and when twelve o'clock comes
I'll say 'One, two, three—stop!' I'll have a pail of water and a cup
here by the fence, for anyone who wants a drink."

The boys were already carrying the four foot sticks of wood to their
chosen locations, and between the confusion of selecting desirable
places and that occasioned by snatching from a wood-pile which did not
afford elbow-room for forty-three boys at a time, there was
considerable bad feeling engendered, and sundry punishments with
impolite names were promised for the indefinite future. The country
boys had judiciously hugged the ends of the wood-pile from the moment
of their arrival, which prospective advantage certain other boys
attempted to nullify by taking wood from the ends, and there might
have ensued a serious collision had not Matt, who had moved the
judge's stand from the wood-pile to the fence, shouted,

"Eight o'clock. One, two, three—go!"

Thirty-nine axes came down nearly as one, and four saws began a not
discordant quartette across the bark of sundry sticks, while the three
unemployed men thrust their hands deep into their pockets and adjured
the boys, collectively, to "go in." A chip from fat Billy Barker's axe
started to avenge Billy upon his tormentor of an hour before, and it
struck the loafer in the back of the neck with such force that the bad
boy howled with anguish, and volubly condemned his soul to all sorts
of uncomfortable places and conditions. The axes soon broke the
uniformity of their stroke; some flew at the rate of nearly a blow a
second, others, particularly those of the country boys, were slow, but
oh, so regular! Still others, confined almost exclusively to the
loafers, struck the wood rapidly and with a particularly vicious
hardness which was not without its influence upon boys of small
spirit. The peculiar ringing of an occasional "glance" was heard, and
soon a yell from Scoopy Brown, who was a very awkward boy, called
general attention to that youth, who was sitting upon the ground
holding one of his feet and weeping bitterly. A careful examination
determined that his axe had not gone deeper than the stocking, so
Scoopy dried his tears and began work again, his spirits sharpened by
many uncomplimentary remarks by the loafers and others who had lost
time by stopping work to look at him.

Within a quarter of an hour fat Billy Barker had visited the
water-pail three times; a quarter of an hour later he was curled up
with agony beside the fence, his only consolation consisting in making
dreadful faces at the big loafer who had proved a tolerable prophet.
At the same time two other boys, one of whom had broken an arm within
three months, and the other being so small that he realized the folly
of contending against many large boys, retired from the contest, and
took place among the spectators, who already consisted of seven men,
one woman (with baby) and two dogs. Then one of the loafers declared
that although he could beat as easily as falling off a log, fifty
cents wouldn't pay for half a day of work under such a sun. Of the
spare forty who remained, nearly half were of apoplectic hue, so that
Matt the umpire, consulting his sister's watch, felt in duty bound to
inform them that barely half an hour had elapsed, and that they would
never get through the morning unless they took things easier.

As for Jack, he did splendidly. With great sagacity he had selected
the largest sticks, these requiring less handling, and fewer delays
between an old stick and a new one, besides making a heap look more
bulky. His axe was in capital condition, as his physique always was,
his nerve was equally good, and he had the additional incentive of
wanting to keep up the general interest, which would be sure to flag
if he were discovered to be falling behind. The country boys led him a
close race, and compelled him to do his best, as did also two of the
loafers. At the end of the first hour, Matt the umpire, who had
attended closely to his sister's watch for the ten minutes preceding,
shouted "Nine o'clock," and most of the country boys stopped for a
brief rest. Jack was glad to follow their example, and at the same
time one of the loafers took a flask bottle from his pocket and
swallowed considerable whiskey. A request, proffered by another
loafer, that the bottle be passed was met by a reply similar in tenor
to that given by the five wise virgins to their foolish companions,
and the apparent meanness of this proceeding made even the weariest
boy determine to at least beat that particular loafer.

Half-past nine came, and with it a loud snap which proved to proceed
from the saw block of lame Joey Wilson. As Joey was a very pleasant
little fellow, with a widowed mother whose lot in life was not the
easiest, another boy, who had a saw, pressed it upon Joey, and thus
honorably retired from a contest which had kept his back aching
frightfully for nearly an hour. Then two or three other boys honestly
acknowledged themselves completely used up, and they retired to such
shade as the fence afforded and constituted themselves an invalid
corps of observation. The loafer who had drank the whiskey dropped
suddenly, muttered something about sunstroke, and crawled away
unlamented by any one.

At the cry of "Ten o'clock!" the working force had dwindled to
twenty-seven axes and two saws. Two boys had been legitimately
summoned from the field by their legal guardians, and at least half a
dozen others longed earnestly for a similar fate. Jack began to be
doubtful of the entire success of his scheme, but the country boys all
stuck manfully to business, and at least one of them was beginning to
show signs of becoming excited. The remaining loafers, too, hung on
very well, and so did a spare half dozen of other boys, mostly large.
The crowd was still large and industrious enough to astonish several
farmers who drove into town, and the road became literally paved with
chips. The invalid corps increased at about the rate of four men an
hour between ten and eleven, but by this time Jack's mind was easy,
for the only danger was that there would not be wood enough left with
which the fittest who survived could complete the half day. Nearly all
the loafers broke down, as loafers always do during the decisive hour,
and the strife narrowed down to the country boys, one loafer, big
Frank Parker, lame Joey Wilson and Jack. Each boy had his special
adherents; the loafers cheered their own representative with much
outlandish language, most of the men encouraged the country boys, the
delegation from the other side of town urged big Frank Parker to "lay
himself out," to "come down lively," to "sling himself," and to do
many other things which to the youthful mind seem best signified by
idioms of great peculiarity, but the mass of sympathy was pretty
equally divided between Jack and lame Joey Wilson. Eligible sticks of
wood began to be sought at the piles of those who had abandoned the
contest, and Matt the umpire had to exert the extreme measure of his
authority to prevent the partizans of the two favorites from rushing
in and carrying wood for them. The breaking of the axe-helve of one of
the country boys elicited a tremendous roar from the entire
assemblage, which was now upon its feet. The lame Joey Wilson faction
began to sing the chorus "Go in lemons, if you do get squeezed," which
was known to be Joey's favorite air and the song stimulated Joey
wonderfully, noting which fact the adherents of Jack started "John
Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave," which Jack was known to
consider the finest thing ever written. But somehow the tune did not
stimulate Jack as it was expected to do; perhaps the words with which
the air is indissolubly associated had a depressing effect upon him,
besides, the two songs were roared with about equal volume of sound,
and as they are written in different keys, measures, and time, the
general effect was horribly discordant and annoying to a tired man.

At half past eleven the remaining sticks, like angels' visits, became
far between, and finally dwindled to one, over which two of the
country boys fought, dropping it in their struggle, to be triumphantly
snatched and sawed by lame Joey Wilson. Then Matt, the umpire, first
ascertaining from his sister's watch that it was not yet twelve
o'clock, announced that any man might take a stick from any other man
who had uncut sticks before him. At thirteen minutes of twelve, five
of the six country boys were upon their last sticks and the other had
a single stick yet uncut before him, which seemed to lie between Jack
and lame Joey Wilson. Jack's axe glanced several times and Joey got
the stick, and at precisely ten minutes before twelve Joey had the
last stick reposing in three pieces upon his pile. The whole crowd
rushed in, but Matt shouted—

"Everybody get back—quick—get back! every man piles his own wood!"

Some little delay occasioned by the difficulty of getting stakes
against which to stake the piles which seemed largest, was ended by an
order to pile against the fence. It was generally admitted, by every
one but the country boys, that the decision must be between Jack and
Joey, and as Jack was quick upon his feet and Joey, an account of his
lame leg, was slow, the former was allowed to assist the latter, but
no one noticed that Jack took considerable wood from the piles of the
boys who had been unsuccessful with the saw; the result was that
Joey's pile was so much the larger that no one insisted upon a
measurement, and Matt handed the half dollar to lame Joey Wilson
without a protest from any one, though the shouts that went up formed
a conglomerate sound which was truly appalling to any adult ear which
it reached.

Then the boys separated and started homeward with their respective
axes, saws, and saw-horses. Dr. Wittingham met several of them, as he
returned at an earlier hour than Jack had expected from his
consultation. What to make of the unusual number of business looking
boys he did not know, but as he went around to the wood-pile to see
how his son had begun his self-imposed penalty, the truth dawned upon
him, and he exclaimed:

"I've used every evening this week upon that chapter of heredity, and
now it isn't worth the paper it's written on!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                               CHAPTER V.

                      EXPERIMENTS IN GRAVITATION.


As June disappeared in the beginning of July, the long vacation of the
Doveton schools began, and with it began Dr. Wittingham's special and
particular annual annoyance, which consisted of keeping Jack out of
mischief. To compel the boy to work all the while was something at
which the good doctor's heart naturally revolted, but it seemed that
when Jack was unoccupied even for half an hour an indignant complaint
by some one was absolutely sure to follow. The doctor was not the only
man who had charge of a boy of mischieveous tendencies, so there was
considerable private jubilation among parents when a lone foreigner
strayed into the town, announced himself as a Polish exile, and
offered to carry a class in French through the summer vacation. The
French language was not held in intelligent esteem by all Doveton
parents, but every one of them understood the value of peace of mind,
so within forty-eight hours the exile was guaranteed an eight weeks
class of twenty boys, at six dollars per boy, and was granted the
upper floor of one of the schoolhouses free of rent.

This arrangement for the consumption of the summer vacation did not
meet Jack's views at all, and he protested so strongly that the doctor
yielded, after exacting perfect behavior as the price of liberty. Jack
promised; he would have promised anything rather than have spent all
those delicious days indoors. There was altogether too much
out-of-doors that demanded his attention; the blackberry harvest in
which Jack earned most of his year's spending money, came in July; the
march of civilization was working destruction with hazel-nut patches,
so that prudent boys desired to know in advance where not to go in the
fall; it was the "off year" for black walnuts, so it was advisable to
ascertain where were the few trees which neglected to be in the
fashion; there were several young orchards which had bloomed for the
first time, and must be visited for sampling purposes, lest perchance
there might some very early varieties come into bearing and be
gathered before he had seen them, slippery elm bark was not entirely
past its prime, several new kinds of fish-bait were to be tested on
the perch which Jack was sure dwelt in jealous seclusion in certain
deep holes in the river, the country district was to be scoured for
new litters of puppies of desirable breed—in short Jack had so much
work laid out that the vacation promised to be a very busy one.

But by the time the French class had been in session a week, Jack
began to feel unutterably lonesome. Matt was in the class; so was lame
Joey Wilson, who was always a pleasant companion; the Pinkshaw twins,
who had no equal as tree-climbers, were also there, and so was big
Frank Parker, whose superior strength and wisdom were not to be
despised. Jack gave unwonted attention to the family garden so as to
be within sound of the mid-morning intermission, and when the
teacher's bell summoned the boys back to school again, Jack not
unfrequently sat upon the school wood-pile during the long hour which
ensued before the dismissal which brought him and the boys together
again. Then satan began to find mischief for Jack's idle hands, and
small pebbles not unfrequently flew into the open windows of the
school-room, occasioning pleasing diversions for the boys and
annoyance for the teacher. Every body knew who threw them, but when
questioned by the teacher they all, with general mental reservation,
professed utter ignorance. The exile-teacher was not of the best
temper, so he took his stand near a window, with the text-book in one
hand and half a brick in the other, but Jack, warned by friendly hands
hanging out of the windows of the side upon which the teacher stood,
operated from the other side and occasioned many spirited races
against time, the teacher's course being across the schoolroom, while
Jack's goal was the friendly shelter of the schoolhouse porch. But
even this diversion grew tiresome, and Jack, from pure loneliness,
finally came to sneaking up the stairway, sitting on the floor of the
hall, and listening by the hour to what to him seemed the idiotic
jabber of his late schoolmates.

Then listening itself grew tiresome; besides, the position was
uncomfortable, so one day Jack climbed up the little hatchway which
led to the cockpit and belfry, laid a board across several beams,
stretched himself upon it, and listened at ease, for there were sundry
cracks in the ceiling. Jack was not long in discovering that one of
these cracks, in its meanderings, passed directly over the teacher's
chair, and that sundry small fragments of plaster could be scratched
from its sides and dropped upon the exile's head.

This discovery aroused the inventive spirit which seems dormant in the
mind of every American, waiting only for appropriate occasion to call
it forth, Jack carefully marked that portion of the crack which
directly overhung the teacher's head. He remained where he was until
school was dismissed; then he cautiously picked at the side of the
crack, between two laths, until it was wide enough to admit a grain of
corn dropped edgewise; then he went below, dusted away the fallen
plaster with his hat, and went home through the unlocked door with a
feeling that the next morning was at least six weeks away.

But the next morning came, according to all correct timepieces, at the
proper hour, and the French class had got fairly under way upon some
of the exasperating paradigms of an irregular verb, when suddenly a
grain of corn fell upon the bald head of the exile. Fat Billy Barker,
who was abler at staring than studying, happened to see the falling
body, and as the startled teacher arose from his chair, Billy began to
laugh. The teacher immediately marked him as the offender, dashed at
him and gave him several hard blows with a switch, after which Billy
put his head down upon his desk, wept, and declined to make a
statement. But the teacher had hardly reseated himself when another
missile of the same sort had struck him; Billy's head and hands being
still down, the teacher exclaimed,

"Oh, Barkare, zen it was not you; I vill apologize, Barkare,—I have
mooch sorrow. Vatever boy it vas should be whipped by Barkare!"

Again the recitation began and another grain of corn fell, this time
in full view of the entire school. A general titter resulted, and this
so enraged the teacher that he strolled rapidly down the aisles,
displaying two rows of terribly white teeth, and shaking his ruler at
nearly every boy individually. This operation had a very sobering
effect, and even Jack was so appalled by the noise of the teacher's
footfalls that he remained quiet nearly an hour. Finally he dropped
two grains in quick succession, and the boys, who had been feverishly
awaiting something new, laughed aloud with one accord. The teacher
sprang to his feet, seized both ruler and switch, and roared.

"Now, who did it? Barkare, you vill tell me, an' let me avenge ze
vipping you did haf?"

Billy gulped down the truth and declared he did not know.

"Vilson," shouted the teacher, "you is ze good boy of ze school; you
will tell me, I know, Vilson?"

But Joey, looking as innocent as if he were saying his prayers, shook
his head negatively.

"Mistare Frank Parkare," continued the teacher, "you haf nearly ze
years of a man, and cannot enchoy to see ze destruction of discipline.
Who vas it that throw ze corn-grain."

And big Frank Parker unblushingly and solemnly said that he did not
know.

"Efferybody tell me," exclaimed the teacher, resuming his chair with
dignity, "or ze class will stay in ze room till it starve to death.
How like you zat, mes garçons, eh?"

The boys did not seem particularly to enjoy the prospect, and Jack
himself sobered somewhat at the thought of inflicting such a penalty
upon his friends. But just there he conceived a new idea, and emerging
quietly from his hiding place, he ran home, obtained a vial from his
father's office, filled it with water, and hurried back. He was
anxious to see as well as to hear the result of his impending
operation, so he removed his board, lay along one of the beams,
steadying himself by his left hand, and held the mouth of the vial
over the teacher's head. Lame Joey Wilson was just translating
fragmentarily, as follows:

"Avez-vous-le-chien-rouge-du-charpentier-avec—"

What the carpenter-owner of the dog really had, remained unexplained
during the remainder of the session. Jack had intended to let but a
single drop of water fall, and he could generally trust his hand at
such work, for his father sometimes allowed him to assist in
compounding prescriptions. But on this particular occasion
anticipation proved too much for reality, for Jack laughed to himself
so violently over the fun about to ensue that his hand shook, a stream
of water poured through the hole, and trickled all over the teacher's
chair. And, worse still, Jack discovered that a two-inch beam is not a
safe place of repose for the human frame in moments of profound
agitation, for he lost his balance, tried to save it with one elbow
and one foot, which between them dislodged great masses of plaster
from the laths and dropped it upon the teacher's desk.


Illustration: EXPERIMENT IN GRAVITATION.


Even then the truth might not have been suspected, had not Jack,
frightened at the mischief he had caused, lost all self-control and
tumbled off the beam and upon the laths. Crack! Crack! went several
laths, a violent commotion was heard upon the remainder, and, as the
school started to its feet and the teacher dropped back in terror, a
boy's foot and a section of trowser-leg appeared for an instant
through a hole in the ceiling, only to be instantly withdrawn.

"Ah!" snarled the exile, seizing his half brick and ruler, and
starting for the hall, "I haf ze villain!" The entire class followed,
in time to hear a rustling sound and to see the teacher's half brick
go up the hatchway, through which the bell rope was being rapidly
drawn.

The teacher danced frantically about and shouted,

"Somebody go for the police—ze constable, what you call him! I would
gif five dollare if I had my pistol viz me here. Somebody bring one
little laddare—zen I go up ze hole an' drag down ze diable. I show you
vat I do, you bring me ze laddare!"

Nobody stirred; every one preferred to remain as spectator. Suddenly
the teacher's half brick descended, followed by a nail keg, a dusty
roll of discarded maps, and a piece of board.

"It is one _attaque de force_!" exclaimed the teacher, retiring
precipitately upon the feet of lame Joey Wilson, who had squeezed well
to the front. "Ze rascal shall go to ze prison. Will nobody go for ze
constable? Zen I will give ze alarm from out ze window."

The exile put his head out the window, just in time to see Jack, who
had thrown the bell rope over the front of the building, sliding down
the same, and making dreadful faces because of the pain which friction
occasioned in his hands and legs. With a fiendish yell the teacher
threw the ruler, which missed Jack. Just as the young man felt that
the rope was no longer between his knees yet the ground not invitingly
near, the teacher reappeared with an inkstand which he threw with such
excellent aim that it struck Jack in the side. The boy immediately
loosened his hold and dropped about fifteen feet, striking upon his
side. In an instant he was upon his feet and hurrying homeward without
as much hilarity as might have been expected, for in falling he had
broken his left arm.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                              CHAPTER VI.


    "When the devil was sick
      The devil a saint would be."

The only consolation that Master Jack could conjure up, as he carried
his broken arm home, was that his father would undoubtedly consider
the disaster a sufficient punishment for the offense. Jack could not
at first imagine why his arm should indulge in such sudden and
terrible twinges and object so nervously to being rubbed or held. The
pain which it experienced from the shaking consequent upon running
caused Jack to subside into a walk as soon as he had assured himself
that he was not followed; even then the pain gave no indication of
subsiding. Suddenly the truth dawned upon the boy's mind, and between
the shock occasioned by the discovery and the sense of at least a
month of vacation to be utterly lost, Jack became so weak and faint
that when he at last reached home he dropped upon the office step and
his head fell heavily against the door. The doctor, who fortunately
was at home, opened hastily and exclaimed,

"Well, what's the latest?"

"Oh, father," gasped Jack, "I've tumbled, and I'm afraid my arm is
broken."

The doctor helped the boy into a chair, eliciting a howl as he did so.
A short examination of the arm caused additional howling, and during
the quarter hour consumed by the operation of setting, Jack abandoned
all preconceived ideas of the nature of fun. Finally, when the doctor
carefully removed his clothing, put him into bed, and told him he
would have to lie there for at least a fortnight, Jack dragged the
pillow up to his face with his unhurt arm, and moistened it most
uncomfortably with tears. Half an hour later, when his father had
broken the news to his mother, who had nerves, and the lady came up to
see him, she found him sobbing violently.

