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Les diagrammes suivants iilustrent la 1 2 3 4 5 6 MKRocoTY mottRNM na own (ANN wrf HO mr CMMf N». 2) LONELY O'MALLFY A Storv ol l]'>v Life AR rill k K! \ t.I k WITH 11 1 I , , i ,, , .,v FR ANK 1 . \; f k H 1 M IKiSTOV XM- SEW YORK MoUGH TOS, M!1M.!N A N !) ( f !>,\ N ■vt!.I, SIRS, WHAT Wi, ! Vt:i LONELY O'MALLEY A Story of Boy Life BV ARTHUR STRINGER WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANK T. MERRILL BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1905 corvRioirr 190$ hy akthvr ■tkinoim ALL BMim KkHHVBD 7« Dtrttkj ykkt WiU$ All ytmb, my umt Ihrttby #». ;i dividid int» ibrit parti, — that tarluu Un^d tg* ,/ h/imt,, tbtt tnrt wtMbffiJ mud^ tg* of di-vtri uv^triu *»tj luny iwugimiigi, ibat ttill mert golden and vt^dtrful n-b»uu t/ Mnalitm utmi t* clou abou ■ ;. and tot mt. j .en tomt fint mornimg H ibt isd ffm thm wt •rt, tbtriajttr, n bt rigard-d ai only one of the grewn-upi. Of ibh dolor- Ml ttndititn ytu irill ki»u> nubing , but lubtn it doti eemi, will/nd your three age, ofymk Uth ttutrging but Ot Mbtr, end all grtwn miay. Oftbe first, of couru, ivt can recall nothing. The ucond, alaclujiy, vtt all too qukUy forg,:. Tbe third, with it, dream, and HIhumi, wt earty tUng with ui Miy in »bM, mtd brtkn mmtritt. St, tUt tmltmtu tr m» «• lb* long and de-viou, wayside of a small boy' i career may, I bf*, kuf «/w in your heart and mine, and perbapi in a /rw other,', umt remtm. brancei oflbou tartitr dsyi ,f lift ibu Itt mtn dip away - of thoie day, tvben I thought you the ripest little girl in all tbe tvtrtd, and you {dart Itayitf) openly avow., that lemon mtringui vm tU lununvun boilttm rftOtMiMmtl A. & M i>«xxa BaritrM, H,nu, Jlfrll,/gciS CONTENTS Chapter One. In IVhich Lonely Finds Him- self an Outlander 3 Chapter Two. In ffbicb the King is Jgain Disowned 31 Chapter Three. In Which False Gods are Pursued Chapter Four. In Which there is a Tri- umphal Procession 95 Chapter Five. In Which the King Cmes Into His Own 129 Chapter Six. In Which Uonel Clarence Makes His Escape 151 Chapter Seven. In Which Lonely Gets Reli- gion With a Vengeance 177 Chapter Eight. In Which Lonefy Tells a Story or Two 221 Chapter Nine. In Which the Greyhound Steps Forth 261 Chapter Ten. In Which Certain Pirates are Pursued 285 viti CONTENTS Chapter Eli ven. In ff^hich the Greyhound Is Overhauled 301 Chapter Twelve. In Which the Biter is Some- what Bitten 31^ Chapter Thirteen. In Which Touth is Stripped of its Glory 335 Chapter Fourteen. In Which^At Lasty We Find Our Hero 353 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IVell^ sirs^ what will you? {pog^J^t) Frontispiece The boy at the buck-saw 5 Pud 'Jones ivas moodily receiving his first lesson in garden-making 8 He emerged from under the driving-shed II Armed himself with great care *7 Nofw^ what strange craft might that be ? »9 Audacious^ jeering^ tyrannical 23 Marooned on the top of her chain-pump 33 Are nt you the new baker's little bey ? 4« He does n't really look so ver-r-ry thin ! 47 Once more up the back stairs SI Why ain't you a-gittin' some schoalin' ? 60 Out in the warm sunshine 67 Marvelous feats on the trapeze 77 Don't tali to me about candy ! 81 Stuck out a snake-like tongue at bi n 89 Now J Put this into yottr face f lOI The Goddess of Liberty and her new page 109 X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The red bandanna went up 1 21 She 7/ tackle anything from a tom-cat to a terrier ! 131 / kin lick you ! 137 That big bully out there licked me! 143 Innocent and unsuspecting 1 47 Shot down his quarry 1 54 Do you think I 'd better risk it? 165 Dictating a truce 169 Butcher Brennan doused the burning captive 1 8 1 Nursing the injured member 183 Pored over the book until the end was reached 1 91 A matter of conscience to accept no mare than one cheese-cake 199 Att a good part of his ntwfy pasted house-kite 205 Come agin ! 209 He was put in the infant class 213 Whipped up over the walnut-trees 225 Just scratched gravel for all they was worth ! 229 There has been some foul deed dene here ! 239 The eld constable proceeded to make himself at home 243 The constable gave the story over again 251 Little Hnkie Ball carried fence-boards 265 Silently poled up Patterson* s Creek 272 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS x; Standing grandiosely exalted on that little upper deck 27s Backed by a masked and scowling man 279 Kin you recollect that crafty Si las? 287 Bore herj struggling and kicking 303 A paper ^ signed in red 31^. You *re captured! cried the delirious pirate crew 329 An improvised skirt-dance 341 IVitk a spy-glass and a shot-gun 357 Pursued by the irate maiden lady '60 Stretched himself out for his nap jj Each vindictively eyeing the other 377 LONELY O'MALLEY LONELY O'MALLEY CHAPTER I In which Ltntfy finds bimstlfan Outlandtr THE sun mounted higher in the tur- quoise sky. The birds sang more sleepily. Faint and far away, from the flats down by the river, a few belated frogs still trebled and fluted. Then, lazily, the warm breeze stirred, and died away, and stirred again, scattering a drifting shower of cherry-blossoms through the heavy, indolent sunlight, murmurous with the hum and drone of many wings, where, for the hundredth time, a song-sparrow preached his vagabond philosophy of "Sweet ! Sweet ! Idleness — Idleness — Idleness ! " It was a cloudless Saturday morning, and the end of May. There was something more than the smell of buds and youn^ leaves in the air, something more than the sound of frogs and sparrows and bobolinks, — for when Piggie Brennan, the butcher's son, had deliv- 4 LONELY O'MALLEY cred his roast of beef at Widow Tiffin's back door, he drew a generous slice of bologna from his trousers pocket, wiped it deliberately on his sleeve, and then wagged his head twice, sol- emnly, and with much conviction. This done, he poked his empty basket well in under Bar- rison's stable, and whistled three times, softly, for Redney McWilliams. Redney, under stern inspection from the back kitchen window, was engaged in a deal of puffing and blowing and wheezing, as he intermittently wielded a buck-saw on a stick of elm cordwood, for some twenty languid strokes, and then, for an equal length of time, gazed vacuously and dreamily at his feet, " to spell his muscles," he had explained to the uncomprehending parental mind, preoccupied with stewing rhubarb in the back kitchen. " S-s-stt ! s-s-stt there, Redney 1 " Then there came a discreet pause. " Redney ! Hi, there, Redney ! " The boy at the buck-saw, as he heard that husky whisper from the knot-hole in the back fence, slowly and cautiously turned his head, without in the least moving his labor-bent body. FINDS HIMSELF AN OUTLANDER $ ** Sbt *s wattbin* / " he ejaculated, under his Inrath. Then there was another discreet pause. *' Cm' on fishin' ! " whispered the husky voice, at last, through the knot-hole. THE BOV AT THE BUCK-SAW Redney cast a furtive glance toward the kitchen window. Then, whistling artlessly, he strode with great deliberation to the very wood- shed door, to reconnoiter. Still whistling, he 6 LONELY O'MALLET mottnted the wood-pile. There he made a great pretense of throwing down freth fuel for his energy. When he heard a ttove-door tlam shut he knew that his moment had come, and stepped quickly from the wood-pile to the neighboring fence-top, and then dropped quietly i..to the back alley. Once he had thus crossed his Rubicon, his entire manner took on a sudden transform- ation, and at Figgic Brennan's repeated declar- ation that it ought to be mighty fine fishing weather again, he gave vent to a vigorous and abandoned can-can, quite belying the exhausted muscles of the buck-saw laborer. Two lots further down the alley they dis- covered Billie Steiner blithely raking up the back yard, wrapt in the happiness of innocent content. They peered in at him, over the fence-top, silently, and with impassive feces. But the tongue of Billie, the unconscious artist, was out, and it worked contemplatively back and forth with every stroke of his rake. An audible snicker broke from the two boys, as they dropped down out of sight. "Say, Billie, c'm'on fishin' ! " " Heh ! " said the startled husbandman. FINDS HIMSELF AN OUTLANDER 7 "Aw, cm' on fisiiin*, Billic ! " At the magic of that mysterious call, float- ing in on his honest labor, all the world seemed to change. The boards about Billie Stdner became a prison wall ; the heavy rake fell from hit listless hand. The seed of revolc sank deep in his breast He scuttled secret- ively down toward the back fence. There he held converse with certain unseen conspirators, through a narrow crack between the imprison- ing boards. A moment later he had scaled his audacious way out to liberty. In the freedom of the alley, on the sunny side of the Steiner chicken- coop, the three boys talked things over, Piggie producing matches and Redney McWiUiams a supply of punk and dried spatter-dock stems. A happy and pensive silence fell over the little group as they I: up. There was no hurry; the whole day was before them ; and it was not until their three throats were dry and their three tongues well blistered that they felt they had had their fill of the weed, and decided to move on. Pud Jones was moodily receiving his first lesson in garden-making, under the wing of 8 LONELY O'MALLEY his rheumatic, care-taking, and yet somewhat short-tempered old grandfather, when a tiny pebble hit him on the bridge of the nose. PUD jONBS WAS MOODILY RECEIVING HIS RKST LESSON IN GARDEN-MAKING He started violently, and looked cautiously at the fence in the rear. But he said nothing. Still another pebb'e hit him, a weightier one, FINDS HIMSELF AN OUTLANDER 9 this time on the calf of the leg. He jumped therefore unexpectedly, and rubbed the spot briskly. " SufFerin' sassafras, Kilvert Jones ! Can't you stand stiddy a minute? First thing you know you '11 be havin' St. Vitus Dance ! " complained the old gardener, already exasper- ated by his young ward's eloquent argument that garden-digging was a ruthless destruction of innocent worm-life, a destruction so horrible to his stern young sense of mercy, he had intimated, that it promised to take the heart out of his day's work. Pud's backward glance toward the fence held a touch of vindictiveness. His unsuspecting tutor turned away, mumblingly, for the spade that leaned against the grape-arbor. When he hobbled back to the little garden-plot his young grandson had disappeared, as completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed him. « Why, — why, bless my soul, he 's — he 's gone ! " ejaculated the old gentleman, weakly, nibbing his chin. And with his hand to his eyes he peered dazedly about. If the hearing of Pud's grandfiither had been LONELY O'MALLEY the least bit sharper, that bewildered old gar- dener might have caught the excited murmur of happy young voices drifting off down the alley, and the mystic whistled call which echoed sofUy out from behind Johnson's bam, where Dode Johnson rebelliously and languidly gath- ered chips, in an old market-basket, and made patient and needlessly exhaustive observations on the traveling powers of a wood-slug. « Hey-oh, there, Dode ! " cried a muffled voice. "Goin' fishin'?" demanded Dode, softly, without rising from his knees, as he caught sight of that telltale little band and sniffed at the penetrating yet mysteriously fr^rant odor of