"Jack, Jack," she exclaimed, "this will never do. There is always a
fever with arms broken above the elbow, and if you excite yourself it
will come on too soon, and it may destroy your reason."

"I wish it would," sobbed Jack, "I'd a great deal rather be crazy than
lie here in my senses all through this jolly, awful month. I can't
pick a blackberry, and I can't have any money for Christmas, and I
know Frank Parker guesses one of the new baits I was going to try on
the perch, and it'll be just like him to go and catch every one of
them. It's just horrid."

"Jack!" remonstrated Mrs. Wittingham, "can't you think how horrid it
is for you to go and break your arm, and make more work for every body
in the house?"

"Yes," said Jack, "but you don't think that makes me feel any better,
do you?"

"Then," said Mrs. Wittingham, "you should take your suffering as a
judgment from the Lord."

"He might have put it off until after vacation, anyhow," exclaimed the
bad boy, at which Mrs. Wittingham clapped her fingers to her ears and
fled, and informed her husband in almost the same breath, that the
dreadful boy deserved a sound whipping even now, and that nothing but
the grace of God could ever make Jack what he should be.

But after Jack had recovered from his rage, and had been surprised
into taking a short nap, he began to view the situation in about the
light which his mother would have liked him to use. It certainly had
been great fun to tease that French teacher—the thought of it provoked
even now a merry chuckle which a twinge of the arm suddenly
discouraged—but it was equally certain that the teacher himself did
not seem to enjoy it. As for sliding down a bell rope, no boy had ever
done it before, to Jack's knowledge, but oh, how his hands were
smarting! The more he thought of them the worse they burned; he must
have something cooling put upon them, even if he had to confess how he
came by them. Some one would be sure to tell his father of his
exploits at the schoolhouse, so why shouldn't he confess in advance
and get the credit for it?

May be the broken arm was a judgment upon him, as his mother
suggested. Well, he would admit that he deserved it, though he still
doubted the necessity for its infliction at this particular season of
the year. He would do his best to learn by it, anyhow—he certainly was
going to have time enough in which he could do nothing else. So Jack
confessed, and had his hands treated to a cooling lotion. The doctor,
having previously heard the story from the vivacious tongue of the
outraged exile himself, and having spent a delightful hour, partly
retrospective, in laughing over the latest capers of his son, was in a
position to listen with judicial gravity and to express his horror at
frequent intervals and in fitting terms. Then Jack listened to a long
and solemn lecture which was more wordy than pithy, and was told that
he must avoid even exciting subjects of thought for a fortnight to
come.

"Mayn't Matt come to see me?" asked Jack in faltering tones.

"Only for two or three minutes at a time," said the doctor; "even
conversation will excite you."

"I want to talk to him," said Jack.

"Why can't you talk to your mother and me?" asked the doctor.

It is beyond all things astonishing what silly questions may be asked
by sensible men when they have forgotten their own boyhood days, and
it is not surprising that Jack could not easily frame an answer to the
doctor's question.

"Did Matt ever feed or clothe you?" asked the doctor.

Jack admitted, with some trifling modifications of the first
condition, that Matt had not.

"Did he ever give you a home, or take care of you when you were sick,
or pay your school bills?"

Jack shook his head.

"Then why can't you care so much for your mother and me as you do for
him?" continued the doctor.

Jack was silent.

"It's because you're an ungrateful young scamp," exclaimed the doctor
with considerable temper, as he arose and left the room.

"Father," shouted Jack, "it isn't! Please come back?"

The doctor, considerably startled by such an exhibition of feeling,
hastily returned.

"Father," said Jack, turning his head in spite of considerable pain
which the motion inflicted upon his arm, "it's because—because Matt's
a boy."

"Umph!" exclaimed the doctor, "that is a reason—a wonderful reason. I
should think you would want to have it patented, or copyrighted, or
something."

The doctor retired, pondering upon human depravity as exemplified by
ingratitude, and Jack, having plenty of time, began to devise some way
of shaming his father out of so unjust an idea as that his boy was
ungrateful. When he became a man and a steamboat captain he would
bring all the doctor's medicines free of charge—perhaps that wouldn't
heap coals of fire upon the old gentleman's head—oh, no! Indeed, he
was not sure but he might one day become a missionary—missionaries
must have jolly times on tropical islands where they can always go
about in their shirt sleeves, have for nothing all the bananas they
can eat, and shoot lions, and birds of paradise, and things, right
from their own doors. Perhaps when he sent his father a tiger-skin
rug, and his mother a whole lot of ostrich plumes, and a monkey, and
some cunning heathen gods to put on her parlor mantel, his father
would talk about ingratitude then, but Jack rather guessed not! Then
when his mother came in with a plate of water-toast, Jack surprised
her by remarking.

"Mother, when marble time comes, I'll give you all the buttons I win."

"What do you mean, Jack?" said the lady.

"Why, we play marbles for buttons sometimes, and there's only two or
three boys in town that can beat me, and I never play with them."

"Where do they get the buttons to bet?" asked Mrs. Wittingham, "and,"
she continued, a dire suspicion coming suddenly to mind, "where do
_you_ get them?"

"I—I don't know," said Jack feebly, at which answer his mother sniffed
alarmingly, and left Jack to feel that grown folks were most
shamefully suspicious, and that they couldn't appreciate gratitude
when it was offered them.

Two or three days later the fever set in, and Jack dreamed for days of
Polar explorations, where he could go swimming in cooling seas and sun
himself dry on iridescent icebergs. He planned a wonderful voyage of
discovery to the North Pole, and it was of inestimable comfort to him
to report progress to Matt, in the five minutes which that youth was
allowed daily at the sufferer's bedside. The tenor of his thoughts was
daily interrupted by his mother, who considered the occasion demanded
Bible reading instead of personal sympathy for the youth, who could
not leave his bed to attend family prayers, and she so frequently
selected passages descriptive of a locality the temperature of which
is the reverse of polar, that Jack had to do a great deal of mental
rambling to get his thoughts in proper trim again.

At last the fever subsided leaving Jack extremely weak in body, but of
a temper simply angelic. He prefaced every request with "please," he
never forgot to say "thank you," and he sang little hymns softly to
himself. Mrs. Wittingham was delighted beyond measure, and when she
suggested that the minister might like to call, and Jack replied that
it would be very nice to have a chat with that gentleman, the lady
became considerably alarmed on the subject of the boy's recovery. Mr.
Daybright, the minister, was really a very pleasant man, as Jack
discovered, now that he had time to "take his measure," as he himself
expressed it, and after Mr. Daybright had talked with him for half an
hour, and prayed with him, and departed, Jack did not know but he
might finally conclude to be a minister himself, and have cake and
cider offered him in the middle of the afternoon when he called upon
boys with broken arms.

Then Jack's Sunday-school teacher called, and suggested that the class
should come in a body, on the following Sunday, and Jack accepted the
suggestion with fervor, and the class came, and stood decorously in a
row, and sang several hymns, and looked as sober as if fish-lines and
peg-tops and balls and birds' nests and orchards and crooked pins and
truancy did not exist anywhere nearer than the planet Neptune. Then
the teacher gave Jack a book from the Sunday-school library, which
book he had selected with Jack's particular condition of mind in view,
and although it proved to be the story of a dreadfully priggish but
very pious little London footman, whose nature, tastes, temptations
and general environment were utterly unlike Jack's, the boy labored
manfully through it, and endeavored to persuade himself that he
enjoyed it.

In fact, so thorough an overhauling did Jack's conscience receive that
he even felt himself called upon to confess to the doctor his affair
with Hoccamine's whiskey, but although the doctor had heard the story
a month before from the lips of Matt's father, he had not yet reached
that mental balance which would enable him to reprove the boy and
still leave him impressed with a sense of the vileness of the rum
traffic, so the doctor said only "Well," in a very grave way, and made
an excuse to leave the sick chamber.

A few days later Jack was allowed to sit under the great trees in
front of the house, and as he was positively forbidden to leave the
grounds, to run, or to make any exertion which might disturb the arm,
which he carried in a sling, he fell to noting the habits of birds
with their young, until he became so affected that he silently vowed
never to rob a nest again. He found in the flowers and the shrubbery
many a charm which he had never suspected when weeding them; he
contemplated cloud pictures until an overwhelming sense of the
beautiful compelled him to decide upon an artistic career, and he
watched every motion of whatever laborer happened to be in sight until
he determined that he never again would throw a chip or anything else
at a laboring man, no matter how funny he might look or how fluently
he could swear when he espied his tormentor.

Finally, to the delight of his parents and many other people who were
responsible for boys, but to the general depression of the boys
themselves, it became known that Jack had signified his intention of
joining the church. Mr. Daybright admitted that in years Jack was
rather young to take such a step, but, on the other hand, he had a far
abler mind, and—even although he was called the worst boy in town—a
cleaner record than half the adults who came into the fold. Mr.
Daybright had explained to him, as men often will to boys other than
their own, that boys need not stop being boys and being happy just
because they become good, so there was considerable disappointment
experienced by such youths as shrewdly imagined that Jack's change of
heart would result in his large and varied assortment of knives,
lines, marbles, skates, etc., being thrown upon the market at reduced
prices. Jack explained, with considerable vigor, that because he was
going to give up mischief it did not necessarily follow that he should
become a muff, or a soft head, or a twiddler, or an apron string, or a
foo-foo, or a stick-in-the-mud, or a dummy, or any other of a dozen or
two unpopular varieties of boy which he mentioned, but that he
proposed to "keep his shirt on," remain "forked end down," retain
possession of his eye-teeth, and have as good a time as anybody else
could who didn't have to suffer for it afterward. And the unregenerate
boys went away slowly and without the great possessions which they had
expected to carry with them, while one of them who was generous as
well as shrewd was heard to say that bully old Jack Wittingham wasn't
going to flunk out after all, and that a fellow could do many a worse
thing than to join the church.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                              CHAPTER VII.


        "When the devil was well,
          The devil a saint was he."

Jack sat, one evening, on a horse-block just outside the front gate,
contemplating the evening star and such of its companions as were
putting in their respective appearances. He was attired rather more
carefully than was considered necessary for a Doveton boy on any day
but Sunday, and his countenance was in keeping with his garb; while
his hair was brushed to a degree of smoothness almost dandyish.
Suddenly one-half of the Pinkshaw twins approached and asked Jack if
he didn't feel like going that night to a meeting to be held by the
German Methodists, who were holding a series of week-day evening
services.

"I can't," said Jack. "We're expecting—expecting a visitor, and I must
stay home to meet him."

"That's too bad," said the half of the Pinkshaw twins, scraping the
dust into a heap with his bare feet, "for they've got old Vater
Offenstein, all the way from New Munich, to do the exhorting, and they
expect a great time."

"They are real good people, those German Methodists are," said Jack,
"but you'll have to excuse me to-night. Get some other fellow to go
with you."

"I can't," explained young Pinkshaw. "Nearly all the boys are going to
a party at Billy Barker's sister's, but Billy and I don't speak since
he traded me a dog that was given to fits, so I'm not going."

Jack sympathized with the Pinkshaw twin in his loneliness; besides, he
did not know but some feeling stronger than mere curiosity was drawing
the boy toward the church; certainly he, Jack, would never have
divulged a religious feeling in any but a roundabout way. The church
was but a five minutes' walk, and he could excuse himself and come
away after the Pinkshaw twin became fairly interested. So he
accompanied the boy, their direction being toward the sound of some
very spirited singing, which could be distinctly heard above all other
evening sounds. Arrived at the little church, Jack found that his
companion would not have lacked congenial society even had he come
alone, for in the back seats were already congregated several boys of
respectable parentage, and a loafer or two besides, as well as half a
dozen adults who frequently occupied back seats in churches. Jack
would have retired at once, but the famous Vater Offenstein had just
ascended the pulpit, removed his coat, laid it across the desk and
opened the Bible, and Jack, who was just then full of sympathy with
all believers of the Word, was anxious to observe the old man's
method.

The service began with an earnest prayer, to which responses were
offered from most of the benches near the altar. Then a rich old
German choral was finely rendered, after which Vater Offenstein
proceeded to business. Jack understood a little of the exhortation,
having studied German, and he ventured a silent prayer that its whole
meaning might be taken in by Sam Mugley, the sadler shop apprentice,
who understood German and all the ways of the evil one beside. The
discourse was apparently a powerful one, for "Amen!" "Gott macht es!"
"Liebes Herr und Heiland!" and various other responses escaped
frequently from the faithful. Old Nokkerman, man-of-all-work at Matt
Bolton's father's store, seemed particularly excited; he waved to and
fro on his seat, his shock of long uncombed hair with a bald spot in
its centre making him particularly noticeable. The old man's cranium
did not, however, attract attention only from admirers of the
picturesque, for suddenly a small but rapid ball of soft-chewed paper
made a fair bull's eye on the circle of bare scalp, and flattened
itself over considerable space. Old Nokkerman turned speedily to
perceive only several rows of solemn-faced unregenerates, Jack's eye
being the only one he could catch, so he shook his fist warningly at
the general line of occupants of the back seats, and then resumed his
blissful manifestations as quickly as if the religious ecstacy were a
mere habit which could be assumed or laid aside at will. A hurried
interchange of views took place in a whisper on the furthest seat
back, with the result that Sam Mugley, the sadler shop apprentice,
slyly drew a small tin putty-blower from an inner breast pocket, and
aimed a ball of putty at old Nokkerman's cranial target. The shot
missed its mark, being low and to one side, and struck Fritz Shantz a
smart blow in the back of his neck. As Shantz was a butcher as well as
a devout Methodist, he rose instantly with blood in his eye, and
started for the back of the church, his mien being so terrible that
one of the more cautious of the loafers hurried out of church and took
to his heels, thus diverting suspicion from the guilty person, and
laying up for himself a day of wrath which Shantz determined should
not be long postponed.

Jack was really in sympathy with the worshippers, and was also
indignant, with them, at the godless disturbers of the excellent tone
of the meeting, but it was out of the power of any healthy boy with a
keen sense of the ridiculous to avoid a little laughter at the
peculiar ways of old Nokkerman and the butcher under their annoyances.
And a little laughter in a boy of fourteen is quite likely to be
something like the beginning of strife; it led to more and yet more,
until Jack was too full to restrain his merriment, and it bubbled out
of his eyes and all over his face. The brethren knew by experience
that when disturbances began so early in the evening, the occasion
demanded sharp eyes and prompt action, so several of the occupants of
the "Amen" seats kept a pretty steady sidelong glance at the back
benches, while one brother walked quietly out of church and notified a
constable that trouble was expected.

Meanwhile, Vater Offenstein continued his exhortations, alternating
between heavenly love and the brimstone of the unpopular extreme of
the debatable land, and the excitable among the brethren and sisters
responded more and more fervently, and Gottlieb Wiffterschneck sprang
to his feet and jumped up and down shouting, "Ach, Herr Jesu!" when
the horse doctor's boy, who had been biding his time outside the
church just under one of the windows, carefully trained a huge syringe
to bear upon the altar, and deluged Vater Offenstein's face with
water, which, like the precious oil upon the head of Aaron, ran down
upon his beard and garments, and shed considerable upon the Holy Book
beside. This was too much for even good Vater Offenstein, so instead
of repeating the sublime prayer of the dying Stephen he picked up a
small wooden bench upon which short preachers usually knelt in the
pulpit, and hurled it at the window, missing the open space and
sending it through two panes of glass and the intervening sash. This
provoked a laugh even from one or two of the faithful, so the
occupants of the back benches released themselves from all restraint,
and laughed aloud in a most unseemly manner, while Vater Offenstein
wiped his face and hair with his coat, and quoted appropriate passages
of Scripture most dreadfully between his teeth, translating some of
them into English for the benefit of the race from which alone the
annoyances of the brethren proceeded. A general quiet being thereby
induced, the exhortation was resumed for a short time, and ended in an
invitation to the penitent to go forward to the altar and be prayed
for.

While the brethren sang a hymn, several sinners passed up the narrow
aisle and Jack turned his head with the hope that he might see Sam
Mugley, the saddler shop apprentice, join the band, but the wicked Sam
was just in the act of blowing a second putty-ball, and Jack's head
coming suddenly in range as it turned, the ball struck Jack fairly in
one eye, causing the boy to emit a howl of anguish. In an instant
Shantz the butcher had collared Jack and shaken him soundly,
exclaiming,

"Dat iss vat a gute Amerigan boy iss, iss it?"

"Somebody hit me in the eye with something," screamed Jack, "and it
hurts awfully. _Oh!_"

"Den dat iss too bad," said Shantz. "Dell me who it vass and I will
break effery bone in hiss body."

But Jack could not tell, and several sympathizing brethren gathered
about him and suggested that he should take a seat farther forward,
and be where the bad boys could not annoy him. Although this
suggestion, thanks to the mysterious ways of the unfathomable German
mind, was equivalent to asking him to put himself more directly under
fire, Jack gladly availed himself of it, so as to remove himself from
an environment which was full of cause for suspicion.

By this time the assemblage was on its knees, listening to a prayer by
Petrus von Schlenker. Petrus' prayer was very earnest, but it was also
long; it was delivered with such rapidity that Jack could not
understand a word of it, so the exercise became rather monotonous to
him, and he opened his eyes and looked about. Under the single slat
which formed the back of the bench, and directly in front of him, Jack
beheld the broad and well-patched trowsers-seat of Nuderkopf
Trinkelspiel, and Satan, who long ago became noted for putting in an
appearance when the Sons of God were in council (See Job, Chap. I),
suggested to Jack that through such a mass of patches a bent pin might
work its way for quite a distance without doing any serious damage to
the wearer. Jack broke an anticipatory laugh square in two, and closed
his eyes in prayer to be delivered from temptation, but when he opened
his eyes again there were the patches, apparently a little more
inviting than before. Jack did not exactly wish that some good brother
on the bench behind Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel would think to crook a pin
and place it on Nuderkopf's bench just as the latter arose to take his
seat, but he wished, in case anyone _should_ be prompted to do such a
thing, that he, Jack, might have his head turned just then so as to
observe the result of the operation. And still Petrus von Schlenker's
prayer went on, and Jack's eyes remained open, and the boy was glad
that he did not occupy the seat behind Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel, lest he
might be tempted. Suddenly there came to Jack something which would
have been called an inspiration had its tendency been different. He
remembered that he had a pin in the lapel of his own jacket, and it
occurred to him that this pin might be bent so as to have a reliable
base, and the point might be inserted in the seat of Nuderkopf
Trinkelspiel's trowsers, where it would be in position to attend to
business as soon as the worshippers resumed a sitting posture. Jack
promptly whispered to himself "Get thee behind me, Satan," suiting the
action to the word by removing the pin from the coat and dropping it
on the floor. But there it was more tempting than it had been before;
it lay there, bright, thick and strong, demanding that Jack should
look at it. It was no common, soft pin, to collapse at the first sign
of pressure, but tough enough to serve as a nail, if occasion
required. Jack was really curious to know if so unprecedented an
application of a pin could be successful, because, if he became a
preacher, as he instantly resolved he would, he might some time preach
in German in that very church, and then if such a trick were served
upon any one, he would be able to detect the guilty person. Besides,
the patch seemed to repose upon other patches, and probably the pin
point could not more than pierce the cloth itself, where it would be
when Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel knelt at the next prayer, and it would
demonstrate what would be the effect of a similar operation upon a
thinner pair of trowsers.

Jack picked up the pin and bent it with the greatest care, though it
would have seemed to an exact scientist that the upright portion was
unnecessarily long for a purpose merely experimental. He inserted it
with the greatest nicety between the coarse threads of the homespun
patch, and though he admitted that Petrus von Schlenker was considered
a very good man, he determined that his prayer was too long to be
efficacious. Suddenly the voluble Petrus said "Amen," the audience
arose, Jack's heart bounced into his mouth, Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel
began to sit down, the brethren started the noble choral beginning

    "Groser Gott wir loben dich;
     Herr, wir preisen deiner stärke,"

when suddenly Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel emitted a most appalling yell,
and followed it up with so many others of a similar character, that
the song sank to a faltering termination, and the singers crowded
around their disturber, scarcely knowing whether to attribute the
disturbance to pain or to grace. Several minutes elapsed before
Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel sought the cause of his agony, but when at
length he extracted the pin from the seat of his trowsers and held it
aloft in explanation, no one failed to comprehend the cause of his
agitation. Then astonishment gave place to mystery, for it passed
conjecture how the pin could even have got upon the bench, with
several reliable brethren just behind Nuderkopf and one at either side
of him. During the general arising, Jack considered it safer to start
homeward to see the company that had been expected early in the
evening, but he lingered outside the window just a moment, to see the
excitement subside, and great was his mirth as he beheld the wondering
faces of the honest Germans. Here he was joined by the Pinkshaw twin
and two or three other boys, but just then Vater Offenstein reminded
the congregation that time was rapidly bearing them on to eternity, so
the brethren resumed their seats, and Jack was going to start for home
when the Pinkshaw twin asked, perhaps forgetting Jack's new
professions,

"What next?"

Lazy George Crayton remarked that he had brought some torpedoes which
he had saved over from the fourth of July, but none of them had
exploded when he threw them, perhaps because in the church he could
not get good elbow-room when he threw.

Jack had determined not to make any more trouble, but if there was
anything which he despised above all others, it was a person who could
never think of but one way to do a thing. So he reproached George
Crayton with being a dunderhead, and George replied that if somebody
was smarter than somebody else, perhaps somebody would have the
kindness to show how. So Jack thought carefully for a moment or two,
and then asked if anyone had an old letter in his pocket. Nobody
answered in the affirmative, but as Jack said that any stout sheet of
paper a foot long would do, a boy who lived near by sped homeward, and
soon returned with a sheet of foolscap. Jack rolled this into a tube,
put several torpedoes into it, put his lips to one end by way of
illustration, and remarked

"There!"

"I'll bet you can't blow them hard enough to snap," whispered the lazy
George in reply.

Such an aspersion of the power of his lungs was too much for Jack's
principles, so he peered cautiously about the church for an
appropriate mark. Vater Offenstein was the most prominent and tempting
one in sight, but him Jack regarded almost as the Lord's anointed. On
either side of the pulpit, however, were large oil lamps, and inviting
attention to the one which was nearest, Jack took deliberate aim and
blew a mighty blast. He missed the lamp, but the wall behind the
pulpit was hard enough to stop any small projectile, and against this
the torpedoes crashed almost as a single one, and caused Vater
Offenstein to jump nearly across the pulpit. Half a dozen of the
faithful hurried out of doors, and after them, to see the fun, dashed
all the occupants of the back seats, while from some unknown hiding
place sprang the constable. Away flew the boys, all in the same
direction, and after them went the constable, the brethren and the
whole body of the scoffers. Jack and the Pinkshaw twin easily got away
from their pursuers and found friendly cover in the darkness, but a
confused sound of harsh voices, dominated by a loud wail, indicated
that lazy George Crayton had been caught.

"Oh, oh, oh," exclaimed Jack in a hoarse whisper, "isn't it too
dreadful?"

"Never mind," said the Pinkshaw twin, reassuringly, "they haven't got
_us_."

"They _will_ get us, though," said Jack. "That George Crayton will
tell on us—he's an awful coward when he gets cornered. What shall I
do?"

"Lick him," suggested the Pinkshaw twin; "lick him until he'll be
afraid to say his soul's his own the next time he gets into a scrape."

"That isn't it," said Jack. "The thing will get all over town, and all
this time I ought to have been at home to see Mr. Daybright, who was
to come to our house to-night for the express purpose of examining me
on my evidences!"

The Pinkshaw twin had nothing to say in reply to this information, and
Jack sneaked home and hung about the doorway until he assured himself
that Mr. Daybright had gone; then he made some lame excuse for his
absence and retired to a very uneasy pillow.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                             CHAPTER VIII.

                        FUGITIVES FROM JUSTICE.


On the next morning there was a marked scarcity of boys in places
where, at ordinary times, boys most did congregate. The scamps who had
scrambled about the edge of sacrilege on the preceding night, kept
themselves carefully secluded from the general gaze, while other
mischievous boys, having learned by sad experience that suspicion,
like lightning, is much given to striking at objects that do not merit
any such attention, devoted themselves industriously to home affairs,
or went upon solitary journeys into the suburbs.

And these precautionary measures proved to be not without sense, for
at a tolerably early hour the Post Office, which was also the office
of the most popular of the two local justices of the peace, was
approached by a strong delegation from the outraged Society of German
Methodists. First came the renowned Vater Offenstein, supported by the
Reverend Schnabel Mauterbach, pastor of the church. Vater Offenstein
had not been able to keep his hair and clothing wet during the hot
August night, but the water thrown from the syringe had not been very
clean, so there were great stains upon the cotton shirt which its
wearer would swear had been put on clean on the day of the service.
The pastor bore the soiled and still damp copy of the Holy Book. Then
came old Nokkerman, his hair carefully combed and soaped down, so that
the justice might plainly see the bald spot which had been used as a
target. Beside old Nokkerman walked Shantz the butcher, with his coat
off, so that he might display the great red spot where the putty-ball
had struck him. After them walked Petrus von Schlenker, to offer an
affidavit that he had prayed during the service, though anyone who
knew the gifts of the tongue of Petrus would have accepted a mere
statement on that point as conclusive. Beside Petrus waddled Nuderkopf
Trinkelspiel, jealously guarding in an empty paint can the bent pin
which had caused him to disturb the meeting; he also bore, in their
normal position, the well-patched trowsers through which the point of
the pin had found its way.

Then came the sexton of the church, carrying under one arm the bench
which Vater Offenstein had hurled at Satan's representative; in
another hand he carried the broken glass and sash wrapped in two
thicknesses of newspaper, and in his pocket was a match-box containing
the papers and such other fragments as could be collected of the
offending torpedoes. A number of witnesses followed, so that the
postmaster-justice's little office was completely filled. Then the
pastor announced that the party had called to make and substantiate a
complaint, and various statements were volunteered before the justice
could impress the assemblage with the necessity for administering
oaths. Vater Offenstein, immediately upon being sworn, opened his
coat, displayed his soiled shirt, and impressively held the Good Book
aloft, opened at its stained, wet pages. Shantz the butcher delivered
his own sworn statement with his face to the wall, the impressiveness
of the proceeding being somewhat abated by his completely covering
with his immense forefinger the red spot on the back of his neck; old
Nokkerman bent nearly double so as to display his baldness as he
talked; Petrus von Schlenker talked volubly to no purpose until cut
short by the justice, and Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel, trying at the same
time to hold aloft the torturing pin, look the justice impressively in
the eye, and yet display the seat of offending beneath his upraised
coat-tail, presented a figure which utterly destroyed judicial
gravity. Then the sexton laid upon the table the little bench which
Vater Offenstein had cast from the pulpit, and carefully unrolled the
broken glass and sash, and brought up from the depth of his pocket the
little but positive proof in the shape of fragments of torpedoes. Then
the constable brought in lazy George Crayton, who had spent the night
in the town jail, and who looked as pallid and guilty as if he had to
answer for the crime of murdering a whole family.

George did not waive an examination; on the contrary, he had such a
passion for confession that he included, in his list of accomplices,
the name of every boy in town against whom he had any grudge whatever,
and it was not until after the examination that it occurred to him
that he personally had done nothing whatever to disturb the meeting.
Then George's father gave bonds that his son should keep the peace,
after which he led the youth home to the pain which follows
discipline. Shantz the butcher turned up his shirt collar, the pastor
and Vater Offenstein departed with the sacred Book, the sexton carried
the pulpit bench back to its legitimate position. Old Nokkerman tried
to scratch his head, but discovered, as his fingers slid impotently
over the soaped locks, that the ends of justice are sometimes attained
only through extra annoyance to the offended; Petrus von Schlenker,
who had been slowly realizing that he had sustained no personal
grievance, made the best of his time by engaging the justice on local
politics; Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel carefully secured the offending pin,
and the constable went in search of the yet unapprehended offenders.

Meanwhile, the innocent half of the Pinkshaw twins, who had been
listening outside the window, had heard the list of the offenders
pronounced by the justice as he wrote the warrant, and discovered to
his horror that his own name was included therein, the informer having
been uncertain as to which Pinkshaw twin was present. An inborn sense
of equity suggested to him the application of the principle of an
alibi, but later he realized that to be innocent yet suspected, would
justify him in escaping the hated French class, and yet save him from
the ordinary penalty of truancy. Away he sped to notify the whole
list, and within half an hour nearly all the boys whose names were
upon the warrant were informed of their legal status, while the
constable, who fully realized how much work was before him, had barely
finished strengthening himself at Gripp's rum-shop.

The first man notified was Jack, and as that youth had an utter
abhorrence of loneliness he suggested to the Pinkshaw twin that he
should name the Dead House blackberry patch as a safe place of
rendezvous, inasmuch as nobody would be likely to go there, the
blackberry season being over, there being no contagious disease raging
in town, and the house being off the road to any where. He also
suggested that the boys should bring with them whatever provisions
they could lay hands upon. Then Jack, with his heart in his stockings,
and his eyes feeling ready to overflow, made haste to collect a
hatchet, a box of matches, his fishing tackle and whatever else he
could think of, in his haste, as likely to mitigate the privations of
exile. Great as his haste was, he found time to hide in the corncrib
for a moment or two, kneel devoutly, and inform the Lord that he
hadn't meant to do anything wrong, and that he hoped when next there
was a scrape impending, the Lord would send an angel to forcibly drive
Jack from the scene of action. More mature sinners, as they smile
pityingly at this style of repentance, would do well to examine their
own business consciences, and restrain their smiles until they
ascertain whether they have not themselves indulged in many a similar
_ex post facto_ operation.

Arrived at the Dead House blackberry patch, Jack found quite an
assortment of solemn-faced boys under the shady side of the high board
fence. All of the guilty parties were there, except Sam Mugley, the
saddler shop apprentice, whose employer had agreed to surrender the
boy when necessary; there were also present many boys who preferred to
flee the evils which they knew—to wit, French paradigms—than endure
those they knew not of. Several boys immediately demanded of Jack what
was to be done, and while the interrogated youth retired within
himself to devise a plan of action, Ben Bagger, who read all the
popular literature for boys, suggested that they should organize under
the title of "The Bloody Land Pirates," and prey upon the society
which had unjustly cast them out, but this suggestion was severely
damaged by Jack, who said that the duty of the hour was to see that
things were made no worse. Then Jack decreed that the party should
retain its present quarters, separating if it chose, at nightfall, to
slumber in neighboring barns, fishing at dawn and after sunset, and
diverting itself by whatever means were available, until a general
amnesty could be procured.

For an hour or two the group amused itself with conversation, the
guilty Pinkshaw twin causing considerable merriment by a recital of
the experiences of the righteous Germans on the preceding night. Jack
endeavored to withdraw himself from the Pinkshaw twin's audience, but
who does not enjoy retrospects of affairs which in themselves were
enjoyable? So he lingered, afar off, yet within sound of the Pinkshaw
twin's voice until that youth alluded to Jack having taken a seat
among the pious, and then Jack, like the cowardly apostle Peter, began
to curse and to swear. The ways of Peter came to his mind, both
reproachingly and in comfort, for he remembered that Peter had behaved
valiantly after discovering what a blatant, white-livered sort of a
fellow he was, and Jack, to stifle his conscience, was willing for the
moment to believe that if he himself swore, lied and put in a general
denial, the evil might be excusable for the sake of the good it might
bring. In this respect he so much resembled many an unscrupulous
wire-puller in church affairs that no theological partizan can fail to
sympathize with him.

After the story of the German Methodist meeting had concluded,
conversation languished, and several boys complained of hunger. Jack
took charge of the commissariat and having carefully garnered all the
provisions that had been brought, he suggested to those who were
guiltless (except of truancy) that if they would go boldly to the
justice, claim to have been at Billy Barker's sister's party at the
time of the outrage, and offer Billy, his sister and his mother in
evidence, they would, without doubt, be cleared. When these boys had
reluctantly departed, the assemblage was reduced to five boys, three
of whom had done nothing worse than laugh at the capers which had been
played upon the faithful, Jack and the Pinkshaw twin, who pleaded
guilty of having thrown the spitball at old Nokkerman's bare scalp,
constituting the remainder.

How these were to pass the time until night was a serious problem,
when one of the innocent, who was also a loafer, produced a grimy pack
of cards, and therewith he soon won all the fractional currency in
possession of his companions; then he departed, having doubly avenged
himself upon fate by dining heartily upon the stores of the exiles. Of
the quartette which remained, Jack was outwardly the most cheerful and
careless, but inwardly—well, he could not help thinking of the Spartan
boy who allowed a fox to prey upon his vitals while he was denying any
knowledge even of the existence of a fox anywhere nearer than the
Apennines. Ruling in hell might have its social advantages over
serving in heaven, but in whatever location a man may be, there will
the appropriate mental temperature be also. Jack's remorse was genuine
and terrible, and he admitted to himself that he would gladly make any
reparation, endure any obloquy, suffer any punishment, in fact, go
through anything that could be devised—except being caught by the
constable.

When supper time came and went, it was discovered that the larder
would be empty in the morning, but fortunately Matt appeared, coming
at night, like Nicodemus, for fear of the authorities, and brought
with him a whole loaf of bread and fifty or sixty cubic inches of
boiled ham. But the boys slept out of doors that night, and awoke with
such appetites that the bread and ham disappeared and they were still
hungry. Then they stole many ears of scarcely ripe green corn, which
they roasted and ate for dinner without successfully filling their
respective aching voids. A raid was made upon a patch of early
potatoes, but these did not roast satisfactorily, as any of the boys
might have known had they ever tried an early potato before. The final
result was that the boys slept supperless, and were at the mill-dam
before daylight, where they were successful in demonstrating to
certain occupants of the water that catching the early worm is not an
unmixed blessing. But even fish, broiled on sticks or fried on a
heated plowshare which somebody had stolen, are not particularly
palatable when eaten without salt or bread. So the party finally
sneaked toward town with hungry faces, vigilant eyes, and waistbands
which would lap past their accustomed meeting place, and fasten,
without extra tugging, at the first suspender button.

Meanwhile, the constable had been prowling industriously about the
town, stimulated beyond average official enthusiasm by the offer of a
ten-dollar bill from the German Methodist treasury, for the
apprehension of all the culprits. He had examined the innocent boys
with the result of determining that the juvenile mind is deceitful
above all things and desperately wicked. He had been to the mill-dam
only to discover traces of early work by workers who, like the Arabs,
had "silently stolen away;" he had watched under the windows of him

    "——Who returneth,
     Whose chamber lamp burneth
        No more,——"

He had examined the cock-loft of the school, ridden along the river
bank, sneaked beside the fences of popular orchards, and lain in
ambush near brushheaps where laying hens most did congregate. He had
even tracked, to unprofitable localities, various boys whom he
suspected of conveying aid and comfort to the enemy, and all he could
show for his pains was a badly sunburned nose, and a pair of boots
considerably damaged by brush-wood and concealed stumps.

At noon, on the third day, he was completely exhausted, and determined
that if ever a good watermelon could supply a pleasing finale to a
noon-day meal, it was then. So he walked out to his own melon-patch,
chuckling, as he went, over the strict seclusion of the same, for it
occupied the centre of a hollow square, the sides of which consisted
of dense rows of tall corn. As he approached this from his own back
door, he perceived how vain is the cunning of man when confronted by
the intuition of the bad boy; for there—at ease, and enjoying the
particularly large melon which he had been reserving against a day
when upon his wife might accidentally be inflicted a deluge of
company—sat the boys for whom he had been looking.


Illustration: THE STRONG ARM OF THE LAW.


The constable roared "Halt!" but with no more success than if he were
an army officer in the midst of a panic, for the boys separated in the
corn rows, and the official was undecided as to which to follow. So,
indulging to an injudicious extent in that profanity which so
naturally attends indecision and failure, he strove gloomily to the
foot of his garden to discover, to his great delight, that Jack had
stumbled, fallen and knocked all the breath out of his body without
seeming able to regain enough for practical purposes. In an instant
Jack was in the official's arms, and though he bit, scratched, kicked
and begged, he was speedily invested in a pair of handcuffs in the
constable's dining-room, and afterward led slowly through the main
street to the town jail.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                              CHAPTER IX.

                        THE STOOL OF REPENTANCE.


It was customary in Doveton to put sober offenders against the peace
in the second floor rooms of the jail, for these, though not
containing everything that a fastidious taste might desire, were well
lighted and ventilated. But as the constable led Jack to jail, he
thought upon his own despoiled melon patch, so he decided to put the
young man into the dungeon which was reserved for the most depraved
disturbers and desperate villains. As Jack was pushed into this
receptacle he noticed, with a sinking of the heart, that the door was
a foot thick, built of most chilling oak-tree hearts, and strapped
with huge bars of iron. Not that he had contemplated escape; he was
just then too feeble of soul to contemplate anything but his own
iniquity; but he had the natural, healthful objection to restraint,
and when restraint can be measured by the cubic foot it is depressing
almost to idiocy. Then the constable shot four massive bolts, each one
of which seemed to give Jack's heart a mighty thump as it grated and
groaned into its proper place. Jack turned to look at the window. It
was of rough glass, so that a prisoner could not look out; it was only
six inches high, though its length was about two feet, and it was
crossed both inside and outside by stout bars of iron let into the
stone. The furniture, when Jack's eyes became sufficiently accustomed
to the dim light to see it all, consisted of a dingy cot of canvas and
a broken pitcher containing the water left by the cell's last
occupant, who had gone to the state prison two months before for
passing counterfeit money. The only decorations were some cobwebs,
which in tone harmonized with the general effect of the interior, and
an engraving, upon the stone of the lightest side of the cell, of a
frightful looking being with horns, hoof and barbed tail, having
beneath it the inscription, "ThE DEViL Taik Evry boDDy." The odor of
the apartment was undesirable.

By the time Jack had learned this much, he threw himself upon the
canvas cot, careless of what else there might be to observe, and
sobbed violently. This, then, was the end of the boy who had been so
good for a month, who was going to join the church and be useful in
persuading other boys out of bad courses, and be a missionary,
perhaps, and a minister at the very least! Everybody now would think
him a hypocrite; he would probably be sent to the penitentiary for a
year or two, for now that the proper occasion for recalling the fact
had passed, he remembered to have heard that disturbing religious
assemblages was a great crime in the eyes of the law. Perhaps they
would send him to the reform school, which would be a thousand times
worse than the penitentiary, for the word "reform" suggested as
dreadful possibilities to Jack as it ever did to a self-made
politician. When he came out again what would happen to him? He had
never seen any persons but loafers pay any attention to discharged
prisoners who made Doveton their abiding place. Nobody would let their
boys play with him then—if, indeed, by that time he had enough youth
and spirits left to want to play; he would have to sit on the back
seats in church among the sad-eyed, uninteresting reprobates who now
sat there, instead of among the neatly dressed boys who sat under the
eyes of their parents and the preacher.