burning punk and dock-stems. " Sure ! " said Piggie Brennan, turning over a board in search for worms. "Can't you make your sneak, Dode ? " Dode looked about him, guardedly. A mo- ment later he emerged, puffing, dirt-covered, red-^ed, worming his way out from under the driving-shed. " I thought you had to clean them turnips up out o' your cellar?" he said to Redney McWilliams, as he lit up luxuriously. FINDS HIMSELF AN OUTLANDER ii " Wat turnips ? " demanded Redney, vacu- ously. "Why, them winter turnips you said 'd rotted down there ! " " Oh, who cares for turnips ! " cried Redney, abandonedly. " This is f shin* weather ! " The sun mounted still higher, the frogs still = — r- HE BMERCBD PROM UNDER THE DRIVING-SHED trebled and fluted down on the river-flats, the warm breeze stirred lazily once more. The alleys and back yards of the town of Cham- boro grew quieter ; the robins sang on undis- turbed ; the noisy rattle of an occasional pump- handle echoed through the blossom-muffled stillness. Even the wooden soldier windmill on the peak of Barrison's stable refused any longer to wheel and flaunt his faded red arms. 12 LONELY O'MALLEY A capering, reckless, and emancipated band of ragged nomads crept and dodged stealthily out past old Captain Steiner's orchard, past the graveyard, and past Judge Eby's cow- pasture, to essay for " shiners " and " punkin- seeds," and to adventure with life among the rafts and odorous logi of the old river. For in an hour, almost, a new and all-conquering infecdon had swept through Chamboro. Few were to escape the disease, for once more the sleepy little river town was in the throes of spring-fever. Piggie Brennan stooped down and tried the water that stood in a stagnant little pool just in front of Curry's greenhouse. He reported it, jubilantly, to be warmer than milk. Then Billie Steiner tried it, and remained discree*' silent, for, pending the drying of a bela washing, he had fallen back on a pair of his sister's stockings, with the too-voluminous tops carefully stretched and tucked up under his trouser-legs — and he did not care to have the fact known. But others soon confirmed Rg^e's ver- dict, and a sudden dedsive " Gee, then, here goes I " from Pud Jones was followed by the FINDS HIMSELF AN OUTLANDER 13 feverish ripping off of an all too-confining boot. In three minutes every member of that band of adventurers sat at the roadside, bare- footed, wriggling toes, and half dreamily con- templating thin young legs, as bleached and white as grass that had grown up under a board. But a month of fishing-weather, they knew, and the right butternut-brown would be there again, and there would be no more need of gingerly picking one's way across stubble and gravel-patches ! From this mysterious rite of denudation, indeed, a sort of Dionysian madness seemed to ensue. The band went mad of a sudden ; one and all they capered, galloped, yelled, curveted, with every sound and movement of ecstasy, plunging and splashing through ditches, puddling in mud-pools, skimming over velvety young grass-plots. Then the shoes and stockings were hidden, in a sadly mixed-up heap, under Smith's cow-stable, and the band took up its way toward the river. It was fishing- weather once more ! Long before they reached his street, the new boy had caught the sound of their shrill- 14 LONELY O'MALLEY noted merriment. With an animal-like in- stinct common to his kind, he had guessed and understood everything. They were going fishing ! He wondered, in a foolish little flutter of hope, if they would call companionably in as they passed, just hollering off-hand over the fence for hin to get a move on, and come along if he wanted to ! Then the new hoy remembered the events of the day before, and the hope died down. Certain disturbing signs had already been driven home to him. He was an outlander, an intruder, with his right still unestablished. And besides all that, things were not going to come out right, bitterly maintained Lonely O'M alley. Nothing good ever came of get- ting at a place on Friday — there was trouble ahead, of some kind. And twice on the way, too, he had seen a black cat, plain as day, on his path. For Lonely O'Malley was indeed a new boy in Chamboro. From the sandy little neighboring hills, the afternoon before, he had caught a disconsolate sight of the sleepy old town, basking like a gray kitten in the sun, FINDS HIMSELF AN OUTLANDER 15 under a sky far more cloudless than Lonely's unhappy soul. It was, to him, neither a moving nor an inviting sight, that first glimpse of his new home ; for like many another strange town, Chamboro lay sprawling brokenly along the valley of a strange river which twined and curled and wound slumbrously down through a dark and alien country, wooded with maple and willow and sycamore. Through the limpid valley quietness of the May afternoon rose the puffing and churning of a river-tug or two, the rhythmical cling-clang of the blacksmith's anvil, the periodic hum and whine and scream of the sawmill. But the hills here seemed to stretch before him not half so green as the cider and fairer hills of remembrance. The water here seemed not half so silvery as was the river at Cowansburg. The bobolinks and bluebirds could not sing so well, the very cherry-blossoms did not smell so good. To this bald new country, indeed, clung none of that golden enchantment which haloed :he new boy's lost home, now forty long miles behind him. And Lonely felt so bad about it all that he wondered whether or not he was i6 LONELY O'MALLEY drawing near to an untimely death, — and to be on the safe side, secretly made his will, up in the hay-loft, and duly signed it in his own blood. The migration from Cowansburg had not been of a kind to suit Lonely *s spirit. It had been effected slowly, placidly, and laboriously, by means of a venerable old wagon from which two hub-bands and five wheel spokes were conspicuously absent, together with a raw- boned, long-haired, and ineffably meek-spirited steed of gigantic proportions, answering to the name of Plato. Tied to the tail-board of the wagon with a piece of clothes-line, had followed Lonely's faithful goat, Gilead, — a stubbornly home- loving creature, who, on different occasions, had been duly sold or traded to nineteen youths of Cowansburg, only at the first opportunity to return to his original owner, with a blind and indomitable instinct that was as profitable as it was touching. Lonely, for this overland journey through a new and unknown country, had armed himself with great care and forethought. A kitchen knife had been secretly pointed and FINDS HIMSELF AN OUTLANDER 17 sharpened, even a hickory bow and arrow had been strapped on the wagon's back axle. His calico waist had also bulged out on the one side with a long-used and well-tried sling- shot, on the other with a goodly stock of leaden pellets, made by means of a rusty old bullet- mould, hired from a com- rade spirit for the occasion. But neither buffalo nor Indian had crossed Lone- ly's path. Not a wild ani- mal had molested them; armed himself with not even a road-agent had ^^^"^ interrupted their journey, nor a highwayman prowled about their camp ! To Lonely it had seemed very slow travel- ing. For on his broken-springed and sadly overloaded wagon the adventurous Timothy O'Malley, lately returned from the gold-fields of the Klondike, carried not only all his goods and chattels, but also his own inebriate seF and his pensive-browed, hollow-cheeked wife, to say nothing of a lusty-throated infant daugh- i8 LONELY O'MALLEY ter, named Alaska Alice,— so christened in honor of the sturdy mustang which had once dragged the wandering gold-seeker over White Pass and delivered him for the last lime from the hardships of a most inglorious and unre- munerative vagabondage. Learning of an opening in Chamboro, Timothy O'Malley was turning from the glories of the Open Trail to his humble but honest old trade of bread- making. There had been a great deal of talk, in Chamboro, of the affluent yoiing Klondiker who was to take up his residence in that busy and progressive town. Much speculation was indulged in as to whether the newcomer would enter into the banking business, conduct l me sort of brokerage concern, or live in quiet lux- ury on the harvests of his northern adventu»-es. When, accordingly, the O'Malley equipage, after a humble but happy enough all-night camp on the roadside trail, appeared unex- pectedly on the outskirts of the town, there was a sudden great to-do in the streets of Chamboro. As Plato, with his languid yet majestic stride, slowly hauled the strange load into the little town, lending to the invasion FINDS HIMSELF AN OUTLANDER 19 the solemnity of a cata&lque, there was much barking of dogs, and bobbing of heads from open windows, and crowding of doorways, and calling over back-yard fences. NOW, WHAT STRANGE CRAFT MIGHT THAT BE ? As for the dogs, Lonely's sling-shot myste- riously though effectively attended to them, desperately engaged as he was in holding upon ao * LONELY O'MALLEY the top of the load six lengths of stovepipe and an ever-sliding mattress. The resentment of Lonely's father was more open, for in the very main street of all Chamboro he publicly flung two empty whiskey-bottles at the Barri- son's bull-pup — a fact which was duly noted, remembered, and commented on. " Now, what strange craft might that be ? " querulously demanded old Cap'n Sands, of old Cap'n Steiner, as the two bent figures leaned on their sticks and watched her float majestic- ally into port. Yet so remarkably did the O'Malley con- veyance resemble a gypsy camp in transit that many of the smaller children fled incontinently, while the fat old town constable guardedly followed the strange vehicle to its destination. And when it was discovered that the once myth-like and much-talked-of Argonaut of the Frozen North was to occupy the humble little house and bake-shop of the late Widow Elkins, and that he had boasted of being able to mix, mould, and bake six hundred loaves a night, the town of Chamboro felt that it had been cheated out of some glory, vaguely denominated, it is true, but still a glory. Nor FINDS HIMSELF AN OUTLANDER 21 had the first impression of the O'Malley fiun- ily been changed by the discovery that, pend- ing the re-shingling of their house, they were camping out in the front yard, cheerfully and contentedly, under the smoke-stained canvas of the very tent which had once stood amid the subarctic snows of Twenty Mile Creek. All this Lonely had seen and resented. So as he caught sight of the barefooted, reckless bandy that bright Saturday morning, and heard their telltale whistles and shouts and cat-calls, he had a little battle of his own to fight out. He wondered, in a moment of weakness, if it would not be better to hide Alaska Alice. He remembered the odium attaching to the boy who openly "minded the baby." An avocation so servile and effeminate branded one, he was fully aware, as with the brand of Cain. Yet he took his own joy, he knew, in the company of Alaska Alice. He even had a sneaking love for toting her about. And he was n't going back on her. Animal-like, he pugnaciously claimed the right to stand by his own. He saw the band stop in front of the Preacher's house, and in buttery and gleeful 22 LONELY O'MALLEY imitation of an over-affectionate mother's voice call out: « Lio-o-o-o-nel ! Lio-o-o-o-nel Clarence!" and then