Then Jack thought of the hereafter, in the literal, material manner,
which was the natural result of the religious teachings he had
received. If angels knew everything and went wherever they pleased,
and if his deceased brothers and sisters became angels just after they
died—they had been angelic while they lived—how must they feel to see
their well-born, carefully taught brother in so dreadful a place as a
common prison? As Jack thought of it he wished the prison bed had a
cover under which he could hide; but as it had not, he squeezed his
face and flattened his nose upon the rough, dirty canvas. The thought
of his parents recalled the wish, frequently felt by Jack, that
somebody would understand him, know how earnestly he longed to be
good—some one to whom he could tell some of the splendid thoughts he
sometimes had—thoughts which would simply astonish his parents out of
their senses, if he could feel free to tell them. Why didn't people
give him credit for what was in him, instead of eternally finding
fault with him for what came out of him? Was he a jug that he should
be judged in such a manner? Looking the matter squarely in the face,
however, how was any one to know what was inside of him except by what
proceeded from him?

This train of reasoning was promptly dismissed as unpleasant in the
extreme, and Jack began to search his pockets for something that might
assist him in consuming time more endurably, when some one at the
grating in the door startled him by exclaiming:

"Well, young man!"

Jack recognized the voice of his father, and his heart went down,
down, down, apparently through the floor, and all the way into the
depths of the middle of the western half of the Pacific Ocean, which,
by careful investigation, Jack had determined was the geographical
antipode of Doveton. Then the door opened, and Jack's father entered,
and, oh, horror of horrors! he brought with him Mr. Daybright, the
minister. Jack sat upon the side of the cot and nervelessly dropped
his face into his hands and his elbows upon his knees.

"Well, young man," resumed the doctor, "what have you got to say for
yourself?"

Jack preserved utter silence, but determined that he never before
heard so exasperating a question.

"My poor boy," said Mr. Daybright, sitting down beside Jack and
putting his arm around him, "Satan has indeed been making a mighty
fight to secure your immortal part."

"I think so too," sobbed Jack, glad of a chance to lay the blame of
his mischievousness upon somebody else, and determining that if he
ever _did_ become a minister, he would make things lively for Matt
Bolton's father, who denied the existence of a personal devil.

"So think I," remarked the doctor, "and a very successful job Satan
has made of it. I wish he would give me a few lessons in the art of
getting hold of boys."

The minister thought to himself that it was not necessary for the
doctor to go so far for information when he could have obtained it
from present company, but as the doctor paid a large pew rent in Mr.
Daybright's church, that divine thought it inadvisable to offend a
person upon whom a portion of his own salary depended. But he could
safely say what he chose to Jack, so he said:

"Rouse yourself, my dear young friend; you still live and move and
have your being, and

                      'While the lamp holds out to burn
                       The vilest sinner may return,'

you know. Why not, in this unsavory place, eschew finally and forever
all bad associations?"

"I will—oh, I will!" cried Jack.

"I've heard something of the sort before," remarked the doctor. "I've
heard it from this young scamp himself, and, Mr. Daybright, you and I
have often heard it from men who thought they were upon their
death-beds."

"Blessed be death-beds, then," fervently exclaimed the minister.
"Jack, why don't you determine to say, hereafter and always, 'Get thee
behind me, Satan!' when wrong impulses make themselves known in your
mind?"

"I have done it," said Jack, recalling his experience with the pin in
the German Methodist meeting, "but it don't take him long to get
around in front of me again."

The doctor hid an unseemly giggle in his handkerchief, and the
minister himself was temporarily silenced; then the doctor managed to
straighten out his voice, as he said:

"Listen to me, my boy. I can take you out of this vile hole, but only
by subscribing a hundred dollars to the debt of the German Methodist
church, repairing their broken window, giving them a new Bible,
changing my custom from the market to Shantz the butcher, who doesn't
sell the best of meat but does charge the highest prices, asking
Bolton to raise the salary of old Nokkerman, reducing the amount of my
bill to Petrus von Schlenker"—

"I didn't do anything to any of these people," interrupted Jack.

"Whether you did or not," said the doctor, "doesn't affect the case.
You did something, whatever it was, to disturb that meeting; those men
were all there, they are all among the complainants, and must be
satisfied in order to persuade them to withdraw their complaint."

"Didn't—didn't Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel want anything?" asked Jack
falteringly.

"Oh!" exclaimed the doctor, "it _was_ you who made him sit upon that
crooked pin, was it? How did you do it?"

Jack, finding himself trapped by his own words, meekly explained the
operation which led to Nuderkopf's spasmodic loquacity, both visitors
holding their mouths as he did so. Then the doctor resumed the
disturbed line of the conversation by asking:

"What do you propose to do?"

"Oh!" said Jack, raising his head, "I'll be a minister, and preach to
bad boys all my life, if you will only get me out of here, and send me
off to some seminary where nobody knows me."

"Umph!" grunted the doctor. "And what sort of a living do you suppose
you'll earn in that business?"

"'Quench not the Spirit,'" quoted the minister, and the doctor
inwardly acknowledged the justice of the rebuke, though he
hypocritically remarked that he had spoken thus only to test Jack's
sincerity.

"Will you let other boys alone—keep away from them entirely?" asked
the doctor.

This was severer than Jack had anticipated, even when in the depths of
contrition and apprehension, so he dropped his head again, and
realized anew what a dreadful thing sin was when one came to look it
fairly in the face.

"Do you hear me?" asked the doctor.

"All but Matt, father," said Jack. "He never does anything wrong,
unless I put him up to it, and I'll promise never to tell him any good
thing again, if you'll let me go with him."

"Good thing!" ejaculated the doctor. "What sort of repentance do you
call that, dominie, when outrageous capers are characterized as good
things?"

The minister shook his head gravely, and answered:

"My dear young friend, you must realize that what you call good things
are really bad things. Until you fully understand this, there is
nothing to prevent your getting into just such trouble again."

"Then I'll call everything bad," said Jack; "blackberrying, fishing,
answers to hard sums,——"

"Gently, boy," said the minister. "None of these things do harm to any
one."

"I supposed they did," cried Jack, "for I like them all, and it seems
as if whatever I like is bad."

"Not at all," said the minister, while the doctor hastily drew forth
his notebook and made the following note for the great work on
heredity: "When a person is suffering, he is liable to believe that
things have always been as they are at that particular moment; hence
the unhealthy poems, novels and dramas which certain disordered minds
spring upon the public." Then the doctor replaced his notebook,
contemplated the weeping boy for a moment or two, sat down beside him,
put his arms around him, and exclaimed:

"My darling boy, I love you better than I love my life." The doctor
lied terribly, as most busy people do who affirm strong, unselfish
sentiments, but Jack was not in a condition just then to question the
character of any one who cared to befriend him, so he hid his face in
his father's breast and cried as if he could not stop. He even threw
his own arms about the doctor with a mighty grip, considering how
young the boy was.

"Think of your mother, too," pleaded the doctor. "She has suffered
more for you than you ever can for yourself, and she is dreadfully
feeble and nervous; _do_ try to lighten the load which at best must be
very heavy to her."

"I will," said Jack; "indeed I will. I'll darn all my own stockings."

"And," said the minister, who wished all things done decently and in
order as established by Providence, "pray daily for grace to overcome
every sin."

"I always do," said Jack, "but it don't always work."

"It never will," said the minster, "if you don't act as if your prayer
was in earnest. No amount of praying will keep you out of a mud-puddle
if you persist in wanting to go into it."

"Well, come along," remarked the doctor, who had consulted his watch,
and remembered a patient who expected a call just then. The door
opened, and the trio stepped into the hall; just then there came along
a zephyr which had passed a kitchen where onions were being boiled,
but for all that, Jack thought it the most delicious breeze that ever
blew. The constable, who stood outside the door gave Jack a most
discomposing scowl which was not entirely disconnected with
remembrances of water melons; but Jack, instead of repaying the scowl
in kind, which he could have done with entire success from his own
incomparable collection of faces, inwardly determined that at some
appropriate time he would privately apologize to the official and
repay his water melon in kind. As his father and the minister turned
toward the main street, Jack exhibited strong manifestations of
reluctance, so both gentlemen concluded it would be only merciful to
lead the boy homeward through less frequented streets. But it seemed
to Jack as if the whole town had known of his impending release, and
were lying in wait to look at him. Shantz the butcher drove by and
glared at him; old Nokkerman, _en route_ for supper, looked upon him
reproachfully; Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel, who was mixing mortar in front
of a new building, contemplated him with the stony stare which is not
peculiar to cockneys only, and Matt himself went by without bestowing
even a friendly wink upon him.

Worst of all, as the trio passed Billy Barker's house, the nice little
sister of Billy happened to step outside the door. Jack dropped his
eyes ever so far, but he could not resist looking out of their extreme
corners to see what she might think of him. The face which he saw
contained considerable wonder, but it also expressed a sorrow which
was unmixed with reprobation, and by the time that Jack reached home
he was brimful of a feeling to which he had hitherto been an utter
stranger. It was not love, as that sentiment is conventionally
defined, for it was entirely devoid of passion and selfishness, but it
is not surprising that Jack, having never heard love talked of but in
one way—to wit, a strong regard for one person by another person of
the opposite sex—should go home with the firm conviction that he was
oceans deep in love with nice little Mattie Barker. To get a kind look
from a person of whom you have never heard anything bad, a person who
never scolded you, nor meddled with any of your affairs, and in whose
face you can see no evidence of guile, will doubtless cause _you_,
adult reader, to contemplate such person with earnest regard, and if
you are a man and the person alluded to is of the other sex, you will
hardly be able, even in the light of your past experience among
humanity, to imagine any reason why she may not be an angel in human
form.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                               CHAPTER X.

                       YOUNG AMERICA IN POLITICS.


For a month Jack labored manfully to keep his pledge to eschew the
society of boys, and a very miserable month it was. He at first
determined to not even answer any boy who spoke to him, but this led
to his being called "Proudy," and "Codfish," and "Bloated Aristocrat."
All this was very galling to a youth who considered himself as
pre-eminently a man of the people. Then, one day, as he was hoeing
potatoes in the family garden, half a dozen boys leaned on the fence
for an hour, and shouted themselves hoarse by exclaiming in concert,
"Tombstone!" To hold one's tongue, as Jack did throughout the
infliction, is to prove one's self a possessor of a high degree of
self-control. When, however, the half dozen boys grew angry at their
inability to elicit any response, and began to throw stones at the
young gardener, Jack's endurance escaped him suddenly and he dashed at
the fence, hoe in hand. All the boys fled except one who, being a
rowdy, had hugged one of the palings in the affectionate manner
peculiar to rowdies, and had unconsciously established an entangling
alliance between the paling and a hole in his shirt. Him, Jack pounded
over the head with the hoe handle until utter breathlessness compelled
the operator to discontinue his labors; then Jack cut him loose with
his pocket-knife and sent him away after an interchange of terrible
threats had been effected. As the rowdy's skull had a roof of wondrous
thickness, he sustained no injury in his mental parts, so he changed
his base only to a point from which he could watch Jack's going in and
coming out.

An hour later, as Jack was going to the store, with two empty jugs to
be filled, respectively, with vinegar and molasses, the rowdy sprang
at him from a sheltering fence corner. Jack shouted "Foul!" but the
rowdy was not particular to regard the rules of the ring just then, so
he stuck one dirty finger in Jack's mouth so as to obtain a secure
grip, and then with amazing celerity, invested Jack with a bloody nose
and a black eye. Jack was not going to abandon the family property,
even in a fight, so he retained tight hold of the jugs, raised his
hands alternately and smote his antagonist, first with one jug and
then with the other. Then the rowdy made haste to cry "Foul!" but
Jack, merely remarking, "What's sauce for the goose—" allowed the
rowdy to complete the quotation for himself, striking him meanwhile
wherever an unprotected point presented itself. A final blow in the
pit of the stomach caused the rowdy to curl up on the lap of mother
earth, and then Jack discovered, for the first time, that all that
remained of the jugs were their respective handles, and that the rowdy
was bleeding profusely in several places.

Jack had never before seen a more dangerous wound than a cut finger,
and even of these he had seen but one at a time, so he greatly feared
that the rowdy would bleed to death. What to do, he did not know; he
recalled the little affair of Moses with the Egyptian taskmaster, and
determined that flight was the dictate of prudence, but as for burying
his victim in the sand, there was no sand nearer than the river bank,
a mile away, and the dirt under the rowdy was a hard-beaten footpath.
Away flew Jack toward home and into his father's office, where he
exclaimed:

"Father, there's a rowdy dying out on the path to the store."

"Heaven be praised!" said the doctor; "that'll lessen the state prison
expenses a few dollars."

"He's bleeding to death," explained Jack.

"Oh," said the doctor arising and snatching a case of instruments,
"that's a different thing; it now becomes an opportunity for
experimental surgery."

"It was I that killed him," continued Jack, in a very thin voice.

"Eh?" exclaimed the doctor, dropping his instruments. "Then you'd
better get out as fast as you can, and not let me know where you are
until you have to. Don't _ever_ do it—I don't want even to see you
again—I wash my hands of you forever."

"Father!" screamed Jack in utter agony, while gallows trees sprung up
before his eyes in every direction, "let me tell you how it was." And
Jack hastily detailed his experiences of the morning, concluding with:

"It was all because I was trying so hard to mind you, and not have
anything to do with boys."

The doctor threw his arms around the youth, and exclaimed:

"You're a darling, noble, splendid boy, but there is no knowing how a
jury may look at the case, when your previous reputation is
considered. Get ready to hide."

Jack hurried up to his room for what seemed to him necessities, but he
had time to reflect upon his varied experiences to do right, with
their lamentable results, and to wonder if it were not really true, as
was implied by some novels he had been unfortunate enough to read,
that fate occasionally forbade some people to do right successfully.
Of one thing he was very sure; come what would, he never could ask
nice little Mattie Baker to become the wife of a murderer. Then he
tiptoed feebly, after one or two ineffectual efforts, to his father's
room, which overlooked the scene of the battle; it might be that the
doctor had reached the wounded boy in time to staunch the flow of
blood before it was eternally too late. From the window, Jack, with
great astonishment and not entirely without disgust, beheld the rowdy
sauntering away with his hands in his pockets, while beside him walked
the doctor, violently shaking his fist and head at the beaten man, and
filling the air with threats which a breeze wafted back to Jack.

The surprise was too much for Jack's nerves; he dropped upon his
father's bed and doubted whether he ever would regain his breath
again; then he bemoaned the loss of the vagabond life which had been
just within his grasp, and which is the ideal of every boy at a
certain period of his life. From this he was recovered by the thought
that, after all, nice little Mattie Barker was not to be entirely a
memory of the past. His eye and nose finally obtruded themselves upon
his attention, and very unsightly objects they were in a mirror; he
hoped nice little Mattie Barker would not see him until his face
regained its natural appearance; and he would certainly take care
never to have himself so disfigured again.

Then his father returned, hastily searched the house for Jack, caught
him in his arms, and actually cried over him, upon which the boy felt
himself a hero indeed. But when his father assured him that his latest
exploit would have a wonderful effect in keeping boys away from him,
Jack did not seem so elated as the doctor would have had him; he
looked so solemn that the doctor asked what the matter was, and Jack
burst out crying, and answered:

"I'm so dreadfully lonely all the time."

The doctor started to ask if either he or his wife were not always at
home, but recalling the drift of a previous conversation on the same
topic, he grew suddenly very cool and undemonstrative and removed
himself, whereupon Jack, who read the human face as correctly as boys
usually do, waxed angry, and lost sight of all his principles, as
every one does in anger, and determined that if he could not have fun
with the boys he would have it without them, and have all he wanted,
too.

He did not lose much time in discovering a way of amusing himself.
August had worked through into September, and though the public was to
have no opportunity of disarranging national affairs at the ballot-box
that autumn, a gubernatorial campaign had opened most vigorously in
the State of which Doveton considered itself the mainstay. The rival
candidates were Baggs and Puttytop, and though both were men of fair
intellect and reputation, as politicians go, and the adult mind could
find but little reason to distinguish between them, the boys of
Doveton, who never for a moment doubted that they were in perfect
sympathy with the inner sense of statesmanship, and knew the
constitutional rights and special needs of Doveton beside, were, to a
man, for Baggs. Jack had gained this precious bit of information from
Matt, so he promptly ranged himself, mentally, with his natural
allies, and sought for means to discourage the Puttytop adherents, who
stupidly saw not though they had eyes, and heard not though they had
ears.

Just then an announcement was made that the famous General Twitchwire,
who was stumping the state for Puttytop, would address the sovereign
voters of Doveton in the main room of the county court house, on the
evening of the second Wednesday in September, the regular fall session
of the county court having begun on the morning of the same day, and
the town being full of countrymen who had legal grievances of their
own, or of some one else, to look to.

Now the county court house was a new building which the demon of
improvement had lately caused to be erected, and as the appropriations
had been exhausted in the manner not unknown to political managers
elsewhere, the main room was the only one which had been completed.
Pipes had been laid for gas, one of them terminating in the ceiling in
the centre of the room, but for evening meetings it was, at present,
necessary to light lamps or candles. So, early in the afternoon
preceding the Puttytop meeting, Jack secreted himself in an upper room
of the court house, with a monkey-wrench, a gunmaker's saw, and a yard
of rubber tubing in his shirt bosom. He dragged a step ladder down
into the main room, and standing upon this he wrenched from its place
the cap upon the pipe from which the central chandelier was one day to
hang. Then he returned to the room above, sawed in two the pipe which
was to feed the chandelier, stretched an end of his rubber tube over
the lower portion of severed pipe, and yelled through it to test the
apparatus. He heard his cry repeated in the lower room so distinctly
that his only fear was that somebody outside might hear it. Then he
sat upon the floor, munched crackers, wished that he had a drink of
water, and waited.

Evening came at last, and from the edges of the window casings, Jack
saw the adherents of Puttytop coming from various directions. From the
neighborhood of the hotel came the noise of the Doveton Brass Band
playing "Hail to the Chief;" this indicated that the famous General
Twitchwire was to be escorted in style to the court house, and Jack
lamented that he could not be outside, behind some good board fence,
to throw stones at the band, but he recalled the line,

                "They also serve who stand and wait,"

from the Sixth Reader, and was nobly sustained thereby. Then the sound
of the music came nearer, the band playing

                     "The Campbells are coming,"

and then Jack saw a transparency, and yet another, and it required
every word of his comforting line to support him in his privation. A
tremendous hubbub in the room below came up through the gas pipe and
rubber tube, and Jack applied his ear to the latter to hear what
General Twitchwire might endeavor to delude his hearers into
believing.

The address began on time, and General Twitchwire had just informed
his audience that if through supineness and lack of concerted action
the gubernatorial chair became occupied, he would not say filled, by a
person with the deficient mental acumen and erroneous views which
characterized the person who was the standard-bearer of the party
opposed to good government, the consequence could not fail to be most
disastrous—when a distant yet loud voice was heard to exclaim,—

"You don't say!"