inquire, mockingly, if Curly Locks wanted to come fishing. At this Lonely remembered that the Preach- er's son wore his hair in longish yellow-brown curls, and dressed, usually, in a black velvet suit, with ruffles, and a hopeless white collar. So Lonely looked at Alaska Alice once more, half affectionately, half defiantly, and realized that his Waterloo was not far away. He made one desperate effort, while there was still time, to waken the grass-gorged and rumi- nant Plato from an attitude of hopeless and demeaning melancholy. This he tried to do by means of an adroitly flung pebble or two. Plato, however, instead of being stung out of his woe-begone abjection by these unjust missiles, merely whisked his thin tail languidly and stood on three legs, in meek and monu- mental pensiveness. Then Lonely waited for the outcome. " Git onto the bone-yard ! " cried a voice from the advance guard of the approaching enemy. A moment later a stone or two fell about the old horse. FINDS HIMSELF AN OUTLANDER 23 " An' look at Irish, mindin' the baby ! " was the next derisive cry that smote on Lonely *s tingling ears. " Lambast the redhead ! " suggested Pud Jones, genially. Lonely caught up Alaska Alice and hunched her up firmly on his hip, his body between her and the assailers. His thin, hungry-looking AUDACIOV8, JEERING, TYRANNICAL face went very white, as the line of audacious, jeering, tyrannical, relentless young savages drew up and peered over the low picket fence. He was, he knew, at least standing his ground with dignity. And all might still have 24 LONELY O'MALLEY been well, had not Alaska Alice set up a sud- den, energetic, and inopportune wail, which grew into a bawl, and from a bawl became a paroxysm. A shout of derisive laughter swelled up from the street. A tomato can hit Lonely on the shin-bone, a pebble or two cut through the canvas of the little tent. " Soak the gypsies ! " cried Redney Mc- Williams, as he took one last sly fling at the meek-eyed Plato. "Ain't this the Klondike millionaire's?" mocked another. " Say, Sis, what y' doin' in boy's clothes ? " demanded Piggie Brennan, sweetly, as he kicked the little front gate open. Lonely winced at that stab, and took a dark and studious look at the offender. There, above all, he told himself, was an enemy he was to remember and an offense he was to wipe out ! The band drifted aimlessly on, and a min- ute later was cutting fishing-poles from the Gubtill's lilac-bushes. They had not even so much as offered to fight ! They had not even sent forth the inevitable challenge to the New FINDS HIMSELF AN OUTLANDER 25 Boy ! And Lonely's last hope of companion- ship crumbled away. The boy's mother, startled by the loud voices, came to the door, with a scrubbing- brush in her hand. She gazed down the street after the disappearing band. " I guess I could keep an eye on Alaska Alice ! " she hinted, as she caught the sound of the shrill, boyish voices, blown back to the doorway where she stood. " Ain't I mindin' her ? " demanded Lonely, moodily. The woman gazed down at the solitary figure, and then out at the dusty road, studded with the prints of many bare feet. From somewhere in the distance a few hens clucked drowsily. " Don't you want to go fishing ? " " Nope ! " said the boy, as he hitched im- patiently at his blue denim overalls. " You — you don't want to go with those other boys ? " she repeated, amazed. He glanced down the dust-covered street, after the happy little band, and was silent. They were playing " Last-Tag " now, and he could hear the old reftain : 26 LONELY O'MALLEY Nigpct 's always last tag! Fools always say so! Up a tree and down a tree; You 're the oiggest fool I know! " Go on, Lonely, and have a good time with the others ! " said his mother, commis- eratively, once more looking back at the des- olate figure in the bald little sunlit yard. Lonely gazed at Plato, flung a stone at the fence, and peered angrily out from under his sandy little eyebrow at his mother. She did not understand. " Don't want to ! " " Go on. Lonely," she urged once more. " I tell you I don't want to go fishin'! " he shrilled out testily. And then he spat hard, a couple of times, to get rid of the sudden lump in his throat. His mother went back to her work. The sound of his father's hammer echoed more and more unevenly from the back roof — due to the fact that much stimulant had been called into service to brace the gold-miner's nerves against labor so dull and menial. The chorus of boy voices grew fainter aud far away. They passed down through the watery Flats, FINDS HIMSELF AN OUTLANDER 27 and out through the wooded gloom of the Upper River. Only now and then Lonely could hear a low little burst of laughter and calling, a mufHed shout or two. Through the clear, opalescent air he caught sight of the smoke from their bonfire. He watched it drift and fade and melt down the river valley. A dog barked in the distance, dismally. The sun mounted higher and higher in the cloudless sky. " 'Laska Alice, do you know what you Ve up and done ? " sternly demanded Lonely. The innocent young lady thus contem- platively addressed continued to clutch at a dandelion head '•h ineffectual fingers, bub- bling and crooning with untimely joy. "'Laska Alice," repeated the boy, medi- tatively, " I think you 've been my finish, all right ! " And he looked own at her studiously, but with no resentment in his vacant eyes, as he remembered, half bitterly, that this was the town where he had dreamed that trumpeters in green tights like the trapeze performers at the circus, were to ride out and greet him, and for 28 LONELY O'MALLEY a whole day the fountains were to run with wine, and the Princess was to beckon down to him from her Tower ! Even a good fight, he felt in that dark hour, would have made him seem more at home. To Alicia — Mtat. 20 When you made custard tarts — of mud — Which Twee die vowed delicious - And I with popguns sought the blooa Of Red- Men, huge and vicious — That was oar glad, mad, rainbow age. Those days when we together Climied thre* the orchard wall to wage Such wars — in lath and feather ! I sit and ponder sadly o'er Each wound of poor old Twee die — Who shed her sawdust brave before Her nurse could find a needle ! We sttrrigd and took each orchard tree — True, long the foe resisted ! — Then gave each captive, for his tea. Mud-pies, as you insisted ! But now, they say, your trousseau 's made. And you, poor child, will shortly Be married to a person staid. And r :h, though somewhat portly ! Ah, me ! My south, mud-pies, and fou. Are gone — gone past recover ! Yet, Dear, I*m still your old and true And one unchanging lover! CHAPTER 11 In which the King is again disowned SONNY, have you lost a goat? " " Mebbe! " answered Lonely, non-com- mittally, eyeing the angular and angry-eyed woman in the pink sunbonnet. " Well, that goat *s et up every blessed one of my black raspberry bushes ! " declared the unknown woman, looking at Lonely as though she could willingly have done the same with him. " That 's too bad ! " said the new boy, blink- ing at the pink sunbonnet. His coolness had far from a pacifying effect. "And that goat goes to pound, young man, till them bushes is paid for, and well paid for 1 " stormed the woman. " All right I " said Lonely, moodily. He had other troubles to occupy his mind. The pink sunbonnet disappeared. A few minutes later the sound of shrill screams rang through the quiet village street. Lonely ventured tentatively forth, to take in the situation. Three gateways beyond his 32 LONELY O'MALLEY own house he found the woman of the pink sunbonnet marooned on the box of her chain- pump, with Gilead keeping guard below, dog- gedly. He had been attacked with a kettleful of hot water ; but the engagement had been a brief one. It was only after exacting a promise that nothing more should be said of the black rasp- berry bushes, that Lonely dragged Gilead away; and, having made a bird-snare into which even the Chamboro sparrows resent- fully declined to poke their heads, he once more loitered ill at ease about his own yard, a bitter and rebellious young Ishmaelite, see- ing that Alaska Alice did not fall out of her cart, and making sure that the omnivorous Plato did not extend his browsing exercises to the fomily furniture. He was still brood- ing about the way in which he had been re- ceived in Chamboro, where not an advance had been made to him, and not a subject had paid fealty to him. And he could have told them more about shiners and mud-cat and sunfish than could all the village Solomons put tc^ether. He, the one-time boy king of Cowansburg, could have shown them how to THE KING IS AGAIN DISOWNED 33 snare more bull-frogs than Chainlioro ever dreamed of. He could have taught them more about bird-nesting, and more about MAROONED ON THE TOP OP HER CHAIN-PUMP twitch-ups and dead-falls and box-traps and fishing-otters, than could the oldest naturalist on the river. And perhaps it would be as well to take 34 LONELY O'MALLEY a second and longer look at Lonely O'Mailey, as he prowls so moodily about between those imprisoning home fences. Beyond a trick of nervously hunching up one shoulder, of wriggling his body when talking, and squinting at people, especially his elders, he is, after all, only a good deal of the every-day, ubiquitous, dream-weaving, nonde- script and nujch misunderstood creature known as Boy. It was only in the merest accidentals, such as being powder-marked on the right cheek-bone, that he differed from others of his kind. The first thing one would be sure to notice about Lonely was a nebulous cloud of freckles, as brown as the spots on a turkey egg, bridging his rather crooked little nose. His thin young face was always hungry-looking, wearing obvi- ously the hunger of the soul and not that of the body, since Lonely, even after his seventh apple turn-over, still bore his wistful look of want. His hair was a dingy reddish-brown, thick and matted, sprouting waywardly up throus^h the rents in his tattered old skull-cap, giving every evidence of that time-honored home-treatment, demanding only a bowl and THE KING 'S ATtAIN DISOWNED 35 a pair of scissors — though later in the sum- mer, it must be confessed, a friendly groom at the livery-stable put this crude method to shame by brief yet transforming applications of the horse-clippers. From under Lonely's bushy little russet eye- brows looked out a pair of eyes which had no r%ht to be there ; for they were, in truth, the eyes of a woman, — unfathomable, lustrous, quick-changing, restlessly meditative eyes, — the sort of eyes, for all the nervous squint that often came into them, that made tender-hearted women vaguely wish, when they chanced to catch sight of Lonely in a moment of fleeting and innocent repose, that they might some day be his Sunday-school teacher and talk to him about his soul. They were eyes that made the hearts of more elderly maiden ladies, when not indignantly driving their predaceous owner out of a strawberry patch, wish just as incongru- ously that they could some day be a mother to Lonely, and at the same time speculate as to how nice he would be with a well-washed &ce, or in a clean and respectably starched roundabout. If, *4a8 ! those undb ming and deluded 36 LONELY O'MALLEY ladies had let their gaze Ml a little lower and studied Lonely's most significant and eloquent members, his sinewy and scrawny young legs, they might have hesitated for a moment or two. For those gently concave, bandy legs of Lonely's veritably seemed built for shinning up apple-trees, for scaling orchard fences, for worming under wood-sheds and careering through melon-patches, for that airy " frog- motion" which is the pride of all youthful swimmers, and, finally, for the general destruc- tion of those garments which are the despair of all experienced mothers. His gnarled and crooked little fingers, too, were equally expressive, cut and scarred and marked as they were, embellished with a sup- ply of warts which had so far defied every art of conjuration, every spell and incantation for their removal, fi-om burying beefsteak under a full moon to assiduous anointment with "witch- oil." When idle. Lonely had the habit of twitch- ing these fingers restlessly (nervous women he could always put to rout by merely working his double-jointed thumbs). Likewise, he had the somewhat irritating habit of knocking his THE KING IS AGAIN DISOWNED 37 heels together. At such times he usually fell to whistling, always out of time and out of tune,' with one shoulder hunched ominously up and his bushy russet eyebrows drawn darkly down. He was, in fact, precisely the sort of boy you would suspect if you chanced to find your Crawford's Early ravi^d of its last peach, or if your English setter happened to be discov- ered under the back piazza with a watering- can tied to his tail. Yet the next day, as you glanced into Lonely's starry and hungry-looking eyes, you might be nervously wondering if, after all, he really got enough to eat at home. Or you ' Lonely was, in fact, quite tone-deaf. Yet just how blind he was to this defect may be seen from the fact that when the Cowanshurg School began practicing for the an- nual Christmas Cantata, Lonely boldly volunteered as one of the soprano voices. He escaped detection by simply mouth- ing, and making no sound, when the teacher chanced to stand at his end of the smguig line. One day, however, carried away by the joyous rapture of the music. Lonely absent-mindedly poured out his cacophonous young soul, off key and out of tunc, to a bewildered and admiring class. The teacher listened, illuminated, and Lonely was cruelly and peremptorily weeded out and gected — to his luting shame and sorrow ! I 38 LONELY O'MALLEY might surprise yourself by solemnly asking his advice about mole-traps and the best way of getting rid of the striped cucumber-bug. So to the bitter end, you see. Lonely O'Malley must remain a very incongruous muddle-up, a contradictory, evasive, ordinary, mortal boy, — a little more sinewy about the shoulders, a little wilder and less learnedly ignprant, a little more artful and irv , . e, than may have been many of his ki. • jut still made up of that ancient and eterr " . fix- ture of good and bad which makes one boy so like another. Sorrow could not lie long on that restless, hunched-up shoulder of Lonely's ; and as his first long Saturday morning in Chamboro wore away, his earlier sense of misery went with it. He had just gone through his complete pertoire of animal sounds, a performance of untiring delight to the gurgling Alaska Alice, when he became suddenly aware of an unin- vited auditor in a red dress. This auditor took the form of a pair of very yellow braids, a pair of very pink cheeks, and a pair of very blue eyes peering in at him through the fence- pickets. J r THE KING IS AGAIN DISOWNED 39 At these he promptly turned, and made a face — an indescribable contortion of the features, in which he expressed all his old-time, unutterable, a^kd implacable contempt for the softer sex. At that the little girl with the yellow braids bobbed do vn her head and drew back, abashed. Recovering herself, she continued on her jour- ney erratically down the sidewalk, her other- wise strange hesitations and gyrations being due to a supreme effort to avoid each and every crevice, for, she artlessly sang to herself as she went : Step on a crack — Break your mother's hack ! As she passed in front of the bake-shop she came to a stop, and g^ed pensively up at the iron railing which guarded the little show- window. Her thoughts were traveling back to the winter day when, in ecstatic contemplation of the sweets within, she had absent-mindedly essayed to suck the frosty iron — and had straightway stuck to it. Already she saw signs of a new stock for that old, alluring window. And she was a 40 LONELY O'MALLEY young lady of much forethought. So she decided to forgive the new baker's son. Lonely himself grew tired of the silence and the quietness. He glanced furtively up the street after the little girl with the yellow braids. She was returning now, with slow and measured tread, her hands crossed before her, her head bowed with grief. She paid no atten- tion to Lonely, as she passed solemnly by. " What are y* playin' ? " asked the New Boy, tentatively. "Widow," answered the girl with the yel- low braids. "Widow— what's that?" " My husband, just died ; I 'm in mournin' for him ! " she explained sadly, with a bit of a lisp as she spoke. " H'h ! " scoffed Lonely ; " how can you be in mournin', in a red dress ? " Here was a stickler, indeed. But the young widow was resourceful. "Oh, well, my husband died o' scarlet fever ! " she said, triumphantly. Then she climbed up on the footboard and leaned in over the fence. There she stood and gazed at Plato with well-meant but unfortunate solicitude. THE KING IS AGAIN DISOWNED 41 *• Don't you ever feed him things ? " she inquired softly. Lonely glared at his questioner, fiercely another three. " Oh, and you Ve got a baby ! " cried the little girl. " She ain't mine ! " explained Lonely, hast- ily. « But isnU she a darling?" The little girl in red had been sizing up the bake-shop win- dow. 42 LONELY O'MALLEY " She ain't much ! " deprecated LoneIy» melting a little. There was a moment's si- lence. " Are n't you the new baker's little boy ? " she next demanded, looking n him with wide- open eyes. Her attitude was plainly conciliat- ing, her tone was companionable, and after all, decided Lonely, a girl was at least something to talk to. "Yep!" he answered, carelessly slinging a stone at a telephone pole, neatly smashing the insulating glass, and allowing the " little boy " to pass. " We 've had the scarletina in our house ! " she said proudly, as she opened the gate and crept in. " That 's why all my dolls is naked." " They was boiled, so people can't catch it off *em," she explained, in answer to Lonely's puzzled frown. " What 's your name ? " demanded Lonely. She told him that it was Annie Eliza Gub- till. " What 's yours ? " " Just Lonely — Lonely O'Malley ! " He tried to say it airily and ofF-hand, but his face grew hot over the demeaning and unusual THE KING IS AGAIN DISOWNED 43 necessity of explaining who he was — be, once the best-known boy in all Cowansburg. But Cowansburg, at that moment, seemed very hx away. " Lonely! ITbat a funny name!" avowed Annie Eliza. " Was you called that because no one would ever come in an* play with ' you?" " Huh ? " snorted Lonely. " Not much, I guess I " " Then how did you ever get such a funny name ? " " It ain't so funny, when you get used to it ; it 's just a name — same as yours or anybody else's ! " " I s'pose so," soliloquized Annie Eliza. She was persistent, however. " But were n't you lonely, or something, when they called you that?" " Naw ! " said the boy, in disgust. Then he hunched a shoulder up and squinted a little — always an ominous sign to those who knew him. " I was bom twins, at first," he explained feelingly. « But the other one of us, he up an' died, an* left me all alone ! " 44 LONELY O'MALLEY Annie Eliza's face twisted, and she showed signs of impending tears, at this sad confes- sion. " Then the docter, he wrapped me up in a blanket, and he brung me over to maw, an' he put me in the bed next to her, an' he says, * This lonely little fellow, you '11 have him to look after.' An' maw, she said, ' Poor, lonely little fellow.' An' she says it kind o' stuck, that word, and so she just called me Lonely, ' right along." Annie Eliza wiped her eyes, and Lonely, the artist, gloried in his work, seeing it was good. Then he wakened, as from a dream, and testily demanded of himself just why he had stooped to such easy triumphs. " Can you come an' play with Lionel Clar- ence and me, sometimes ? " Annie Eliza was asking him. ' This touching and fanciful explanation, I regret to say, is and always was quite destitute of historical foundation, notwithstanding the persistence and feeling with which Lonely repeated it when occasion demanded. " Lonely," indeed, wu a boyhood corruption of his mother's patro- nymic, "Lomely," — a corruption, however, which had clung and was to cling to Masta O'Malley for many yean. THE KING IS AGAIN DISOWNED 45 " Mebbe," he sourly conceded. An awkward silence fell over the two new fricn is. "Do you want to see my cut?" the girl finally asked him. This was the supreme mark of her good will. He admired it as he ought. He was on the point of exhibiting to her his double-jointed thumbs, an exhibition for which of old he had invariably demanded twenty pins, when he remembered himself, and strove desperately to rise above any such ingratiating advances — humbled, broken, and desolate as he was. He asked neither the pity nor the friendship of women folks. And he threw a vindictive pebble or two at Plato, each missile smiting so soundly on his ribs that Annie Eliza was moved to ejaculate an almost tearful " Oh ! " " The poor thing ! " she murmured, forget- fully. " He ain't so poor ! " maintained Lonely. "That's his way — he's one of the bony kind!" "Oh, I sec!" said Annie Eliza. A little sigh of sympathy escaped her, however, as she looked at Plato still again. 