The speaker glared angrily about, and the chairman of the meeting, who
had taken the precaution to arrange that admission should be only by
tickets of a peculiar color, wondered whether counterfeit tickets had
been imposed upon the doorkeeper. The general resumed the thread of
his discourse, and had just pronounced a glowing eulogium upon
Puttytop, when a voice exclaimed:

"Hang Puttytop! Give us a man!"

Then the sheriff and two constables, all of whom were Puttytop men,
began suspiciously to scan the audience. But not a Baggs adherent
could they see, except Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel, to whom it was well
known that a frequenter of Gripp's rum-shop had sold a ticket for ten
cents, the inducement offered being that the meeting would close with
a lottery, in which every ticket holder would be entitled to a prize
of some sort. But Nuderkopf, judging by his snores, was slumbering
soundly; besides, the disturbing voice used a better English accent
than Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel could ever be suspected of acquiring.

Several other remarks of the speaker were greeted with derisive yells
through Jack's speaking tube, and the famous General Twitchwire took
occasion to remark, with a great display of offended dignity, that if
the authorities could not suppress such disturbers it was pretty
certain that the party in Doveton was upon its last legs.

"Gott macht es!" (God grant!) shouted Jack down the pipe.

This seemed to offer a clue to the offender. The language was
certainly Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel's, and he was positively the only
Baggs man present, so the sheriff and the two constables dashed at him
and rudely aroused him. It was the only evening meeting, except some
of a religious character, which Nuderkopf had attended during his
residence in Doveton; he had frequently to be aroused in church; he
was very religious and musically inclined; the force of association
caused him to imagine he was in church; the silence to indicate a
temporary and dangerous stagnation of religious service, so he cleared
his throat and successfully launched the first line of a devotional
song before he opened his eyes, when a rude hand was clapped over his
mouth and another was applied with great force to the side of his
head, and then he was pulled at and dragged, and finally lifted over
the back of his seat, which happened to be the last bench of the jury
box, and was dropped out of the window, landing on the sidewalk three
feet below, in a state of confusion which bordered upon imbecility.

This was too much for such of Nuderkopf's religious associates as were
there present, even although they were Puttytop men, so they arose to
points of order, several of them speaking at a time, and they were
rebuked by the chair, and hooted at by the rowdies, who always
infested political meetings; and one excitable German cast an
opprobrious epithet at a conspicuous rowdy, and the rowdy retorted by
snatching a transparency from a bearer and throwing it lancewise at
the German, and the cloth caught fire, and a general yell ensued, and
everybody looked out for number one, with the result of making number
two of everybody else, and the famous General Twitchwire stepped
suddenly to a window and jumped out, and the sheriff and the two
constables bawled "order" until they were themselves their only
auditors, and a body of quiet but observant Baggs men in the window of
a house directly opposite, agreed with each other that the Puttytop
ticket didn't seem to be looking up so very much, after all.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                              CHAPTER XI.

                          A QUIET LITTLE GAME.


When Jack finally left his hiding place in the court room, it was with
a pretty distinct conviction that no one would ever discover his
secret, and that the evil of this life seemed as ruthless in its
pursuit of Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel as in his own case. Then there
slowly developed within him the thought that Nuderkopf, who had been
the principal sufferer by the trick of the speaking-tube, was not even
a member of the despised Puttytop faction; so Jack, like many another
mischief-maker who injures some one of whom he had never thought while
planning his departures from rectitude, sought refuge from his
conscience by plunging into gloomy reverie upon the fateful lack of
sequence in earthly affairs.

Not the least of his troubles was the fact that, whereas in other days
he might have called all the boys in town together and told them the
story of his effort to purify the State government, and delighted his
soul over their enjoyment of it, he could now tell it only to Matt,
who, while a very true friend, had not as keen a sense of the
ludicrous as Jack could have desired. Still, one hearer would be
better than none, and Jack wondered whether it might not yet be early
enough for him to hurry to Matt's house and impart the delicious
story, when suddenly, to his great delight, he met Matt himself.

"Where have you been?" asked Matt, "I've been over by your house
whistling for you for the past hour. And the loveliest thing—oh, my!
Will Pinkshaw has learned a new game of cards—poker, they call it, and
it's splendid. Gamblers play it for money, but it's just as much fun
to bet buttons, or beans, or corn-grains, or anything. Will and I have
been playing it in the moonlight, by your side fence, ever since dark,
and we must have played a hundred games."

"It isn't too late for me to learn, is it?" said Jack. "The moon will
shine all night."

"Oh, somebody might come along," protested Matt. "The constables prowl
around after ten o'clock, you know."

"Then let's go into the stable and get on the hay under the big
window," said Jack. "The moon shines in there—nice soft seat, out of
sight—everything."

"But we haven't any cards," said Matt.

"Then borrow Will Pinkshaw's," said Jack. "You bring 'em up to the
stable—you know the way—and I'll have a handful of corn ready, and
we'll have a jolly quiet game for a little while."

Matt was nothing loth to act upon this suggestion, for new games with
cards—or anything else—have a way of utterly enthralling the juvenile
mind. Within ten minutes he was back with the cards, but their owner
had refused to loan the precious pasteboards unless they were
accompanied by himself, and Jack experienced a great though secret joy
that without his own direct agency he was brought into company with a
boy other than Matt, and at a place somewhat different from the
Sunday-school where alone he had fraternized with boys during the
month. The _modus operandi_ of the game was speedily made known to
Jack, the corn was scrupulously divided into three equal portions, and
the play began. Jack had not read Hoyle, so perhaps it was the devil,
who is said to be particularly encouraging to green players, that
decided nearly every game in Jack's favor. Matt was soon "busted," and
meekly borrowed twenty grains of corn from the winner, but the
Pinkshaw twin, who had bet no more carefully than Matt, remained
financially equal to his engagements.

Jack began to wonder whether the Pinkshaw twin might not have sold his
soul to the devil, like some gambler he had read of whose money was
magically reproduced as fast as he lost it. The thought caused him to
fix his eye upon the Pinkshaw twin as if he had been fascinated by
him, and soon he discovered that the arch-adversary of souls operated
from the heart of the owner of the unfailing pile, for the Pinkshaw
twin, who had been pre-informed of the currency to be used, was seen
to slyly take some corn from his pocket and lay it upon his pile.

In an instant a sharp quarrel ensued, the Pinkshaw twin lying most
industriously and displaying an empty pocket in evidence, but a
careful examination of Jack's winnings showed that many grains of
sweet corn were among them, whereas there was no such grain in the bin
from which Jack had supplied the general exchequer. So the Pinkshaw
twin sullenly confessed, and pleaded that playing for corn-grains was
no fun, anyhow, for a fellow couldn't do anything with them after he
had won them; he therefore proposed that the party should play for
buttons.

"Where will we get them?" asked Matt.

"Cut off the suspender buttons on our trowsers," suggested the
Pinkshaw twin. "Neither of you fellows wear galluses, do you?"

The suggestion was acted upon, and the volume of currency being
somewhat limited, the betting proceeded quite cautiously. But luck was
still against the Pinkshaw twin, so, desperately remarking that his
jacket was an old one, he removed the buttons from that garment also.
And still he lost, so he attacked his shirt front, although Matt
suggested that shirt buttons were hardly big enough to bet with. These
same went the way of the others, and then the Pinkshaw twin, realizing
that no one would see him on his way home, denuded his trowsers of all
the remaining buttons, and tied a string around his waist to hold the
garments up. Losing these, he pledged his pocket knife to Jack for ten
buttons, with the privilege of redemption within twenty-four hours.
Then, when he wanted to "raise" handsomely on "two pair," he had
nothing to do it with, Jack declining to lend anything whatever on the
miserable security of a dirty handkerchief, so he offered to bet his
pack of cards as fifty buttons, and Jack agreed, and calmly displayed
"three of a kind" and the Pinkshaw twin was a ruined gamester.

The Pinkshaw twin had been accumulating a large stock of bad temper,
however, as the game progressed, and of this he partially divested
himself, as the party arose, by striking Jack a heavy blow between the
eyes. Over went Jack, backward, upon some hay which inclined downward;
away he rolled, until stopped by bringing up suddenly against the
shelving roof; there he found himself upon one of those unreasonable
hens who persist in stealing a nest late in the season, and "setting"
thereupon with maternal instincts, the end of which is never
calculated in advance. The hen naturally protested, in the loud manner
which is said to be an attribute of her sex in general, and as Jack
was slow in changing his position, she continued to protest, and then
Jack heard the house door open and his father hurry down the back
steps, probably in search of chicken thieves, the which abounded in
Doveton.

"The other window!" whispered Jack hurriedly. All three of the boys
scrambled to it, and jumped out, the Pinkshaw twin becoming somewhat
involved with his trowsers, the string securing them having broken. He
soon scampered off, however, holding his clothing together as he ran;
Matt's retreating footsteps were already inaudible, while Jack,
hurrying around to the front gate and tiptoeing up the back stair and
through the open door, was in his room and in bed before he realized
that his jacket, upon which he had been sitting, had been left behind.
Just then the clock struck two, but Jack determined promptly that the
old timepiece must be out of order, as it frequently was.

He had the cards, though, and they were irrevocably his, and to be one
of the only two or three boys in town who possessed property the sale
of which was prohibited by law, was glory enough to have acquired in
one night, even at the expense of a blow in the face. With their
possession, however, he had also acquired responsibility: his mother
might be suddenly moved to "look over" his clothing before breakfast,
as she frequently did when intent upon repairs; or the doctor might
search his pockets, as he occasionally had done, in search of
something that would explain the extreme quiet which, once in a while,
characterized Jack. So the boy got out of bed, and put the cards and
the Pinkshaw twin's knife into one of his stockings, and hid them
under his pillow.

Jack listened for his father's return until he was drowsy and he
finally went to sleep and fell instantly into a dream of hearing a
great army, with confused trampling, pass by him on some road in which
he could not view them, and then that the army engaged in battle with
some other army, shouting and screaming fitfully, and firing great
guns spasmodically, and then there was a terrific crash, and a general
roar, and the armies and the dream sank into nothingness, and Jack
knew nothing more until aroused by the breakfast bell. He was very
drowsy as he arose, but he remembered that it was the morning for the
regular semi-weekly change of stockings, so he clothed himself and
descended to breakfast to find his father very silent and his mother
overflowing with the sad fact that during the night the stable had
burned to the ground and the doctor had barely saved his horse,
carriage and harness.

Jack was greatly affected by the information, and recurred to his
wonder whether the devil in person might not have been helping the
Pinkshaw twin after all. Certainly, they, the players, had struck no
light. After a slight breakfast Jack hurried out to view the remains,
but the doctor was on the ground before him, and was holding up a
partly burned jacket, which he was inspecting with great care.

"Jack!" exclaimed the doctor.

"Sir?" answered Jack, most courteously.

"I threw this out of the window last night, having found it on the
hay, just where the fire began. There are charred matches in the
pockets. How did that jacket get there?"

"I left it there yesterday," said Jack. "I was up there yesterday,
lying about, and it was so warm that I took off my jacket."

"And sat on it, I suppose, and wriggled around on it and ignited the
matches, and burned down my stable. Couldn't you have set fire to the
house, too, while you were about it, so as to have ruined me
completely?"

Jack rightly considered this a very cruel speech, but he hung his
head.

Among the many bystanders, attracted by a rarity such a fire generally
is in a village, was the gunsmith, and as he gazed upon the many bits
of portable property which had been thrown from the burning stable,
his eye fell upon something familiar, and he picked up the saw which
Jack had used on the court-house gas pipe; examining it hastily, he
exclaimed:

"Why, here is my own saw, which I had such a long hunt for yesterday
afternoon."

"I just borrowed it while you were out," explained Jack. "I was going
to bring it back this morning and tell you about it."

"What did you want of such a tool?" demanded the doctor.

"I wanted to saw a piece of iron," said Jack, with downcast eyes.

"Who's been cutting the hose of my carriage sprinkler?" asked the
doctor, suddenly espying the yard of rubber pipe, which Jack had
fondly supposed would never be missed from the long coil from which he
had cut it.

While Jack was casting about in his mind for some plausible excuse, he
heard, to his unspeakable relief, his mother shouting from the back
door:

"Doctor, doctor, come here right away! Don't wait a single minute."

The doctor obeyed the summons, and Jack was consoling himself with the
thought that the monkey wrench, which belonged to the stable, could
not tell tales about him, and the hen, if still alive, could not talk
English, when the doctor's well-known voice struck terror to his soul
by exclaiming loudly:

"Jack, come here!"

Jack went into the house, and was confronted by the father of the
Pinkshaw twins, who had brought a buttonless coat and a pair of
trousers as evidence of the truth of his boy's statement that Jack had
fought with him, knocked him down, and cut the buttons from his
clothes out of simple malice. (It may be remarked, in passing, that
the Pinkshaw twin had shrewdly determined that Jack would rather be
unjustly punished on such a charge than confess the truth.)

"You needn't deny it," said Mr. Pinkshaw; "my boys always tell the
truth." (N. B. Everybody's boys do.) "I'll warrant you have the
buttons in your pocket now, saving them up until next marble time,
when you'll play them away."

"Jack," said the doctor, "empty your pockets."

Jack had not the strength to resist or devise any way of reducing,
without exposure, the protrusion of that one of his pockets which held
the buttons. How he wished that the lately despised shirt buttons, so
small, so insignificant, had constituted the whole body of the
previous evening's currency, instead of its being inflated by the huge
papier-mache sailor buttons from the Pinkshaw twin's jacket.

The doctor came rudely to his assistance, however, and soon the floor
was covered with buttons, to the identity of most of which Mr.
Pinkshaw could swear.

"My boy says Jack stole his knife, too," said Mr. Pinkshaw.

"I didn't!" vehemently protested Jack, and a close search failed to
prove that Jack spoke untruly. Just then the Wittingham servant came
to the door, holding aloft in one hand a stocking and in the other a
dirty pack of cards and the knife, exclaiming:

"The loike av this was undher masther Jack's pillow, ma'am."

"That's my boy's knife!" exclaimed Mr. Pinkshaw.

"Are the cards his, too?" asked the doctor. "I hope so, for the sake
of Jack's back."

"They _were_ his," said Jack, determining that all hope for
concealment was past. "I won them from him at poker, and won the knife
and the buttons too."

"It's a lie!" shouted Mr. Pinkshaw. "My boys have their faults, but
they never gamble."

"Ask Matt Bolton, if you don't believe me," said Jack.

The doctor looked as fixedly at Jack as if he were trying to discern
rudimentary horns, hoofs and tail. Then he arose suddenly, seized
Jack, thrust him into his room, muttered something about bread and
water for a week; then the old man fell upon his knees, and besought
the Lord for guidance as earnestly as many another person has done
after neglecting to use any of his heaven-given sense and opportunity
for the control of lively children.

As for Jack, he sat moodily down upon a chair, and formed at least one
resolution, to which he had long been urged: If he ever gained his
liberty again, he would never, never, never, on clean stocking day,
leave his dirty stockings lying about for some one else to pick up.

And on the evening of that day the doctor pored over the skeleton of
his intended book on heredity, but the best he could do was to devise
a chapter head, and even this was quoted from another book containing
some excellent hints upon heredity:

            "When the unclean spirit leaveth a man," etc.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                              CHAPTER XII.

                             SWEET SOLACE.


Jack was willing to live on bread and water for a week; he would have
acknowledged the justice of any penalty short of death, for the
burning of the stable would not appear to him other than a dreadful
calamity for which he was primarily responsible. He did not mean
anything wrong, to be sure, when he designated the stable as the place
for the game, but it began to seem to him that what one meant or did
not mean was of very little consequence when he made any departures
from the beaten path of rectitude. He had not put matches in his
pocket for the sake of burning the stable; he had meant nothing wrong
by sitting on his jacket that night—he had only done so that he might
be cooler, and that it might prevent the sharp stalks of hay from
protruding so successfully through his thin trowsers. He could not
foresee that the Pinkshaw twin—hang him!—would get angry, and stamp
over that coat as he struck the winner—for that was undoubtedly the
time, when, under the crunching of the Pinkshaw shoe-heel, the matches
were ignited. Why couldn't the old jacket have burned up, instead of
remaining to tell tales? What could have brought the gunmaker, usually
so industrious, to view so uninteresting an object as a burned stable,
and how came he to walk just where he could espy his own saw? Why
should the doctor have assumed, at sight, that the yard of hose had
been cut from his own carriage sprinkler? And why had the whole affair
happened on the evening preceding clean stocking day?

"Morality is the order of things." Jack may never have heard this
saying, but he became slowly of an opinion which embodied the same
idea, and he determined upon a reformation which should leave nothing
to be desired in point of thoroughness. He would not say anything
about it to his father and mother, but he would let the truth burst
upon them of its own irresistible force some day. He had his doubts as
to whether an announcement of his resolution would have any particular
effect any way, for his parents had heard something of the sort
before, without beholding any particular fruition thereof. He would
give up every single pleasure which could not be justified by the
Bible itself. His issue of veracity with the Pinkshaw twin came to his
mind, with the suggestion that the only boyish method of settling such
affairs was hardly consistent with the nature of his good resolutions.
Still, had not Ananias and Sapphira been struck dead for lying?—surely
to give the Pinkshaw twin a sound drubbing would not only be excusable
but necessary, as a matter of moral duty. Had not Mr. Daybright
himself preached a sermon to prove that every man was, morally, his
brother's keeper, and was not lying positively forbidden by one of the
Ten Commandments?

As for the stable, Jack determined that the first thousand dollars he
earned when he became a man should be given to his father to
compensate for the loss of the building and its contents. The building
cost but little more than half that sum, but the interest which would
accumulate in six or seven years would bring the loss up to the amount
determined upon, and Jack was determined to be honest to the last
penny. And if the Pinkshaw twin was any sort of a fellow when he
became a man—though from present appearances this seemed improbable—he
would see the justice of providing the money himself, for he had had
no moral right to get angry at the result of fair play, particularly
after having been himself detected in the act of cheating. Jack
determined to reason calmly with the Pinkshaw twin on this
subject—after the other settlement had been made, of course.

Then Jack began to realize that he had eaten a very light breakfast,
and that the smell of boiling and roasting and baking which was wafted
up from the kitchen was particularly tantalizing to a fellow who had
to dine on plain bread. But even this serious thought was overborne by
a graver one which came suddenly to his mind: could nice little Mattie
Barker ever bring herself to love a gambler who had burned down a
stable—his own father's stable, too? This was too great an agony to be
endured—he could give up his darling sins, but nice little Mattie
Barker was a darling of a different kind. Something ought to be done,
and that very promptly, to disabuse Mattie's mind of the erroneous
reports which would be sure to reach the young lady's ears, but what
could it be? He might write to her the plain, unvarnished tale of the
affair, but that would have to admit that he had gambled, and which
would Mattie be likely to dislike most—a possible incendiary or a
confessed gambler?

Suddenly, to Jack's great relief, there entered Matt, whom Mr.
Wittingham had failed to realize had been a participator in the
irregularities which led to the destruction of the barn. To him Jack
explained the situation regarding the stable, and a right doleful time
the two boys had together until Jack remembered that he had not yet
informed his bosom-friend of the affair with the political meeting.
Jack endeavored to recount the incidents thereof in the light of his
new resolutions, but Matt's hilarity became speedily contagious, and
within a scant ten minutes Jack detected himself, to his great horror,
in the act of framing a revised and enlarged order of disturbances for
the next great Puttytop meeting, which would take place in about a
fortnight, and was arranging that Matt, whom he had half an hour
before vowed to lead into right ways, should blow torpedoes at the
speaker through the open windows from a long tube which Jack would
have made for the purpose.