46 LONELY O'MALLEY « But why don't you have a nicer bekin* horse ? " she persisted. Then came another of Lonely's dangerous moments. He saw red, and murdered Truth. That Plato had been purchased for fourteen dollars on the market square of Cowansburg, and had been looked upon, first as an instru- ment of the intended migration, and later as a docile and patient steed for the bake-shop delivery wagon, no longer troubled Lonely. "Why," he spluttered, "that horse took Pop over the White Pass ! " "Ginger-pop.?" asked Annie Eliza, bright- ening. " No, Pop, — the old man ! An* horses was fellin' dead all around, but Plato, he kept right on, till he got over that White Pass ! " " Where 's the White Pass ? " "Why, up in the Klondike somewheres, where Pop made his fortune. Plato there was Pop's best friend all through that trip, an* showed him the way out of a blizzard once, an' another time came an' found him when he was lost I " " Goodness ! " exclaimed Annie Eliza. " An' — an' Pop says he 's just like a brother THE KING IS AGAIN DISOWNED 47 to him, even though he ain't very showy- lookin*. Gee-whittaker ! — he would n't sell Plato for all Chamboro ! " " Goodness me ! that 's different, is n't it? " said Annie Eliza. "He docs n't really look so ver-r-ry thin, especially when you see him from the front 1 " HE DOES n't really LOOK SO VER-R>KY THIN ! And so they talked on until, from a near-by yellow house behind the lilac hedge, Annie Eliza's mother called her to dinner. That young lady took her departure reluctantly, saying that she would be back again, and in- quiring if Lonely would like to help her make 48 LONELY O'MALLEY tatting or come with her and the dolls, ume- time, and play in the graveyard. Lonely s sudden answer, w' ch w as n -'- a polite one, somewhat speeded Annie £liza in her de[xii *'ire. I '.ven after she had disappeared, the New Boy gazed down with moody anil far-away eyes at the baby, and wit' out even noting the fact, saw that yf^u"g dv glee- fully anil doggedly consume woolh . tir- pillar and several handfuls o muQ m rhe remnants of a flower-bed. Then he made his escape to the bi^ of "^he stable, where he sot^ltt ctmtohxxn m mudi chair-rattan s»»oke, and thought of the old Omansburg gang, and from time to time wished that be were dead. Much eadiac than Lonely lt«i looke for, however, he w« destined to - w^th a com- panion of his own sex, if not ai ge cr of his own bent ana dispo»dt ha a block aw- from the little bake-S! p. Gilead v he but unwelcome emissary that br< it the unexpected meeting. For Gik ing in an unguarded PHE Kimo IS A» \IN DISOWNED 49 »^nent i lade his escape, proceeded leisitrdy o the iitde Town Park lying betweea tke river and Wattcwon's Creek. TNre he de- -oured all of the municipal f ^-bed and then most of the park shrub. was en- joying the bark from a few i. ounger sha -trees when discovered by oi nkins, the ardener, who drove him igti Jiiuousiy forth with a spade and much bad language. Wandering fretfully homeward, Gilead lin- gered a momen*- or two in the Sampsons' side yard, over a tempting row of geraniums, set out but a week before by the Preacher'^ wife. This repast eventually led him to the door of the summer kitchen, where sat Mrs. Sampson herself and a Swedish servant-girl, patiently and contentedly stoning a huge crock of raisins, for her next Christmas pud- ding, that excellent housekeeper always priding herself on the fact that her piddings of this nature should stand and npen for at least six months. Gilead, with a i^t aftd confident bound, leaped inside the semmer kitchen. At this unlooked-for apparition the Swedish girl fled, screaming lustily. A nM>n»nt later she was 50 LONELY O'MALLEY followed, quite briskly, by the more portly Mrs. Sampson. Once behind the screen-door of the inner kitchen, the. two women exhausted every ex- pedient to shoo or drive Gilead away. Gilead, indeed, made himself quite at home, and discovering the large crock of carefully stoned raisins, slowly, contentedly, and delib- erately made away with them, under the rueful eyes of Lionel, his mother, and the Swedish housemaid. In despair, they at last sent in word to the Reverend James Sampson, busily preparing his sermon in the quietness of his study. That gentleman, noting the devastation which had been wrought, decided to take no half measures. Securing the horse-whip from the driving-shed, he boldly opened the screen- door into the kitchen, and, hang the un- perturbed Gilead, vigorously and heatedly chastised the intruder on his hairy Imck. It was not until an accidental stroke caught Gilead on the tender tip of the nose that the character of the action altered. Then the in- truder turned sharply, and followed Lionel's father through the screen-door into the kitchen. 52 LONELY O'MALLEY then up the back stairs, then along the upper hall, and down the front stairs, back through the dining-room and the kitchen again, and once more up the back stairs. How long this undignified pursuit might have lasted it would be no easy matter to say, for agile as was the Preacher, Gilead could always skip up the stairs after him more nimbly, even taking time for an occasional butt or two as he went. Then, in an inspired moment, Lena, the Swedish girl, slammed the door between her master and his pursuer. And there was Gilead, safe and sound, a priioner in the Preacher's dining-room, where, recovering his composure, he made away with the table-fern and was leisurely nibbling at Mrs. Sampson's window plants, when Lionel Clarence was hurriedly dispatched for the new O'Malley boy, who, it was claimed, was the rightful owner of the trespasser. Lonely appeared, solemn-eyed, pensive- looking, with one shoulder hunched up. He led Gilead ingloriously forth by means of the chin-whisker, and in the back yard belabored him — where the hair was long and thick — until even the Preacher turned away and THE KING IS A^IN E^^WNED 53 commiseratively demanded that Lonely lor- bear. Indeed, Mrs. &unpson presented th tnu t ^ e d and wondering New Boy with a huge s^ «if pound-cake for his bravery, and hoped that he would come regularly to Sunday-school, and always be kind to dumb animals, and not fight with Lionel Clarence, as did the other boys. And Lonely gazed at Lionel Clarence, and said he guessed there wouldn't be any fighting between them — for Lonely had his tribal pride as to whom he chose for his enemies. Yet it was out of this untoward incident that sprang the immediate if incongruous friendship between Lonely and the Preacher's son. That very afternoon they met in secret, and being joined later by Annie Eliza and her dolls, they performed a long and elaborate funeral service over the Gubtills' d^ canary. Then, touched with a common infection of grief, Lonely assisted in the disinterring of the remains, and was meekly luxuriating in the sorrow conse- quent upon a second and even more mi^ificent burial service, when Chamboro's young band of adventurers, drifting somewhat disconsolately and wearily homeward from their truant day 54 LONELY O'MALLEY on the river, lined quietly up at the fence, and took in the mourning group with the silence of unspeakable contempt. Lonely, looking up and finding himself dis- covered in the midst of an eloquent funereal prayer, flushed hot and cold with a sudden inward rage — a rage more at himself than at his scofl'ing enemies. " Makin* mud-pies ? " mildly asked Redney Mc Williams. There was something madden- ing in the soft and oily insolence of such a question. Lonely got up from his funeral hands-and-knees position. "Why, he ain't got curls like the other two! " said one of the tormentors, in mock wonder. Lonely walked slowly toward the fence, his face white, his jaws set, bristling like an angry terrier. " I can lick you, you saphead ! " he cried shrilly, as he shook his fist in the face of Pig- gie Brennan, the heaviest of the leering band. "I can lick you, d' you hear! I can lick any blamed one o' you." A chorus of youthful laughter went up at this ineffectual and frenzied sally. THE KING IS AGAIN DISOWNED 55 " Who 's fightin' with females ? " inquired Pud Jones. Then some one tossed a dead sunfish neatly against the starched white blouse of the Preach- er's son. Piggie Brennan, finding a loose picket on the fence, wrenched it off, and deftly and contemptuously flung it for Loncly's shins. Lonely jumped and missed the blow. The laughing band fell back, and went listlessly and carelessly on its way. He was not even worth fighting with ! " Don't you come around me again until you get that hair o* yours cut off! I)' you hear me?" Lonely suddenly blazed out at the startled and altogether innocent Preacher's son, in an inconsequential rage that was as unlooked for as it was passionate. And he contemptuously kicked over tombstone, burial casket, and canary hearse, and strode away. The River of Youth From all the golden hills of dream. Dew-cool and rainbow kissed. It twines and glides, a silver stream. Through valleys hung with mist, Dtwn past Enchanted Woods to where Romance walks ever young. Where Kings ride forth to take the air Oh steeds with velvet hung, — Where secret stairways tempt the bold. Where Pir,. Caves abound. And many a chest of Spanish gold May solemnly be found I Through magic years it twines and creeps Past Tozvers of peacock blue. Where still some ancient Princess sleeps. And dreams come always true ! Then gleam by gleam the light goes out. Then darkened, grief by grief. It sighs into our Sea of Doubt, And Manhood's Unbelief! CHAPTER III /« which false Gods an pursued YOUNG man, why ain't you a-gittin' some schoolin'?" The angular woman in the black bead bon- net shifted her basket of lish from her right arm to her left, and gazed at Lonely with un- relaxing severity. Lonely, in turn, hunched up a shoulder and continued to study the feats of the bareback riders in the new circus poster, whereon the f)aste had not yet had time to dry, "Why ain't you gittin* some schoolin'?" repeated the woman with the glinting and dangling black beads. " Don't need none, I guess ! " said Lonely. He worked his double-jointed fingers ener- getically : this often had the eflPect of driving women folks away. "Don't need Would you listen to that grammar ! Don't need any schoolin', and a-murder;n' good langu^e that way ! " " Schoolin' ain't everything ! " maintained the boy, stoutly. Yet he had his sneaking 6o LONELY O'M ALLEY Kven at that moinent he was longing and aching to be able to cipher out to the uttermost the descriptive superlatives which bordered so mysteriously the circus bill before him. But the big words stuck him, every time. KALSK (lODS ARK PURSl'KI) 6i " No, it ain't crytfiing, Mister O'Mallcy, Hut what do you ever expect to amount to, without bcin' al>le to" talk decent?" "I don't see's talk 'II ever build a flyin'- machine ! " cried the boy, in a sudden little rage. " And 1 'm a-goin' to school, anyway, 's soon as summer holidays is over ! " " Be you !" mocked the pleader for higher education, wondering what flying-machines had to do with the question. The boy paused to pull Alaska Alice away from the bill-board, where she was contentedly making her dinner on a little pool of scattered paste. "And when 1 get into that school," went on Lonely, as he faced the black beads again, and suddenly burned with the foolish passion of the conqueror for conquest, " when I do get in that school, I '11 show 'em a thing or two about book-learnin' ! " And as the vaunting heat of his vain little fire left him, he added : " And maybe something about mindin* my own business, too ! " "And mebbe something about mindin' your manners, too ! " snapped the angular wo- man with the basket, as she and her beaded bon- net went tartly on their way, leaving Lonely, 62 LONELY O'MALLEY who hud been in the seventh heaven of the imagination dreaming of circus sounds and sights and smells and memories, vaguely yet sharply discomforted for the rest of the morn- ing. " I 'm sick o' this town," he said, moodily. " I 'm goin' to be a trapper, and hunt Indians! " But being joined by Lionel Clarence later in the day, they fell to studying the circus posters once more, while Lonely considerately explained to the Preacher's son how the other- wise inexplicable suppleness of the real circus acrobat was due, of course, to the fact that in early infancy he had his backbone cut out. And still later, in the stable-loft, they delighted Annie Kliza and three of her little girl friends with a terrific sword combat, in which Lonely, arrayed in swimming-trunks, magnificently bled to death — by means of a cow's bladder filled with raspberry vinegar, purloined from the unsuspecting Mrs. Sampson's cellar. Indeed, as Lonely more and more realized that he was foredoomed to the companionship of Lionel Clarence, he took the Preacher's son more and more in hand, doing his best to make a man of him. falsi; (iODS ARK PURSUED O3 With much secrc-t exercise on a haymow trapeze, much surreptitious sucking of eugs, much pn'-'-hing and thunijiing of his teiule and atte u . " young body, and many copious applicatic: iintt marvel of boyhoo i 'uhri- cations, -ugle-Worm Oil, — ma .i' ,. ired from a bottle of those fish-worn is kr e- wn as "night-crawlers," carefully corkea up in water and hung in the sun until the resulting com- pound, reputed to make the body limber, is certainly odoriferous enough to make the stom- ach unsettle — with all these cogent agencies, I repeat. Lonely worked over Lionel Clarence, and wrought wonders in the once despised and anaemic Preacher's son. He taught him how to do the cart-wheel, he tauRiit him his Neeley upper-cut and his Cowansburg " trip," he schooled him in the science of wrestling, and in the arts of frog- spearing, initiated him into the mysteries and delights of the mullein leaf, the dried grape- vine, and the throat-scalding Indian tobacco- plant. One memorable day he took him in secret to the upper river swimming hole, and although the water was still disagreeably chilly, he sternly held the Preacher's son's clothing 64 LONELY O MALLEY in bond until that blue-skinncd and shivering youth timidly essayed " dog-fashion," splut- tering, moaning, shrieking, making weird faces, rolling his eyes, forlornly calling for his mother, and finally skimming naked up the bank and across two hay-fields, once the dis- gusted Lonely had released him. His instructor tried to lure him back again by airily doing " the over-stroke," by showing him how luxurious it was to float, by tread- ing water, by triumphantly " bringing up bottom" out in the middle of the river, and even diving backwards off the sycamore roots. Lionel began to cry with the cold, however, and at last Lonely relented. But only for that afternoon. For sternly and rigorously the lessons were repeated, until the Preach- er's son proudly eschewed " dog-feshion " and caught the knack of the more honored "frog- motion," and even attempted a timid dive or two. From that day on, Mrs. Sampson, without knowing it, was the mother of tw(^ sons : one, Lionel Clarence Sampson, sickly, frail, timor- ous, forever having headaches, and forever get- ting pains in the stomach just before school- FAF.se gods are pursued 65 tiiiK-; the other, "Shag" Sampson (so calletl by Lonely hecaiise of his ample mane of yel- lowish-brown hair), short-windetlly combative, but both audacious and predaceous. In return for these favors Lonely demanded periodic tutorship in the elements of English grammar, and with crampcd-up fingers and strangely contorted face filled out Lionel's unused copy-books, and, on the Samps ons driving-shed roof pored over some many- thumbed " Rollo Dialogues," and, at last, flung the book into the rhubarb- bed, with the contemptuous verdict that Rollo was a " stirtV and that he was sick and tired of pottering round with fool hooks, anvway ! Whereupon the two restless spirits, full of their vernal disquiet, caught the Harrisons' cat and painted it a delicate pink with thu rem- nants of the bottle of raspberry vinegar, left over from the sword combat. Then, pitkiixr on a suitably out-of-the-way ami secret vpot, Lonely and Lionel Clarence worked long and mysteriously at the river-bank with an old spade, well shadowed from the public view by a clump of dwarf-willow and wild grapevine. The result was a cave, with a smoke-vent 66 LONELY O'MALLEY through an old stovepipe above, the roof well shored up with purloined fence-boards, the entrance necessarily commanding a secret view of the river. In this cave Lionel Clarence took much delight, and countless colds in the head. Even Annie Eliza was not made acquainted with the SKret passage leading to this lonely refuge, meekly and faithfully as she followed Lionel and the New Boy in all less mysterious adventures. Although Annie Eliza had even sniffed knowingly at their clothes, and recog- nized the telltale odor of Indian tobacco, she had remained discreetly silent and loval. Lonely would have tabooed her heartlessly bat for her new-born devotion to Alaska Alice, wh^i she minted Mid wheeled and carried about croonin^y, thus giving Lonely an un- look^ ^ar chance for wandering and adven- ture, in whieb, when possible, the Preacher's ma joined him. All might have gone well but for the fact tfart one warm afternoon Mrs. Sampson went to the back hall window, to open the sash, while she finished her upstairs sweeping. Her startled glance happened to fall on the sun- FALSE GODS ARK PURSUED 67 bathed shingles of the driving-shed, and there, lying luxuriously out in the warm sunshine, with their legs crossed and expressions of OUT IN THE WARM SUNSHINE ineff)l'>!c content on their vouiig faces, were Lonely O'Malky and her son Lionel Clar- ence, 'fhe good woman leant [ on the handle of her carpet sweeper and gasped. For in the hand of each of the hovs before her was a stout piece of dried grapevine, and from time to time, as each lay there, he drew in long inhalations of pungent smoke, and emitted it from between his pursed-u}i lips with slow ami placid hrcaths. 68 LONELY CyMALLEY Mrs. Sampsot) kmed over the front banister and gently ciriied h» husband from the study. The Preacher ioWamed the direction of her indignant index finger, adjusted his glasses, looked again, and yef again, gasped a little, and was scarcely able to believe his eyes. 'I he Preacher's son was just on the point of taking a fresh light, and Lonely was carelessly Hccking the ash from the end of his weed, with a twitch of the little finger known only to the connoisseur. " Lionel Clarence Sampson! " cried a sud- den stentorian voice, out of the smoke-hung stillness. At the first familiar cadence of that deep chest-tone, Lonely lifted his heel from the nail which Md hmt on the sloping shingles, and with gi^ neatness and dispatch disap- peared in one quick slide down the east side of the shed. From there he made his prompt escape ^der a broken base -board on the back fence, and from the secure position of the Allison's chicken-coop roof waited pro- ceedings. Lionel, at the sound of that voice, dropped his telltale burning brand, as though stung FALSE GODS ARE PUMUEl^ 60 by a sudden electric shock. Then, wirliour moving from the spot where he lay, he began to weep, audibly and convulsively. "Come down from that roof, Lioad Clarence!" said 1m ^ther, with significHt solemnity, as he strode vfadifully am into the back yard. Lionel Clarenec, wailing motr eloquently than ever, ^amif and relu^mtly made his descent. " A son of mine, indulf^ in dif perniao«« and loathsome practice (jf smoking, ofioit^i^ with evil companions ! " A moment after saying this a mysferious cali>>afe-root landed with a resounding whack against the driving- shed wall. The Preacher looked (]uickly about, but no one was in sight. Then he reached forth and grasped his son and heir, firmly and significamly. " Rei»«i^«r, J»nes, he is your son ! " cried the half-relc«^i^ mother from the upper hall window, as she siw the two diii^pear into the secrecy of the driyiiig-shed. A moment later vigorous and prolanfed cries came forth into tfce still afternoon sm. Lonely listened, with one shoulder hunched up, his eye glued to the back fi»ce. 70 LONELY O'MALLEY When the Preacher emerged, flushed and heated, he once more looked carefully about But no one was to be seen. " Now, I shall go to young Master O'Mal- ley's parents, at once, and advise them of this depravity, this vicious and degrading habit ! " " You do an' I '11 sick my goat onto you ! " said a challenging voice, from the rear of the back fence. " What — what 's this ? " demanded the Preacher. " Where are you, sir? " "I'm right here! An' 1 say if you go tattlin* round about me 1 'II sick Gilead onto you until you wish you had wings ! " And Lonely turned wearily homeward, tired of the dispiriting drama. This was what he got, he told himself, for playing with preachers' sons, and mixing up with people who wear velvet and ruffles ! Forthwith, from that day of wrath, how- ever, Lionel Clarence was rigidly and sternly enjoined from companionship with Lonely O'Malley. So the New Boy was thrown on his own devices. He even once more took up with Annie Eli/a, and in his desolation of FALSE GODS ARE FURSUKD 71 spirit mended her dolls for her, and made rope hair for their too rigorously sterilized heads, and helped her play at housekeeping, and assisted in the moulding of mud-pies, and sat and patiently looked on at many unsuc- cessful sewing efforts. He even forgave her passionate and ghoulish love for the grave- yard, and retired there to eat green apples and salt with her, and gathered May-flowers for her, and carved her initials on the old beech- tree in the cow-pasture. Not that Lonely's heart had either failed or betrayed him, or that he was deep in love with Annie Eliza. His passion had long since been ideally consecrated to a certain Little Kva, who had appearetl two years before in The Holden Combination lincle Tom's Cabin Company, and sold her photographs between the acts — a bt.>autiful, golden-haired, a/ure- eyed creature, half angel and hal 'girl, \\hosc- dress he had touched as she |\.s^,,i down the crowded aisle, whom he had never so !?n eh as spoken to, and yet of whom he still brooded and dreamed. It is tme Annie Eliza had her charm. She lisped just a little, and what, thought Lonely at times, could be prettier 72 LONELY O'MALLEY than a lisp. She also toed-in a trifle when she walked, and it had never occurred to Lonely that toeing-in could be done so fasci- natingly. And then she was so dog-faithful, and never tattled ! She at least filled in the time, he magnanimously decided. He did not, however, give over all his days and thoughts to the softer sex, during this interregnum of idleness. A good deal of the time he worked secretly on his flyii^-ma^Me, up in the stable hay-iuft, smd maay days he went off on lonely excursions, towards the upper river, out past ^he Commons, past Blue Hollow and the brick-yards, where, beyond the bald hills and clay slopes, dwelt a barbarian and outlandish people, ?nd where, when a stranger appeared, he was apt to If' heetsd at and stoned. Tbe) ere a watchful and a wariilK lot, these far-off barbariaiis, and (m more than ^e occasion they did their best to cm oM Look's ictrtpr^ Hunting in packs like wrives, mysterisiisly appearing and dis- appearing, yet nev'r quite able ro corner the alert young in'-uder with the sHng-shot smd dm freckled nose. For they had caves and fires and dug-outs, \ hese oudrnders, and tl»y FALSE GODS ARE PURSUED 73 obeyed no law but their own. it was darkly rumored, even, that there was blood on their hands, — the blood of an old gray farm-horsc, abandoned to the road and corralled and cap- tured in a time of famine, when portions of the prize, cooked over a cave fire, had been stoically and persevering! y chewed on by cer- tain members of the ruthless band. Yet, as the bake-shop window became re- filled with chocolate mice in little cardboard boxes, and balls of pop-corn, and all-day suckers, and appetizing-looking bulls-eyes, and candies of various colors and kinds, Annie Eliza's devotion to Lonely became more and more demonstrative and more and more com- pelling. He even allowed himself to sur- render to that soft invasion, forgetting the love he had consecrated to the mythical Little Kva of other days, forsaking his bluff man- hood, and allowing certain new and quite pleasurable sensations to awaken in his languid breasr. Roving and predatory bands of town boys passed up and down the streets before