Then nice little Mattie Barker came to mind during a lull in the
conversation, love being merely secondary to action, as it is in most
other restless natures, and Jack, not without some confusion and
halting of speech, informed Matt that he was in love.

"Why, are you sure?" asked Matt.

"It's a dead sure thing," declared Jack.

"Dear me!" ejaculated Matt.

"Dear Mattie Barker!" exclaimed Jack, and instantly his countenance
ran through the whole chromatic scale of facial expression, and then
dropped low, perhaps to rest from its sudden exertion.

"That's who, is it?" said Matt.

"Yes," said Jack. "I didn't mean to tell you, Matt, but it came out
all of a sudden. I meant to ask you, though, to go and explain things
to her, so she shouldn't have to think any worse of me than she needs
to."

"All right," said the literal Matt, "but I couldn't very well have
told her if I hadn't known who she was, you see."

"Yes, that's true," admitted Jack.

"Well, I guess I had better do it at once, for I saw her sitting on
the back piazza, peeling peaches, as I came along, and there's no time
like the present, you know."

Jack acknowledged to himself the general application of Matt's plea
for promptness, but he somehow wished that the explanation might be
deferred, for he was doubtful as to what message to send, so he asked:

"What will you tell her, Matt?"

"Oh, I'll say you didn't set the barn afire," said Matt, "and that
your worst present fear is that she may believe you did."

"That's pretty good," said Jack, beginning to walk up and down the
room, "and it's delicate, too; you can tell her I haven't sent that
message to any other girl in town, and that I'd rather die than do it.
Go ahead."

But Matt could not think of anything else to say, and Jack himself
thought of something, but made several ineffectual attempts to give
voice to it. At length he assumed a heroic attitude and said:

"Tell her that in my rigorous confinement my sole comfort is taken
from thoughts of her."

"Golly!" exclaimed Matt; "that sounds just like a book! It's just
stunning. I'll write that down and commit it to memory on the way, for
it's too good to spoil."

Matt pencilled the sentence on the back of a bill which he had been
sent to pay, and over Matt's shoulder Jack read the words several
times, with a comfort which gradually grew into pride. Then he said:

"I wish I had something to send her as a proof of my—regard. Do you
suppose she ever plays marbles nowadays—I've got a gorgeous glass
alley that I could send her."

"I don't know about that," said Matt, thinking profoundly, "but I
guess it would be all right, for she can trade it to her brother Billy
for his sleigh-line to make a skipping-rope of—I'll just suggest that
to her."

"Good," said Jack. "You are a true friend, Matt. When do you suppose
you could come back and report? I can't wait till to-morrow morning,
but mother won't let you come in a second time to-day, I'm afraid."

"I'll come under the window and whistle," said Matt, "and you can put
your head out and I'll whisper up."

"All right," said Jack, "and you'll hurry, won't you?"

Matt promised haste and departed just in time, for Jack's father came
in to say that now that Matt had become a gambler, his visits would
have to be discontinued. Then Jack felt desolate indeed, and he cried,
and began to make a series of promises, but he was cut short with the
remark:

"I've heard a great deal from a promising boy; I think I'd enjoy a
performing one, as a change."

Jack had thought some of developing to his father his great plan of
restitution for the burned stable. But now he determined most
resolutely to remand this great deed to the limbo of surprises,
although six or seven years would be a great while to defer the
enjoyment of observing the effect upon the doctor of the intended
operation.

Then Jack's mother came in, bearing a tray containing several slices
of bread and a glass of water, and she held the tray before her,
exclaiming:

"Behold the wages of iniquity, my son."

Jack beheld, with a hungry glance, and determined that iniquity,
besides being unpleasant, was paid for in currency of but slight
intrinsic value. He recalled, somewhat to his confusion, the passage
of Scripture which asserts that the wicked "have more than heart can
wish," and he wondered if his spare repast might not be an indication
that he was not so very wicked after all.

"Jack," said Mrs. Wittingham, "you are killing me by inches. I've
reached an age when I am easily affected by anything unusual, whether
it is good or bad, and everything I hear about you upsets me."

"Nobody ever says anything about the good things I do, mother,"
complained Jack.

Mrs. Wittingham remembered to have had some such thought at certain
times in her own life, when her good deeds were regarded as actual
matters of course, whereas her petty imperfections had been causes of
complaint and unkindness. But to admit such a thing would be to give
the boy sympathy, and should wrong-doers have the consolation which
sympathy would afford? So Mrs. Wittingham lost an opportunity of at
least narrowing the gulf between her only child and herself, and
continued:

"Oh, dear!—I would give anything if I could understand you. I never
did any of the dreadful things you do."

"You were a girl," explained Jack.

"My brothers never did such things, either," said Mrs. Wittingham.

"I guess they didn't run and tell you every time they did anything,"
the boy suggested.

"They had nothing to tell," said Mrs. Wittingham. And she told the
truth; her brothers had lacked the vitality necessary to persistent
mischief-making and had always been considered good boys, though their
manliness after they reached adult years was strictly of a negative
nature, and they had invariably failed in business and everything else
they undertook, barring the one who had used slyness as a substitute
for strength, and decamped for parts unknown with the funds of a
corporation of which he had been cashier. But Jack could devise no
retort to his mother's last remark, so he moodily took a slice of
bread, and the lady departed, contemplating her son with a look far
more loving than she ever indulged in when the boy's eyes were upon
her.

Jack ate his dinner with considerable gusto, complaining to himself
only of insufficient quality. As he lifted the last slice from the
plate he discovered a bit of paper under it, upon which was pencilled
the Scriptural saying, "The wicked shall not live out half their
days," and Jack considered this line the most unsatisfactory dessert
that had ever been placed before him. He admitted the truth of all
Scripture, however, and he meekly hoped that he might live long enough
to earn money to make the payment for that burned stable—this he could
surely do, if the wicked were allowed a full half of three score and
ten years.

A sudden whistle under the window banished every thought, pleasant and
unpleasant, except of nice little Mattie Barker, and though from where
Jack sat to the window measured only three or four steps of distance,
Jack felt that he consumed at least an hour in traversing it. Finally
he looked down, and Matt looked up and whispered:

"It's all right."

"Glory!" whispered Jack.

"The glass alley went right to the spot," continued Matt, "for she
said she'd wanted that sleigh-line for months, but Billy had been too
stingy for anything."

"What did she say—about me, I mean," whispered Jack.

"Oh, nothing much," said Matt, "that is—well, she said it was too bad
that you couldn't get out, and that you should have to suffer for
somebody else's meanness, but she hoped you'd never gamble again."

"I won't," said Jack: "I'll swear it on my Testament, right away." And
Jack's head was withdrawn for a moment, and then reappeared, its owner
remarking:

"There—that thing is fixed."

"And she sent you a posy—I've got it in my hat. How will I get it up
to you?"

"I'll let a fish line down," whispered Jack, and hastily suited the
action to the word. "Put it on the upper hook," Jack continued,
"that's a new one, and no fish has ever mussed it any."

The precious token of regard was hauled up, and Jack kissed it,
modestly retiring his head as he did so. Then he looked from the
window again, with an extremely radiant face, and whispered:

"Oh, Matt, I never was so happy in all my life!"

"Not even when you'd got up to a woodpecker's nest?" asked Matt.

"No," said Jack, "nor when I caught that big salmon last year,
either."

"Is that so?" asked Matt, reflectively. "Then I guess it's time for me
to be thinking about getting in love. And I know it's dinner time.
Good-bye."

Matt departed, and for the first time in his life, Jack did not regret
the absence of his favorite companion. Fortunately he had not drunk
the water from his goblet, so he placed the flowers therein, and he
looked at them, collectively and individually, and he took them out
again and kissed their stems, because those were what nice little
Mattie Barker's fingers had touched when she plucked them, and he
skipped six or seven years as if they were mere syllogisms and he a
politician, and his fancy invested him with a moustache and nice
little Mattie Barker in a dress which touched the ground, and they
were living in a beautiful house overlooking the river, with the
finest of fishing rods and double-barrelled guns on racks in the
parlor, and a beautiful easy chair which should be Matt's very own,
and a span of crack horses, which he would sometimes lend his father,
and things, and things, and things.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                             CHAPTER XIII.

                      THE BOY WHO WAS NOT AFRAID.


When Jack emerged from his enforced retirement of the week, it was
with an aristocratic complexion, a fine sense of rectitude, and a
powerful conviction that in spite of his unsavory reputation having
had additional light cast upon it by the burning stable, there still
was something worth living for, and that the something aforesaid was
nice little Mattie Barker. The bouquet she had sent him had been
carefully preserved throughout the week, though it had not always been
easy to secrete it on the approach of his mother and father. Why he
should have hidden it from them he could not have told, for they would
have assumed that he had culled it himself, and they were more than
glad on account of the new regard for flowers he had shown since his
sickness; but it made Jack feel very manly to hide that bouquet, to
imagine that it would be removed if discovered, and to think of the
desperate deeds he would do rather than have it torn from him.

In spite of love, however, the boy felt somewhat as a discharged
criminal is supposed to feel. He did not know where to go, or what to
do. The prohibition of the society of other boys had been strengthened
by new and stringent clauses. Jack could not very well seek out girls
to play with, unless he chose to run the risk of being laughed at, and
being suspected of fickleness by nice little Mattie Barker. His recent
conversations with his mother had not been of a variety of which he
wanted more, his father was pleasant enough of speech—when not
pre-occupied—but he would persist in affixing a moral or a warning to
every sentence he spoke, and though Jack felt sure that no person
living had a higher regard for moral applications than himself, he did
not care to have them in everything. His father liked butter, as was
proper enough, but did he mix it with everything he put in his
mouth—cake, coffee, fruit, etc.? Jack rather thought not.

Perhaps the doctor had never heard of the pope's bull against the
comet and its impotence, or he might have evolved a moral application
for his own use, in the matter of prohibiting Jack from associating
with other boys. No matter how earnestly the world, in the time of the
pope alluded to, expressed its objections to associating with comets,
the comet came right along as straight as a due deference to solar
control would allow. And the order of seclusion imposed upon Jack did
not make him any the less yearned after by his late playmates. It
began to be noticed, by boys of observing habits, that the youth of
Doveton were falling into ruts, and showing no inclination to depart
from them; that there was nothing particular to do; that the
procession of games, each according to its season, was lapsing into
irregularity; that nobody got up anything new, and the only plausible
reason seemed to be the absence of Jack. In a general convention of
boys it was agreed, with but two dissenting voices—those of the jugged
loafer and the buttonless Pinkshaw twin—that what society needed was
to have Jack resume his place in it, and the two dissenters were
informed that if they didn't make the vote unanimous they would find
it advisable to move to the next town.

Then it was informally resolved that Jack's father was an old hog, and
a protest from lame Joey Wilson, who declared that during his own
illness, which had made him lame, the doctor had been just lovely to
him, only made it more inexcusable that the doctor should not be
better to Jack. To such a pitch of indignation did the feeling against
the doctor arise, that after the nine o'clock evening bell broke up
the convention, the braver and more close-tongued boys expressed their
disapprobation of the doctor's course by building a rail fence, some
forty lengths long, around the doctor's front gate, carrying the rails
from a pasture a square away. To remove this fence, and replace the
rails in their rightful positions, required all of Jack's time during
the following week, noting which fact the boys doubted whether their
operation against the doctor had been a positive success, while Jack
himself perceived, as he perspired, that even sympathy has its
penalties.

But he adhered manfully to his good resolutions. As the time for the
next Puttytop demonstration approached, he determined that he would
leave all his delightful devices to the friend who suggested them to
him, while to Matt, who one day sneaked to the fence and asked when
that new torpedo blower could be had, Jack tragically exclaimed, "Get
thee behind me, Satan." To be sure, he said it before he had taken
time to ponder upon the advisability of saying it, and the instant it
escaped his lips he wished he had only thought it instead of uttering
it; but none of this reconsideration had any effect upon Matt, for on
receipt of the unexpected reply, he had bestowed just one frightened
look upon Jack and then taken to his heels, and remained invisible to
Jack through all subsequent days until he received an apologetic note,
after which confidence was restored by supplementary proceedings at
the front gate.

The great Puttytop demonstration was effected without disturbance, but
there were some signs of despondency manifested by those interested in
the local ticket, which Puttytop helped and was helped by, for the
Germans, incensed by the treatment which Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel had
received, made their grievance an affair of nationality, and went over
bodily to the Baggs faction. As the few last days of the campaign
approached, Jack's patriotic spirit began to chafe at inaction, and he
finally became excited to the pitch of asking his father whether he
might not take part in the great and final Baggs torchlight
procession. The doctor was astonished by the temerity of this request,
but he was himself a Baggs man, Doveton was too far from any great
city for politics to have become exclusively rowdyish, the marshals of
the procession were nearly all church members, Jack had been quiet for
a long time, so the doctor gave his assent, taking the precaution,
however, to make a personal appeal to each marshal to keep an eye on
the boy.

Jack was overjoyed, and proceeded at once to make a transparency and
covered it with stirring mottoes. Then he made another, a very fine
one it was, too, which he embellished with the inscription, "Truth
crushed to earth shall rise again," and this he presented to Nuderkopf
Trinkelspiel. But Nuderkopf intimated that he had had enough of
politics to last him until the next campaign, so he used the
sympathetic transparency to shield a plant of late tomatoes from the
frost, and when Jack learned this he confided to Matt that he washed
his hands of that ungrateful Dutchman, then and forever.

Somehow Jack had frequent and imperative needs to consult other boys
before the night of the procession, but each time he asked the
permission of his father, and made known the subjects of the
conversation desired, until the doctor began to believe that Jack was
really trying to do right. As for the subjects of consultation with
the boys, they ranged all the way from lights for transparencies to
the particular style and succession of hoots to be uttered on passing
Puttytop headquarters. Upon this last-named affair Jack bestowed a
great deal of time, and, finally, having gone to Matt's for something,
and found nearly all the boys in the Bolton barn, he conducted a
rehearsal with such success that within five seconds after the first
note had sounded, the Bolton horse had started back in wild affright,
snapped his halter-strap, and bumped the side of the barn behind him
so forcibly that he was stiff for a month afterward.

When the procession finally formed, Jack's transparency was the
observed of all observers. On one side he had acknowledged his youth,
but warned the opposition against despising it by the inscription,
"Little, but Oh, My!" On the second face of the transparency,
Mephistopheles, all in red, laid a gaunt hand, black, upon an ungainly
individual in blue. Lest the meaning of this painting might seem
doubtful to the general gaze, the name of Mr. Puttytop appeared under
the blue personage. A third side was ornamented with the portrait of
the opposition candidate, and it must have been a good one, for Jack
had cut it from a Puttytop poster which had been tacked to his
father's new stable. In this picture the adapter proved himself to be
not without genius, for over the whole of that portion of the
candidate's cranium which had been devoted to hair, Jack had affixed
real putty, fastening it in place with pins, their heads enlarged with
red sealing wax and their points bent inside the canvas. The effect of
this work of art, when it came under a light from the outside, was
that of a bald-headed man, upon whose scalp a bad case of smallpox had
concentrated its energies. On the fourth and last side there was a
palpable allusion to the bibulous habits of which Puttytop had been
accused by the managers of the Baggs faction, for the ornament was a
sketch of a declivity, beginning at an upper corner and drooping
downward almost to the opposite corner; on the top of this began a
series of red spots which increased in size, number, and intensity of
tint until they culminated in the general deep red at the base; under
all this was the inscription, "His Nose."

Many were the stones and imprecations hurled at this _chef d'œuvre_ as
the procession moved through the streets, and all of Jack's strength
of mind and body was required to enable the young man to manage his
temper and hold his transparency upright. It would hardly be safe to
say that the doctor, who viewed the procession from a corner, entirely
approved of his son's taste, but the boy's upright bearing pleased the
old gentleman, and as one of the marshals, who was also Jack's
Sunday-school teacher, rode very close behind Jack, the doctor went
home feeling that his boy was in safe hands.

But the final disposing of the procession did not conclude Jack's
patriotic duties. A large paper balloon, inscribed "Baggs Forever, One
and Inseparable," was to be sent up by the boys. This was to be placed
in the heavens by means of heated air, to be provided by a burning
sponge saturated with alcohol, and hanging on a wire which was
stretched across the open mouth of the balloon. The boy who had been
charged with procuring the alcohol had dishonestly spent the money for
powder and shot with which to go hunting, but he had made good the
deficiency by stealing his mother's bottle of cooking brandy. It
burned to a charm, the balloon soared gracefully aloft amid a loud
chorus of "Ah!" and then the boy who held the bottle and who knew the
liquor by its smell, remarked that it was a pity not to put the
remaining contents where they would do the most good. The motion was
seconded by one or two bad boys who were not unacquainted with liquor,
and the bottle was passed from mouth to mouth, Jack being the fourth
who received it.

"I don't drink," said he, holding the bottle and wondering whether it
would be best to empty it on the ground.

"You're afraid to," said one of the drinkers, to whom Jack had been
held up, to the extreme pitch of exasperation, as a good temperance
boy.

"Of course he's afraid," said another bad boy.

The mere smell of the brandy made Jack shudder, but this was as
nothing to the trembling caused by the charge of fear. Afraid? well,
he _was_ afraid—of being laughed at, so he placed the bottle to his
lips. He did not know anything about the quantity to drink, except
that when he drank water out of a bottle as he frequently did when out
after berries in summer, he usually took about a dozen swallows, so he
swallowed industriously until one of the bad boys who had not drunk
complained that none was being left for the others. Then it seemed to
him that he had been swallowing the whole of a great conflagration,
and that he would cough himself to death, if, indeed, he did not die
of the uncontrollable trembling that agitated his frame.

During the long-drawn moment in which this new misery was being
experienced by Jack, most of the remaining boys had been vociferating
discordantly about something, and when Jack regained some little
control over himself he saw that the balloon was the cause of their
agitation; it had lost its balance, perhaps from too much of the
brandy getting to its head, and in turning sideways it had caught fire
and begun to fall. It caused a beautiful though dissolving view, and
soon there was nothing remaining but the sponge, which was coming down
as brightly and apparently as swiftly as a meteor. Everybody ran to
see where it fell, and although the sponge was making considerably the
best time, it had by far the greater distance to travel, so the boys
had nearly reached it when it tumbled into the well-stocked pig pen of
Shantz, the butcher, where it was received with all the hubbub which
the appearance of so unusual a visitor could warrant. The spectacle of
a brightly-blazing sponge in a small enclosure, with a dozen hogs
squealing at it, was one which commended itself to the boys by its
utter novelty, but when the proprietor of the establishment opened his
own back door, and descended the yard with a club, the scene became
suddenly devoid of interest, and the place which knew the boys but
now, knew them no more that evening. The boys afterward agreed, while
talking the matter over, that any sensible man would first have cast
the dangerous visitor from the pen. But Shantz had seen so much of
juvenile mischief that whenever he saw a boy near the scene of any
irregularity, he thought more of preventing future trouble than of
curing that which existed, so he left the pigs to take care of the
sponge, and gave chase to the boys.

Jack did his best to keep up with his companions, but he had never in
his life suspected our quiet old globe of such unstable ways as she
indulged in during that short run. The world tipped to one side until
Jack was certain that he would roll over to his left in a moment and
slide straight down hill to the Atlantic Ocean, which was five hundred
miles away. Then the world tipped the other way, and Jack felt himself
going, going, going, until he felt sure that in a minute or two he
would be caught and impaled on some lofty peak of the Rocky Mountains,
more than a thousand miles to the right. Then all the stars of heaven
forsook their orbits and dashed about each other in a manner which
made Jack too giddy to look at them, so he looked straight before him
at the steeple of the Presbyterian Church, just in time to see it
dissolve itself into two steeples, which trembled awhile and then
indulged in a mad strife to see which should overtop the other. The
antics which Hoccamine's store indulged in were very dangerous to a
brick structure which had been erected by contract, as that had. Then
Jack seemed to be treading on air, a league at a step, yet unable to
approach any nearer to his companions.

Suddenly his collar tightened, though he could not imagine why; then
the judgment-day seemed surely to come, for stars and steeples and
stores all mixed themselves in utter confusion, and Jack fell backward
some thousands of miles, apparently, and the last sensation he
experienced was of seeing a giant about a mile high, but of a face,
form and voice identical with those of Shantz the butcher, and the
giant raised a club, which was certainly the trunk of the largest of
the California big trees, and——

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                              CHAPTER XIV.

                          PAYING FOR A SPREE.


When next Jack became conscious of his own existence, it was with a
conviction that the giant who looked like Shantz the butcher had set
his feet against a mountain or something, and was bracing himself with
all his force against the top of Jack's head. Then he felt assured
that the giant had taken out Jack's eyes, filling the cavities with
two enormous leaden balls, and that the giant had filled his mouth
with wool, and put ice under his back, having first run an unyielding
iron rod all the way through his spinal column, and that the giant had
bound his knees and elbows in splints so that neither could be bent,
and then had fiendishly set a great fire blazing in front of his face.
After what seemed hours of dumb terror, Jack succeeded in parting his
eyelids, and the leaden balls within them answered the natural purpose
of eyes pretty well, for he saw that he was lying on the ground, with
the sun, already several hours high, shining right in his face, and
that he was quite close to a fence, and out of the way of any of the
beaten paths of the town.

Then he found he could move one of his arms from the shoulder, and
then, after considerable effort, he could bend his elbow, and he felt
the other elbow and assured himself that it was not bound after all.
Then he managed to raise himself by one arm, though the iron rod in
his spine was not as elastic as he could have wished, and a cautious
look upward and a painful twisting of his neck showed that the giant
was no longer pressing on the top of his head, though the sense of
compression still remained. This soon gave way to a sensation of
lightness, and Jack fell backward; though he managed to turn upon his
side a moment or two after.

Some misty moments were consumed in attempts to determine who he was
and how he had come to be in that particular place, the final result
being that Jack became convinced that he had been drunk. The mere
recalling of his last experiences of the previous night made him so
lightheaded that he clutched frantically at a tuft of grass to keep
himself from tumbling upward. Then he realized that he had never
before in his life been so terribly thirsty, so he entered the side
gate of the garden near which he had been lying, and drank freely from
the well-pail. Even this exertion left him so shaky that he had barely
strength enough to get outside the garden before he dropped. Then he
curled up outside the fence, shaded his eyes with one hand, and
determined that the sun had never before been so bright.

Then he set himself to thinking. His father and nice little Mattie
Barker came into his mind, arm in arm as it were, but the latter soon
drove out the former, with the result of making the young man more
miserable than he had ever been under the oppressive terrors of
parental wrath. He had barely escaped losing her by being suspected of
incendiarism and being a confessed gambler, but what were these to a
genuine, positive case of drunkenness? No one had seen him in his
present condition—at least, it was safe to assume that no one had, for
to see a drunken person in Doveton was to talk about him, with the
result of soon having a crowd of lookers-on. He had not meant to get
drunk, but, honestly, had he ever deliberately intended to do any of
the dreadful deeds of which he had been guilty! Once, while lounging
in a courtroom, and in the cessation of putty-blowing which he had
thought wise while the sheriff's eye seemed upon him, he heard a
lawyer inform a jury that the law always considered the intention of
the wrong-doer, and now Jack wished that his adored might have heard
that address. He wondered if Matt could be trusted to carry her a
message about something else, and then lead conversation deftly toward
the unintentional wrong-doers of the world, and impress upon little
Mattie the fact of which he had been informed in court. But, no, Matt
was such a literal fellow.

Meanwhile, there had been an unusual commotion in the Wittingham
household. Jack not having responded to the breakfast bell, the
servant was sent to awaken him, but she returned with the information
that he was not in his bed, nor had he been there during the night,
for the coverlid and pillows were as smooth as if untouched. Then the
doctor growled and Mrs. Wittingham fretted; and the doctor said he
supposed the young scamp had gone home with Matt, and Mrs. Wittingham
hoped the boy had not gone to the river and got drowned in the dark;
and the doctor said he did not see why women always imagined
improbable things as soon as anything happened that was out of the
usual order, and Mrs. Wittingham said she could not understand why men
always would be unsympathetic just when there were aching hearts that
longed for tenderness; and the doctor called himself a brute, upon
which Mrs. Wittingham disposed of a tear or two which had come
unbidden, and the doctor declared that the skin of the young reprobate
should pay for those tears. But the cuticle alluded to did not appear,
either with or without its natural occupant, nor could a search of the
stable throw any light upon the mystery.

Then the doctor drove to Matt's, and discovered that the boy was not
there, and he stopped at the jail, ostensibly to ask about the
keeper's baby, but really to give the official a chance to say
something, if Jack had got into trouble and his old quarters again.
But still he remained uninformed, so he began to interview such boys
as were visible; these knew nothing, as boys always do when questioned
about one of their own number who seems to be wanted by his right
guardians. No one had seen him since the balloon caught fire, though
they quieted one very unscientific fear of the doctor's by declaring
positively that he had not gone heavenward with the balloon itself.

Suddenly the doctor was accosted by Shantz the butcher, who was
driving by, and who said:

"Doctor, you know dot bad boy dot you got?"

The doctor admitted that he did.

"Vell, den," said Shantz; "yust you hear vat I say—better it is dot
you do it. You not keep dot boy some oder blace, den I kick him some
oder blace, py shimminy cracious! Dat's yust vat it is, I dell you."

"What had he done to you?" asked the doctor.

"Vat he has done?" echoed Shantz. "Vell, vat he didn't mebbe come
pooty nigh a dooin', dot ding is mighty bad, now I dell you. He drew a
pig sponge full of fire at my hogs. You dink I vant to sell roast
hogs? No, sir! an' ven I do, I puts 'em over de fire—I not put de fire
right ofer de hogs, an' den git yust lots of boys to come an' laugh
vile de pigs is squeaking, cause I reckon dey don't like to be roasted
midout being killed before dot."

"Why didn't you thrash him, if you caught him at such a trick?" asked
the doctor.

"Vy didn't I?" asked Shantz. "Vell, I yust did, but 'twasn't no goot;
he vouldn't holler, but yust tumbled on de ground an' vas vorse as a
whole dressed pig to pick up again."

A few questions as to time and place followed, and the doctor drove
hurriedly off, vowing to himself that if Shantz had really injured the
boy, the burly German should have a large account to settle. To tell a
man to punish Jack was one thing—to find that the man had taken the
doctor at his word, and in advance, too, was quite another. The doctor
drove toward Shantz's house, looking carefully about him and asking
questions of every one he met, so it came to pass that just as Jack
was wondering how to get home and explain his absence without telling
the whole truth, he heard his father's voice, startingly near at hand,
shouting:

"Jack, did he hurt you much?"

"Sir?" answered the miserable boy. Then Jack recalled the likeness of
the giant of the previous night, so he feebly said, questioningly,
"Shantz?"

"Yes—the villain!" exclaimed the doctor. "My poor boy, come here, and
let me see what he did to you. It was bad enough for you to throw a
burning sponge into his pig-pen, but——"

"I didn't, father," said Jack. "The sponge fell from the balloon." And
Jack told in detail the story of the ascension and untimely end of the
balloon, though his recital was so fragmentary and delivered with so
much shading of the eyes and rubbing of the head that the doctor grew
seriously alarmed for the boy's reason. It took him but a second or
two to dismount from his carriage and lay his hand on Jack's head, yet
even in this short time his conscience pricked him sorely for his many
sins of omission concerning his only son, and he formed enough of good
resolutions to pave at least a mile of the infernal pathway.

"Let me see your eyes," said the doctor.

Jack lifted them, heavy and bloodshot.

"No concussion of the brain, thank the Lord," said the doctor. "Now
show me your tongue."

Jack opened his mouth, and that very instant the doctor sniffed the
air suspiciously; then with both hands he held the boy at arms' length
and exclaimed:

"You've been drinking, young man."

Jack looked up guiltily for just a second, and then dropped his eyes.

"Go home this instant!" said the doctor; "take off your clothes and go
to bed, and stay there until I come. I never gave you a bit of
sympathy without finding that I'd wasted it. Go along—quick!"

As the doctor spoke, he reached for his carriage-whip, so Jack moved
off much faster than a moment or two before he would have thought
possible under the existing physical circumstances. When the doctor
had turned his carriage and moved off to visit some patients whom he
had been neglecting all the morning, Jack's fears were sufficiently
allayed to justify his thinking about the weather, for it seemed to
him that the sun had never shone so hotly even in midsummer. Then he
wondered what his father would do to him. He had been punished with
great severity many a time, though his faults had never before been so
grievous as this present one; the mere thought of being punished at
all was more than in his present physical and mental condition he
could bear.

Suddenly an old thought occurred to him: he would run away. He had
many a time determined to do so, but on such occasions the weather was
too cold, or too hot, or he had an uncompleted trade on hand, or he
was penniless, or something. Now, however, the expected punishment
overbalanced every lesser fear. Perhaps he would starve, but he would
not be so dreadfully sorry if he did; he would escape the scoldings
and punishments that he knew of, while that which might come after
death would at least have the alleviating quality of novelty. But
there was little likelihood of his starving; runaway boys in books and
story papers never did anything of the kind—they always fell upon
streaks of luck, and finally married heiresses. Jack did not care to
marry an heiress; nice little Mattie Barker was rich enough for him,
but alas! she would have to remain a sweetly mournful memory. He would
at least strive to obtain her sympathy; he would write her a touching,
a tenderly-worded farewell, and then, as he came into his fortune in
other lands, he would write her respectful anonymous letters—perhaps,
even, he might write her in verse, though about that he could not
speak with certainty at present. One thing he knew—he did wish his
head would stop aching so dreadfully.

Arrived at home, he went softly to his own room, bolted the door, and
sat down to write. He wrote and tore at least a dozen letters before
he could pen one which seemed to suit him; this, when completed, read
as follows:

"Miss Mattie Barker:

    Dear Madam,

        Farewell forever.

                JACK WITTINGHAM."

It then seemed to him that his father deserved a parting word, so he
wrote:

    "Dear Father:

            You want me to be good, and so do I, but circumstances
    over which I seem to have no control, prevent the consummation of
    my earnest desire and intention.[2] When I come back, I shall be a
    man, and rich enough to comfort you in your declining years, and
    mother too.

            Your affectionate son,

                JACK."

Footnote 2:

  Jack had found this sentence in a note from one of his father's
  unfortunate debtors, and he had been carefully saving it for years
  until a proper opportunity for using it should occur.


This letter had been begun at the top of the page, with the intention
that it should cover the entire front, but as it was, there was a
considerable blank space at the bottom. So Jack labored hard to devise
a postscript, but his head was not equal to much composition. Suddenly
his fond resolution came to mind; it was to have been a dead secret,
but now it seemed only just that his father should have something to
break the shock of his son's departure—something particularly
comforting and uplifting. So he wrote:

"P. S. The first thousand dollars I earn, I'm going to send to you, to
pay for the stable that burned down on account of the matches in my
jacket pocket getting scrunched under Bob Pinkshaw's foot."

This postscript gave Jack a great deal of comfort as he looked at it,
but he doubted whether it was the part of prudence to linger over it.
So he sealed and addressed both letters, and put his father's on the
mantle in the doctor's room, just under the hook where the doctor's
watch was always hung at night; the other letter he determined to mail
at the first post-town he reached in his wanderings.

Then he got a little hand-valise of his father's, having failed to
find a pocket-handkerchief large enough to hold the traveling outfit
which he considered necessary. He packed all his fishing tackle, a red
shirt, a pair of swimming tights, the box containing the remains of
nice little Mattie Barker's bouquet, some underclothing, his Sunday
suit, and his whole assortment of old felt hats. He looked around the
room lest he might have forgotten something, and beheld the little
Bible which his mother had given him on his tenth birthday. He had not
read a word from it for a month, but then runaway boys always carried
their mother's Bibles, or Testaments, he was not sure which—and they
beat everything for turning off murderous bullets or the daggers of
assassins. Then he remembered how his mother had looked at him and
kissed him when she gave him that Bible, and he wished that she had
always looked so, and he nearly cried without knowing why, and he
longed to go find his mother and give her a great hug and kiss, but it
would be just like her to ask awkward questions if he did. He would
have a last look at her, anyhow, come what might, so he tiptoed to the
sitting-room, and there she sat darning one of Jack's stockings, with
a lot of others before her, and she was looking very tired and seemed
to have been crying.

"She won't have to darn stockings any more," said Jack to himself,
"and that'll be a comfort." Then he slipped out of the back door,
through the garden, behind the blackberry rows, into the meadow, and
so down to a wild little gully which would lead him out of town unseen
by any one.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                              CHAPTER XV.

                             RUNNING AWAY.


Jack's first care was to get out of town; once out of sight of any
house, however, he began to wonder seriously what course he should
take. The terrible thirst with which he was consuming suggested that
he should keep close to the river, the water of which, now that
October had come, was quite cool. There was a scarcity of houses along
the river bank, and Jack had entirely forgotten to bring any food with
him; still, if he developed no more appetite than he had at present,
he would want nothing to eat for days. Besides, the river bank was
well wooded for miles, and though the trees had begun to shed their
leaves, there was still foliage enough to secrete a boy from anyone
who might be impertinently curious. Still better, the dry leaves would
make a delightful couch, and Jack began to think that the sooner he
tried them the more comfortable he would be, for his head persisted in
aching, and his legs were very weak. So within two miles of town, he
halted, scraped a great many leaves against a fallen tree, as he had
heard was the habit of hunters and trappers, and stretched himself
upon them. The air was balmy, the shade was most grateful, so Jack
soon dropped into a slumber.

When he awoke, it was quite dark, and he found himself unaccountably
chilly. Fortunately he had brought matches, so he managed to make a
fire of leaves and dead sticks, and the blaze was very cheering. But,
somehow, he could find no side of that fire at which he could stand
without having the wind blow smoke into his eyes, and his
brandy-swollen optics were not in a condition to endure smoke with
equanimity, even for the sake of belonging to a runaway who was going
to enable them to see all the wonders of distant lands. Finally, Jack
scraped the fire toward his bed, and by lying on the latter he avoided
the smoke and obtained his first tuition in positive woodcraft. Piling
on additional wood, he soon had a very bright fire, in front of which
he again dropped asleep, but the fire crawled from leaf to leaf until
it reached his bed, and he awoke to find himself half smothered, and
his clothing charred in several places. His tours for fuel began to
extend farther than the light of his fire, so that he had to feel
about very carefully for wood, and the rustle in which the dead boughs
indulged as he dragged them from beneath the leaves suggested snakes,
of which Jack stood in deadly terror. The obduracy of several small
dead trees provoked him beyond the limits of his small store of
patience, the smokiness of old and rotten boughs did not tend to peace
of body and mind, so Jack began to swear and then to cry. Both of
these exercises made him feel better in some way, however, and he at
last succeeded in making a very large fire.


Illustration: JACK IN CAMP.


But he realized, for the first time in his life, that the blood of a
man recovering from intoxication, acts as if it had been passed
through a refrigerator. He revolved before that fire as if he had been
upon a turnspit, but cold chills would creep down his back while his
front was roasting. He wished that somebody had accompanied him, so
that he would not be so dreadfully lonesome, and the remarks of a
distant owl, who exclaimed "Hoo—hoo—hoo—hoo—are you?" in endless
iteration, did not at all satisfy his longing for human society. There
was at least one comfort to be anticipated,—the morning could not be
far distant.

As Nature slowly cleared his head, Jack began to weave plans for the
future. Whether to go east or west, he could not for a long time
decide. The two countries were about equi-distant, and each had its
advantages, but the tendency of story papers for boys preponderated
strongly in favor of the latter; besides, the names of certain western
localities were particularly enticing, so he decided to go west. He
wished he had a revolver, but if he could beg or work his way west on
the trains, as runaway boys always did in stories, he might have money
enough left to buy a second-hand pistol. Besides, he could sell his
personal effects—all but his fishing tackle and his Bible and nice
little Mattie Barker's bouquet; as for the Bible, he must have a
breast pocket made for that at once. If the morning would only come!

Suddenly he heard a familiar bell; ha!—a fire had broken out in
Doveton, and he was not there to see it. Well, he deserved some
punishment for his wrong-doings, and he felt that this would be a
sufficient one, for a fire was a rarity at Doveton, and he was
therefore losing a great deal. The peal ran on, but stopped at the
ninth stroke. What? Could it be but nine o'clock? The night seemed to
grow darker and colder all in an instant, as Jack realized that he
must have fallen asleep about noon and was to be alone in the woods
all night.

Then the wind awoke, and made the most dismal of noises in the trees
overhead, and it blew harder and harder, and once in a while it
disturbed a bird who protested shrilly and with a suddenness that sent
Jack's heart into his mouth. The wind stirred the leaves, and Jack
recalled, with violent agitation, the fact that a panther had been
seen in those very woods a few years before. He had heard that such
animals were attracted by bright lights, so the reflection of fire on
dewy leaves a little way off took, to Jack's eyes, the shape of the
glaring eyes of a wild animal. He hastily separated the sticks on his
fire, and beat down the coals, looking behind him several times a
minute as he did so, for fear the animal might spring suddenly upon
him. Would a mother's Bible arrest the jaws of a panther, he wondered,
and if so, to what part of his person would it be advisable to tie the
Holy Book?

Then the velocity of the wind increased, and, soon a drop of water
struck Jack in the face. It must have been dew, shaken from the trees
overhead? But no; another drop came, and then another, and then
several at a time, and then too many to count. It was raining! Jack
began to cry in good earnest, but something must be done, so he began
to strip bark from the dead tree against which he had lain. It came
off in very small pieces at first, but by careful handling, Jack
managed to get several strips long enough to reach from the ground to
the log as he lay under them. But even then things did not work as
they should. Between each two pieces there was an aperture, so in a
few moments the rain had marked out at least four vertical sections of
Jack's clothing and made itself felt on his skin. A slight drawing up
of the knees displaced one piece of bark, and the cautious twisting
necessitated by the replacing of this piece, disarranged two others.

And this was the sort of thing which he would probably have to endure
all night! Jack cried and shivered, and shivered and cried, until his
coat sleeve was wet with tears, and his remaining garments were soaked
with the rain which the continual displacement of the bark admitted.
He thought of other lone wanderers—Robinson Crusoe, Reuben Davidger,
the Prodigal Son, but all of these had lucky things happen to them.
Even the last-named personage had something to eat, such as it was,
while Jack now felt as he imagined Esau did when he traded off his
birthright for a mess of pottage. He would certainly starve before
daylight, in spite of the money he had to buy food with.