him, now almost unheeded. I i far-off fields wid lanes and alleys great deeds were being done, and strange adventures essayed; but 74 LONKLY O'M ALLEY he, he told himself, cared nothing for them. A soft rose-tint of unreality clothed all his world. He grew moody and morose. He even fried to put his feelings into song, on several occasions. One of these he actually indited, in his own blood, and left under the sidewalk crossing for Annie Eliza. He washed his fece without being nagged to do so, behind the ears and all. He likewise purchased a fifteen-cent bottle of perfume, and in the morn- ings smugly wet and plastered down his thick mat of russet hair, and on one occasion tallowed it copiously, only disgustedly to wash it off with coal-oil on being asked by his father if he had been swimming near the slaughter- house again. He even gtew sensitive as to deportment and apparel, and always took off his hat in the house, and passed t'linfr^ at table, and attempted many striking eliorts toward personal adornment, from a hold-back strap off the harness for a belt, to a discarded necktie of his fr.ther's, — to say nothing of a huge glass buckle-head purloined from Plato's bridle, and now riveted jauntily on the lapel of his coat. Even the impending advent of the circus FALSE GODS ARE PURSUED 75 scarcely shook the tranquil and enfeebled spirit of Lonely out of its Dorian sloth and content. He still read the bills dreamily, but found the old thrill to be wanting. When one particularly resplendent pageant appeared on the street side of the Harrisons* barn, how- ever, it moved him to suggest pensively to Annie Kliza that they get up a circus of their own. This performance was given in the big box- stell of the O'Malley stable, neativ draped with quilts, and the admission was ten pins. The procession was an imposing one, with Gilead leading, the GubtUls* tom-cat coming next, then a squirrel-cage containing two red squirrels, a canary in a bird-cage, two dogs, and a very indignant setting-hcn, on a wheelbarrow. Although Lonely, adorned for the occasion in a suspiciously feminine-looking woven shirt, turkey-red trunks made by Annie Kliza and himself, and a pair of long black stockings secretly borrowed from his mother's bedroom bureau-drawer, executed marvelous feats on the trapeze, did the muscle-grind, skinned the cat, made the bird's nest, turned back hand- springs, stood on his head, walked on his MICROCOPY RBOUmON TKT CNAIT (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 76 LONELY O'MALLEY hands, and essayed a flip-flop which did not quite materialize, — although our bright star, I repeat, indulged in marvels of strength and resorted to great feats of agility, his glory was dimmed by the sad consciousness that his awe- struck and admiring audience was made up of only eleven small girls, three babies in arms, and five diminutive males, all so young that they still wore frocks and dresses. What counted the sighs and shouts of de- light from such an audience ; where, indeed, it was so easy to impress, and so worthless to be a wonder ! The last act of the performance was to have been an aerial dive from the top of the stall partition to a pile of timothy hay. But Lonely, in the excitement of the moment, decided to give his admiring and open-mouthed audience a few gratuitous exhibitions of strength. His first test of muscular prowess was an attempt to dislodge a suspicious-looking pine upright, which supported the wavering old hay-loft flooring. This inspired feat of our modem young Samson was eminently successful, for with it he brought down both the house and the roof, and at the same time forced the day's 78 LONELY O'MALLEY performance to come to a confused and igno> minious end. When the last child had emerged from the hay and dust, and the tumult had subsided, the entire audience repaired sorrowfully to the bake-shop window, where they drew up in a hungry circle and lingered wistfully, to feast in spirit on the array of good things within. For with the arrival and display of a wonder- ful new stock of licorice-sticks, pepper-drops, butter-scotch, and caramels, this window had become the centre of attraction for ail the neighborhood. Little girls licked the iron ^•uard-rail in silent and pensive ecstasy. Babies were held up to flatten their little noses against the pane, to drum and paw ineffectually at the highly colored confections within. Small boys tarried to smack their lips over the box of chocolate mice. And as half a dozen times a day Lonely sauntered airily in and out of the magic door behind which lay all this wealth, it is no wonder that sly advances were made to him, and that Bettie Doyle gave him her agate alley, and that Lulu Barrison extended to him a generous and significant invitation to come and witness the poisoning of their cat FALSE GODS ARE PURSUED 79 Even Annie Eliza herself was not altogether disinterested in her attachment, and, with, perhaps, quite unconscious venality, admired Lonely's muscles in public, and ran errands for him, and herded Gilead and Plato when necessary, and showed to the envious denizens of the street that she was the lady of Lonely's favor. All of these flattering advances the idle Cassar received with a reserve that was both dignified and non-committal. He was even artfully questioned, at last, as to the quantity of candy and maple-sugar allowed to him day by day. Whereat he laughed scoffingly, and curled his lips with contempt. " Don't talk to me 'bout candy an* maple- sugar ! " he commanded. " Why ? " demanded Annie Eliza, plaint- ively. " 'Cause I 'm sick an' tired o' candy ! " A look of mingled incredulity and longing was directed toward the window by his circle of listeners. Never in all time had such a thing been heard of before. " Do you mean you can eat maple-sugar. 8o I ONELY O'MALLEY an* car'mels, an' th ngs, just whenever you like ? " asked Betty Doyle. " 'Course 1 can ! " said Lonely, import- antly. A little chorus of wondering " Ohs ! " went up from the astonished circle. " Why," proceeded Lonely, seeing red, and once more proceeding to murder Truth, — " why, all I got to do is to take a box and sit down an* eat w'at I want. But choc'late mice are w'at take me! They *re great, are n't they ? So soft an' mushy inside, an' then the taste of the choc'late kind o' mixed in with it ! " He felt in his pocket with a sudden re- membering hand. " Gee ! I had six or seven in here a few minutes ago ! Must have forgot an' eaten 'em up, I guess ! " He paced up and down in front of the bake-shop with a swelling sense of his own importance, puffing up like a pouter pigeon. "Who 'd 'a' thunk it !" said the impressed but illiterate Jennie Biffins, wiping her mouth with her dress-sleeve. " I guess I '11 have a car'mel or two now I " said Lonely, casually. He opened the little bell-hung door and disappeared. A minute 82 LONELY O'MALLEY later he reappeared before the circle, swallow^ ing hard and licking his lips. " Ain't so good as the last lot ! " he said, critically. The circle of wide-eyed listeners nudged one another knowingly, and shook their heads in solemn wonder. To Lonely there was something almost intoxicating in the sunlight of this open admiration. The poten- tial glories of his inheritance had never before dawned upon him. The circle was waiting for further information. " Why," the New Boy went on, off-hand, " Pop comes up out o' the bake-oven an' says to me, kind o' cross, too, • Lonely, why ain't you eaten that maple-sugar up, so as your maw can wash the pans out ! * " A sigh went up from the circle. "*You finish up them choc'late mice,' he says, * before you go out an' play this morn- ing ! ' An' of course I 've got to eat 'em, — got to, whether I want to or not. He gits purty mad if he sees me tryin' to sneak out without doin' what he says." This time his auditors gasped, openly. "But, Lonely," interposed Annie Eliza, quite impersonally and innocently, " don't you FALSE GODS ARE PURSUED 83 ever feel like gettin' somebody to help you ? " " How d' you mean ? " " Why, when he 's mad about you not doing them kind o' things fast enough ! " "Nope," said Lonely. "Pop don't like folks round the shop ! " " Then when yer goin' to bring us out some ? " piped up a very young and indiscreet little boy in a checked petticoat. Lonely looked at him scornfully, hunched up his shoulder, and turned away to the win- dow. At last, driven beyond endurance, Annie Eliza herself repeated that audacious question. « Why, any old time, I guess," answered the baker's son, carelessly. " An* some choc*- late mice, too, eh ? " he added, making an in- describable clucking noise with his tongue, against the roof of his mouth, as he wagged his head and pointed out the pasteboard box filled with rodent delicacies, to the end of each one of which was attached an elastic tail, mak- ing them all the more wonderful and felike. A dozen mouths watered at the thought, involuntarily. They crowded round him, and 84 LONELY O'MALLEY eyed him reverentially, and brought him little gifts and remembrances, and emulating Annie Kliza, audibly enlarged on the size and strength of his muscles, and the wonder of his circus tricks, and even allowed that l*lato w s the handsomest horse in Chamborr>, and conceded Gilead to be the gentlest and most innocent animal that ever browsed on a flower-bed. And as for Lonely, he became quite drunk with the dizzy consciousness of his power, and although deep down in his heart he knew it was an illicit and perverted sense of mastery, an unworthy field of conquest, he made it suf- fice him, for the time being. He passed back and forth among them with a sort of lordly 5 Jependence, making no return for the hun- gry and melting eyes which tiny girls made after him, and offering no reward for the pa- tience with which the smaller children waited for him to come out and play, and the celerity with which they gathered chips for him, and cleaned out the stable, and even delivered an occasional special order for bread, without so much as eating one pinch from the soft and temptingly odorous middle of the loaf. So after that. Lonely went in and out of the FALSE GODS ARE PURSUED 85 house by way of the bake-shop, and whenever he beheld an audience awaiting his egress, he appeared before them smacking his lips with great relish and protesting he could still taste that last chocolate mouse. But never a choco- late mouse, or a licorice-stick, or an all-day sucker did he deign to pass on to his band of hungering and still hoping worshipers and followers. Six new glass jars of sweets added to the poignancy of their misery, standing on a shelf in alluring regularity, marked " Pepper- mint," " Wintergreen," "Lemon Drops," « Horehound," " Extra Mixed," and last, but not least, " Brandy Drops." This latest spectacular addition to the bake- shop's :,.ock was too much even for the Preacher's son, then strictly enjoined to shun and eschew the society of Lonely O'Malley. Lionel Clarence, after feasting his eyes on the wonderful window, crowded in among the little baby-carriages and go-carts and urchins and damsels of the street, and once more met his old friend Lonely in secret. Then, flaunt- ing all parental mandates, he stole a sauce- pan from the home kitchen and with the New Boy repaired to Watterson's Creek, where 86 LONELY O'MAI.LKY they caught, stewed, and ate a goodly meal of crayfish. It was the arrival and display of a fine