Meanwhile his parents were as miserable as himself. The doctor spent
the morning, between professional visits, in devising some new and
effective punishment for the boy. But when he found Jack's room empty,
and was unable to learn that the boy had been home at all, he forgot
all about punishment, and started on horseback in search, with the
fear that Jack's unsteady legs and light head had got him into
trouble. He searched fence corners, wood-piles and barn-yards between
his house and the place from which Jack had started, and he
questioned, without success, everyone he met. Returning in real
agitation through a fear that the boy might have fallen into a well in
search of the water for which he must be constantly longing, the
doctor retired to his own room for special prayer and supplication,
when he found Jack's letter. With this he hurried to his wife, and so
frightened the lady that the doctor attempted at first to make light
of the whole matter, but his fears and his apprehensions were too much
for him, so he sank listlessly into a chair and covered his eyes,
while Mrs. Wittingham cried, and wrung her hands, and asked what was
to be done.

"I don't know," said the doctor. "I know what should have been done
long ago—I always do, after trouble has come, and it's too late to
remedy it. We should have made ourselves more companionable to Jack,
but instead of that, we've only tried to make him a person like
ourselves. We're so bound up in our own round of daily affairs that
we've never paid much attention to him except when he has got himself
into mischief."

"I'm sure I've always seen that he had food and clothing, and you have
sent him to school, and given him everything he's asked for that was
within reason."

"Within _our_ reason, yes," said the doctor, "but I remember to have
had tastes different from my parents, when I was a boy, and they were
not at all bad, either."

"I've prayed for him, heaven knows how earnestly," said Mrs.
Wittingham.

"So have I," said the doctor, "but I don't cure my patients by prayer.
And my own boy, my only son, who has more good qualities than all my
patients put together, I've never paid special attention to, except
when his ways were irregular. And I am the man whose address—'An Ounce
of Prevention is worth a Pound of Cure,'—made me such a name when I
read it before the State Medical Association! Oh, consistency!"

"But what are you going to do, doctor?" asked Mrs. Wittingham.
"There's no knowing where he may be, or what he will do—perhaps we'll
hear of him in some penitentiary."

"Or in Congress," said the doctor. "He'll be a smart enough rascal to
get there, with that busy brain and smart tongue of his."

"But you must do something, doctor," pleaded Mrs. Wittingham.

"I'll tell you what I'll do first," said the doctor springing from his
chair; "I'll go and burn up that infernal book on heredity; a man who
can't understand his own flesh and blood, isn't fit to write about
those of the rest of the race. Then I'll hire both constables to track
him, first swearing them to secrecy. I guess I won't burn the book,
though—I'll learn enough by this experience to tell the truth instead
of running a lot of theories on the public."

The constables were on the road in an hour, and the doctor, pleading a
sudden call out of town, turned over his patients to the least
disagreeable of his rivals, and took the road himself. But no one
seemed to have seen Jack. Matt knew nothing about him, and the doctor
reached home at midnight looking as many years older as he certainly
was, wiser and sadder.

All night long Jack's parents lay awake in each other's arms, crying,
praying, reproaching themselves and excusing each other, and forming
self-denying resolutions for the future in which they hoped to have
their boy again. With each gust of wind, Mrs. Wittingham shuddered and
suggested dreadful possibilities, and the doctor comforted his wife
while he kept to himself suggestions equally dreadful. The rain sat
the doctor to fearing dangerous sickness to the boy who was in such
unfit condition to breast a storm. When _he_ was a scrapegrace boy
himself, and away from home, he had always sense enough to go into a
barn when it rained, but he never thought to attribute this much of
wisdom to Jack, for his thoughts kept recurring to the boy's earlier
days, when Jack was a sturdy, merry, helpless baby, and his parents
had planned such a delightful future for the jolly little rogue.

A swing of the gate leading to the barn-yard brought the doctor to his
feet, and hurried him out into the storm with bare head and feet, but
alas, it was only the wind. A muffled step on the back piazza called
him again from his bed, but he found only the family cat. He grew too
weak to try to silence his wife's fears, too weak to think, too weak
to examine his own apprehensions, too weak to do anything but pray and
promise. At early dawn he dressed himself and hurried out to feed his
horse, so that the animal might be ready for an early start. He gave
the pony an extra measure of corn, and climbed into the hay-loft to
push down some hay. An old hat of Jack's lay upon the hay a little way
off, and the doctor snatched it and kissed it passionately, his eyes
filling with tears as he did so. Then, as he wiped his eyes, he saw
something else that reminded him of his boy, though he scarcely knew
why. He stopped to pick it up, and a loud yell resulted, for the dingy
object was Jack's hair, the owner of which had burrowed the remainder
of himself deep in the warm hay. Tears, fears, prayers, good
resolutions and all other products of night and penitence escaped the
doctor as if they were dreams, and he exclaimed:

"Well, sir?"

"Oh, father!" said Jack.

"Is this as far as you've been?" demanded the parent, indignant about
what seemed to him sympathy obtained under false pretences.

"Oh, no," said Jack, "I've had an awful time. You may punish me all
you want to, but you can never make me suffer as I've done to-night."
And Jack cried as if his heart would break.

"Your poor mother," said the doctor, "has been nearly crazy."

"Let me see her!" said Jack. "Just let me see her once more." And in a
moment Jack had jumped from the hay-loft window and was limping toward
the house.

The doctor, recalling with some shame his good resolutions, followed
with all possible haste, though by the conventional means of exit, and
when he entered the house, he beheld the runaway hugging and kissing
his mother in most frantic fashion.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                              CHAPTER XVI.

                          LOSING A REPUTATION.


Jack was so overjoyed at getting home again that his plain little room
seemed a palatial residence when he entered it. As long sections of
bare skin were visible through his dried but burned clothing, and as
the latter was also well sprinkled with hay-seed, he made haste to
change his apparel. He really hoped his father would whip him, he had
been so bad, and lest the punishment should not be as heavy as he
deserved he put on very thin clothing, and neglected to put anything
between jacket and skin to temper the blows. If his father did not
punish him, he would punish himself; he would go without pie and cake
for a year, or he would commit to memory a chapter of the Bible every
day. Of course nobody in the village would speak to him now, but he
didn't care, if only he could remain at home, never to go away, not
even when he became a man.

Suddenly, as he emptied the remaining pockets of his burned clothes,
he found the letter which he had intended to mail to his sweetheart
from some convenient post-office. At sight of this his heart gave a
mighty bound, and he retracted his resolution to remain at home all
his life, unless, indeed, his mother might be brought to fully approve
the choice of his heart. He would lose no time in consulting both his
parents about this affair of the affections, and he counted it as a
sin that he had not done so long before. What very different people
from what he had supposed them to be, that night had taught him his
father and mother were!

The expected punishment not manifesting itself, Jack ventured out of
his room and stood upon the back piazza to look at the garden, which
suddenly appeared to him to be the finest garden that the world ever
knew—the garden of Eden excepted, perhaps.

From here he listened to the breakfast bell, and wondered if any bread
and water would be sent to him; if not, he would at least have the
consolation of knowing that he didn't deserve any. But suddenly his
father shouted that his breakfast would be cold if he didn't eat it
soon, so Jack descended, in a maze, to the nicest breakfast he had
ever seen, and oh! wonder of wonders, his father gave him a cup of
coffee, a luxury which he had been taught to forego, because the
doctor thought it very injurious to growing boys with large heads.
Jack occasionally stole a loving look at both parents, but it pained
him greatly to discover for the first time, that his father looked as
if he was going to be an old man, and he was confused by seeing his
mother's eyes fill with tears at short intervals.

When breakfast was over, the doctor went into his office without
saying a word to Jack, and Mrs. Wittingham, first kissing her boy,
went to her household affairs, and Jack felt very uncomfortable. He
was too full to be silent, but it was not the sort of fullness, so
often experienced, that could be relieved by whistling, or singing, or
dancing, or teasing the family cat. He was absolutely longing to pay
the penalty of his misdeeds, and he was determined not to be the cause
of any delay, so he followed his father into the office—a thing he had
never done before in his life in the face of impending conflict. The
doctor was surprised beyond measure by this unexpected demonstration,
and his astonishment increased as Jack, after lounging about
uncomfortably for a few moments, suddenly exclaimed:

"Father, I want to be punished."

"Bless me!" exclaimed the doctor, turning so suddenly that a powder
which he was preparing dusted all over his clothing. "Have you lost
your senses, my boy?"

"No, sir," said Jack, hanging his head. "I guess I've just found them.
I've been a dreadfully bad boy, and I think I deserve to be punished
severely."

"Well," said the doctor, after several moments of silent contemplation
of his boy, "that's the strangest case I ever heard of."

The doctor dropped the paper which had held the powder, hurried to the
desk, took out the notes for his work on heredity, and made the
following memorandum: "It is undeniable that the mental, like the
physical nature, sometimes generates a quality utterly different from
itself." Then the doctor erased this, and re-wrote and amplified it.
The second form did not satisfy him entirely, so again he erased and
wrote, and repeated the process several times. As he was making his
sixth erasure he became conscious that Jack had lounged up to his
elbow.

"Oh!" said the doctor, "you said you wanted to be punished, didn't
you?"

"Yes, sir."

The doctor wanted to say "Confound it!" but he habitually refrained
from such remarks before his boy; as he looked back to his doubly
scrawled page, however, he unconsciously penned "Confound it!"
directly after his late erasure, and he followed it with exclamation
points to the end of the line.

"What do you think should be done to you?" asked the doctor, finally.

"I don't know," said Jack, "but it ought to be something dreadful, for
I've been so bad."

"Why did you get drunk?"

"I didn't mean to do it," said Jack, "but that's just the way with
everything I do," and Jack explained the affair with the
brandy-bottle.

"You did something worse than get drunk when you took that brandy, my
boy," said the doctor.

"I suppose so," said Jack; "I always do something worse. But I don't
know what it was."

"You showed yourself to be a coward," replied the doctor. "What do you
think of cowards?"

"They'd have called me a coward if I hadn't drunk it," said Jack.

"Yes," said the doctor, "and that's what you were cowardly about,
can't you see?"

Jack admitted that he could.

"Wouldn't it have taken more bravery to have laughed and fought down
such a charge, than it required to drink the liquor?" asked the
doctor.

"Yes, sir. And I want to be punished for being a coward too."

"Goodness!" exclaimed the doctor, seizing his hat and vanishing. A few
minutes later the Reverend Mr. Daybright, just as he had entered his
study, received a call from Dr. Wittingham, and the doctor promptly
proceeded to detail Jack's case and ask for advice. Now Mr. Daybright
belonged to a denomination which has very pronounced ideas on the
subject of sin and punishment, and the minister preached as his church
believed, and was sure that he believed what he preached, yet he
counselled the doctor to let the boy alone.

"But he wants to be punished," urged the doctor.

"What good can it do him?" asked the minister; "if he is in that frame
of mind, the sole object of punishment is attained in advance."

"But he has done wrong; he has kept his mother and me in intolerable
misery for twenty-four hours, and it seems to me that something should
be done to him."

"Ah!" said the minister, "you're thinking about revenge, which is very
different from punishment. And it is my duty, as your pastor, to urge
you to give up the thought at once, for it is unchristian and brutal."

"Why," said the doctor, flushing angrily, "I don't want to punish him;
I simply think it a matter of duty."

"Yes," sighed the minister, "revenge has generally been considered a
duty, so great is the influence of inheritance even upon minds
intentionally honest."

The doctor abruptly departed, muttering to himself:

"That's a point for the book, any how!"

Arrived at his office, the doctor found Jack still there. He picked
the boy up in his arms, and as Jack mentally submitted to whatever was
to be his fate, his father sat down, hugged the boy close, and said:

"My darling fellow, tell me what I can do to keep you out of further
mischief and trouble. That shall be your punishment."

The exquisite sarcasm of the potter questioning his clay did not
strike Jack, which is not very strange, as the doctor himself was
unconscious of it. But Jack could only say:

"I don't know."

"I would sell everything I own, if money would do it," said the
doctor.

Jack was still unable to answer, but the doctor's assertion caused the
boy to squeeze closer to his father's breast, which movement greatly
comforted the old gentleman.

"I think if you'd always let me be with you, father, I would be a real
good boy," said Jack. "I like you better than I do anybody—but Matt;
yes, better than Matt either."

"Thank you, my boy," said the doctor, with some little coolness which
Jack detected.

"I've got to do something," said Jack, "and if I can't see things
that's good to do, I have to do others."

The doctor remembered having had some such experience himself, in the
days of his own mischief-making, but he answered gravely:

"I have to spend a great deal of time in sickrooms, my boy, where it
would be inconvenient for you to be."

"Then let me be with you when you're at home," said Jack, "and," he
continued, rather hesitatingly, "let me ask questions, and you try to
answer so I can understand you."

The doctor dimly realized that when he was busy he did not answer
questions willingly or lucidly, but he replied:

"You ask a great many questions about things which I don't think you
should know about, Jack."

"Well," said Jack, "I can't help thinking about them, and when you
turn me off, I nearly always ask somebody else and I find out anyhow."

The idea that other people should be telling his boy about matters
which he declined informing him upon was a blow to the doctor's
self-respect, and his sense of propriety, too, for he knew what class
of people Jack would be likely to apply to for information, and the
nature of the answers which would be given. The doctor pondered a
little while, and then said:

"Jack, how would you like to learn a trade? You could be with me in
the evenings, you know."

"What sort of a trade?" said Jack.

"Whatever you like," said the doctor, "I wouldn't for anything have
you at any that was distasteful to you. You certainly like to use
tools—you have ruined all of mine in various ways."

"I think I'd like to be a carpenter," said Jack.

"Then you shall," said the doctor. "If you like it, and stick to it,
I'll set you up as a builder when you learn it, but the moment you
grow sick of it I want you to let me know. You are smart enough to
become a good architect, and that's a more profitable profession than
mine."

"May I have tools of my own?" asked Jack.

"Yes," replied his father, "the best that money can buy. And I will go
right away and find some one who will teach you."

The doctor went straightway to the best builder in the neighborhood,
and had the proposition civilly but promptly declined.

"Every boy I ever took managed to ruin all my best tools within a
year," explained the builder, "to say nothing of the lumber which he
worked up into fancies of his own, and ruined by failures of one sort
and another."

"I'll buy my boy the best and largest set of tools that you can
select," said the doctor.

For a moment this offer seemed an inducement to the builder, for there
were many tools which he disliked to buy yet needed occasionally to
use; he might borrow from the promised outfit. But as he thought
further, he replied:

"You're very fair, but tools aren't everything. If I do the square
thing by the boy, I must use a great deal of time in teaching him, and
time is money. My time is worth a great deal more than the boy's work
will be for a couple of years."

"I'll pay you cash for your time," said the doctor; "I'll give you a
thousand dollars in advance, if you say so."

This offer staggered the builder, prosperous though he was, for where
is the man who does not want a thousand dollars?

But still the builder hesitated, and the doctor asked:

"What else do you want?"

"Well," said the builder, prudently retiring to the doorway of a house
he was building, "what I want is to tell you something that maybe you
won't like, but I can't help taking it into consideration. They do
say—_I_ don't say it, mind, but I've heard it from a good many—that
Jack is the worst boy in town."

"It's a lie!" roared the doctor. "He's the best—that is, he has the
best stuff in him. He's never quiet; he learns his lessons as quickly
as a flash; he hates work about the house, just as I'll warrant you
did when you were a boy, and he must do something. He likes to handle
tools, though, and wants to be a carpenter."

"Liking is all very well," said the builder, "but sticking to work
don't naturally follow."

"Did you ever hear of his dropping a job of mischief until he had
thoroughly finished it?" asked the doctor.

"No," answered the builder with great promptness.

The final result was that sundry papers and moneys passed between the
doctor and the builder, and on the following Monday morning, Jack was
at work at seven o'clock nailing planking upon a barn. The news got
about town very rapidly, and by noon there were at least twenty boys
looking at the unexpected spectacle, and tormenting Jack with ironical
questions. When night came Jack's hand felt as if it could never grasp
a hammer again, and he was otherwise so weary that he declined,
without thanks, an invitation to go with the other boys to serenade a
newly-married couple with horns and bells. Then he helped shingle a
portion of the roof of the new barn, but his mind was greatly
distracted by the awkwardness of a boy, in an adjoining pasture, who
was trying to braid together the tips of the tails of two calves; the
consequence was that he had progressed so short a distance with his
own row of shingles that the other workmen had gone across the barn
and returned to start afresh, and, as they rested until Jack got out
of the way, they ungratefully upbraided him because of his slowness,
and he wasn't going to be called slow again, not for all the calves'
tails in the universe.

                             --------------

This book might have been continued indefinitely, had it not been that
Jack was steadily at work which he liked, and had a great deal of his
father's society out of working hours. Gaining these, he lost his
reputation for being the worst boy in town, for although he remained
for several years a boy and a very lively one, he had something
besides mischief to exercise his busy brain upon, and a boy cannot be
honestly busy and mischievous also, any more than he can eat his cake
and have it too. Even the doctor and Mrs. Wittingham reformed, though
it was very hard for the latter to stop fretting at the boy, and for
the former to cease acting as if his son, like his horse, merely
needed food, rest and correction.

Jack did not go about preaching reform to the boys and advising them
all to be carpenters, but he unconsciously talked from a standpoint
very different from that which he had habitually occupied in other
days, and his talk came gradually to exert considerable influence
among the boys, though they seldom noticed the change themselves.
Jack's very title, "The Worst Boy in Town," was in considerable danger
of lapsing for lack of a successor, and the inhabitants of Doveton are
still undecided as to where it belongs.

As for the doctor's great work on heredity, it is not in print yet,
for the doctor happened one day, while mourning over a neglected and
consequently unproductive Bartlett pear tree, to drift into some
analogies between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, with the result
that he realized that if the splendid hereditary tendencies of the
tree could not prevent its bareness and its running to superfluous
wood, there could be no hope of an untrained boy, even if he was a
scion of the Wittingham stock. This idea took such entire possession
of the doctor that he went into the house and burned his manuscript as
far as completed, and all the notes beside.

According to Jack, who professes to be an infallible authority on the
subject, nice little Mattie Barker grows nicer every day, and she has
promised to change her name in the course of time, and her parents
have endorsed her decision, for though Jack is not yet of age, steady
boys who are also bright, and have learned a business which is not
akin either to gambling or theft, are not numerous enough to be
despised. And Jack has a whole portfolio full of cottage plans, all of
his own designing, over which he and Mattie spend long and industrious
evenings, and Jack has taken a solemn vow that when the proper plan is
decided upon, and the building begins, Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel shall be
the sole hod-carrier, and shall be paid the highest market rates for
his services.

Being practically a successful man, Jack is the receptacle for the
confidences of hosts of his old playmates, who feel that their good
qualities are not appreciated by a world which is quick to complain of
their occasional irregularities, but he has sent many of these youths
sadly away by remarking:

"It doesn't matter how many good qualities are inside of a fellow, if
only his bad ones make themselves lively on the surface."



------------------------------------------------------------------------



Transcriber's note:

    ○ Punctuation, hyphenation and spelling were made consistent when
      a predominant form was found in this book; otherwise they were
      not changed.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Worst Boy in Town" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.