lot of maple-sugar that eventually overcame Annie Eliza, and prompted her ruthlessly and de- cisively to smash her savings-bank with a ham- mer. Then gathering up her seven scattered pennies, she took destiny in her own hand, and went straight to the bake-shop. Discover- ing Betty Doyle with her nose flattened hun- grily against the window, she told her of her venturous plan. Together they invaded the little shop, as the tiny bell above the door rang with a shrill and awe-inspiring clatter. Once across that sacred portal, they gazed about them bewil- dered, almost overcome by the wealth of the treasure before them. Lonely's father, the far-famed hero of the Klondike, was busy at the bake-ovens,' and to their chagrin, they caught not even a fleeting glimpse of that illustrious but self-effecing ■ Fwrtunately for his business, Timothy O'Malley had taken unto himself a partner, a one-legged German bearing the illustrious name of Biunarck, whoae duty it was to delim- bread and collect accounts. FALi>ii r JDS ARE PURSUED 87 man. His wife, however, was busily engaged in wiping down the shelves, putting a news- paper over a large pan of cooling maple-sugar, which had just gone through a frugal course of dilution with wholesome brown sugar. Annie Eliza couldn't decide whether to take all chocolate mice, r half in so of the fresh maple-sugar. She finall; com^.jmised on a chocolate mouse and a ; -nnyworth of candy from each and t /ery out (.1 the six new ja». While this purchase was being counted out, Lonely's voice sounded wistfully from with- out the back door of the little shop. " Say, maw, ain't you a-goin' to let me scrape out that maple-sugar pot ? " Annie Eliza and Betty looked at each other, electrified. " Lonely, you stop nagging ! " answered his mother, as she dropped the seven pennies in a cigar-box behind the counter. " But I ain't had a taste of any of this good stuff since we moved in ! " continued the dole- ful and reproving voice of Lonely. The two shoppers exchanged glances. " You know what your fath t said about 88 LONELY O'MALLEY that. Lonely ! " warned his mother, as she took up her brush once more. "Well, I think it's— it's rotten, I can't have a taste o' candy now and then!" he almost howled, in irate indignation. The two visitors withdrew, breathlessly. The revelation had come. Lonely O'Malley was a cheat, an impostor, a make-believe! The litde bell over the door had scarcely grown still, once more, before the news spread up and down the street like wild-fire. Two hours later a youthful Ca;sar stepped pompously forth from the Forum, uncon- scious of the awaiting assassin's blow. He was rubbing his stomach gleefully, and smacking his lips with unspeakable gusto. " Gee, that new maple-sugar is good ! " he declared, with a wag of the head. A shrill and hostile jeer went up from the once loyal and fawning circle. Lonely turned to Annie Eliza, puzzled. That young lady, with a face very much be- smeared and gummy, thrust forward her chin, distorted her sugar-coated pink cheeks, and stuck out a defiant, contemptuous, and snake- like tongue at him. FALSE GODS ARE PURSUED 89 "Coin* to let me scrape out the maple- sugar pot ? " mocked and taunted Betty Doyle, with bitter laughter. A dozen young voices* were quick to take up the cry, and together his once fr-'-hfiil adherents danced off down the street, flinging back at him that Parthian taunt. Heleaned dis- consolately against the bake-shop door, and knew that the day of his tyranny was over, that even his mock rule, his pretendership, had come to an ignomini- ous close. Then he made his escape to the haymow, where he worked feverishly and soothingly on his flying-machine. After all, it was just as well ; this was not the king- dom, this little land of braids and petticoats, in which a Caesar should feel at home. It was all over, and for all time, between him and Annie Eliza. His awakening may have been a nidc and STUCK OUT A SNAKE-UKE TONGUE AT HIM 90 LONELY O'MALLEY chastening one, but through it he learned, as other warriors had learned, that women can- not make up all a man's world, that Calypso cannot always hold out her softer charms to a Ulysses, old or new, that the tawniest-haired Cleopatra cannot always bind a Csesar in slavish bonds. He hungered once more for a world of arms and men, for the turbulence of his own kind, for the dust and battle of real boyhood ! Then, finding that even work on his ever- troublesome flying -machine palled, he de- scended from the hay-loft, and making his escape over the back fence, sat in the sun anc moodily yet raptly contemplated the circus poster covering one whole side of the Barri- sons' barn. Then, with a sudden tingle of delight, he saw, as he looked at the foot- bill, that the following day was the date for its arrival. That such an event could slip his memory showed eloquently enough how enslaved and unmanned he had been. The circus was coming, and he had forgotten it ! Then he fell to studying the poster once more, wondering if there would be more than eleven elephants — that colossal number h:iv- FALSE GODS ARE PURSUED 91 ing actually made up the last Cowansburg parade. Then he turned to marveling at the strange climate of the pictured landscape before him, where side by side with the polar bear strid- ing back and forth on his icy berg, the giraffe nibbled nonchalantly at the top of a luxuriant palm-tree, and the trained seal smoked his pipe in the very midst of a stately caravan of Arabian camels wending circuitously about an arid Sahara of sand. MiiJr soung with the April hi Hi, onnd stockings ; so, holding that what was sauce 114 LONELY O'MALLEY for the goose wu Muce for the gander, he made himself more at his ease, and was inter- estedly and pointedly watching the half^iressed Queen of the Tight Rope inhaling cigarette smoke, when he was seized by the woman in the dirty apron, and without ceremony or apology thrust from the tent. He made his way disconsolately about, look- ing for the wagon-office, in the hope that the manager's possible delight at the grace and ease with which he had filled his part as a page might induce that bluff gentleman yet to change his mind and make serious advances as to Lonely's joining the Circus for all time. He felt vaguely disturbed, for the moment, at the thought that of late he had sadly neglected his muscles, that the angle-worm oil had been applied only scantily and carelessly, and that he had never yet perfected to his own Uking his new twister back-somersault. Yet, after all the excitement and activity of the morning, he soon began to feel an empti- ness m the pit of his stomach, where the in- exorable dock of nature was warning him the dmner-hour must be well at hand. Just as he was debating on his course of action, a bluff A TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION lis voice called to him. It was the circus manager himself. " Here, Carrots, this is yours, I guess ! " He handed down to the startled boy a little oblong bit of pasteboard, tinted blue — the most celestial of blues, it always seemed to Lonely — and the boy remembered that it was always blue for children, red for grown- ups. " Here, you, take a couple more ! " said the man hurriedly ; then he turned to speak to a passing attendant, without so much as look- ing at the two little pieces of blue pasteboard he was holding out for the boy to take. Lonely shook his russet head, sadly but firmly. In all Chamboro there was not one soul, he very well knew, who could make use of those tickets. He had not a friend in the town to bring along with him. It was useless to think of the Preacher's Son ; even Annie Eliza was out of the question. His honors had come to him too late in life ; he had been crowned in the hour of dissolution ! And if the man in the black derby hat had not been such a busy and preoccupied person- ii6 LONELY O'MALLEY age, he might have taken a second and longer look at the sad-eyed urchin who refused, and actually turned away from a circus ticket. It was wonderful, however, what a hurried though substantial dinner did for Lonely's blighted hopes, broken heart, and altogether wasted life. He slipped out of the back door, wiping the crumbs from his still masticating mouth. There, as he hurried out to feed his new brindled pup, answering to the name of Shivers, and procured through the transfer of a hunting-knife and three shares in his new air-ship when completed, he caught a fleeting glimpse of Lionel Clarence, escaping from the parsonage for one last despairing study of the ever-assuaging and yet ever-inflammatory cir- cus poster, on the back of the Harrisons' barn. Lonely reimprisoned Shivers under the in- verted baby-carriage body, where he was forced to make his new home pending the growth of those stronger ties which were to bind him equally to Homer and Gilead. Then the boy cut after the escaping Preacher's son. Lionel Clarence, when the other boy joined him, was shaking his head with gloomy cynicism over the h'ghly-colored panorama. A TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION 117 " All that is n't true ! " declared the Preach- er's son. " I just don't believe they ever could do those things, and have all those animals ! " After all, thought Lonely, there were worse fates than his. What if destiny had foredoomed him to life in a parsonage, and collars and long hair ! " Why, ain't you goin* ? " asked the baker's son, loftily, incredulously. Again Lionel Clarence shook his head. " Mother said I might, perhaps, — but father decided it would n't look right, you know ! " " Who cares for looks ! " cried Lonely, an- archistically, spitting through his teeth. Lionel Clarence sighed heavily. A gentle little glow suffused Lonely's diaphragm. "Why don't you just pike out by your- self, same as me ? Just mosey off and take it in, and then rub some resin and horse-hairs on, if you 'vc got to get a lickin' ? " He felt truly sorry for Lionel Clarence. " Are you goin' ? " asked the Preacher's son, rapturously. " Cert ! " said the laconic Lonely, spitting again, the same as a tent-hand might. ii8 LONELY O'MALLEY " Will you tell me things — when you get back?" The glow in Lonely's midriff was mounting to an intensity always ominous. Yet he de- cided to take his time about it, and enjoy the taste of the situation to the full. He drew closer to the other boy with his heels well planted apart. " Want to come ? " he asked at last, casually. " Right into the main show ? " " Of course ! Right in ! " " Would n't we have to hook in ? " parried the Preacher's son, infected by the other boy's spirit of adventure. " Nope I " said Lonely, secretly feeling for his blue ticket. " But where would we ever get half a dol- lar?" almost wailed Lionel Clarence. The O'Reillys, he knew, had sold their cook-stove so that the fiimily might attend the perform- ance en bloc; but the O'Reillys were lazy, improvident, and shiftless, a blot on the fair name of Chamhoro. Lonely smiled loftily. He flipped the blue ticket carelessly, contemptuously, disdainfully, into the other boy's lap. A TRIUMPHAL PROCKSSION ,,9 "Go on, and have sonic fun," he cried, grandly. " I could have got half a do/en for you, if you 'd only said something ahout it ! " And he looked offended and hurt at the thought of such an oversight on the part of the Preacher's son. This latter youth was already peering cautiously about him, to see if the coast was clear for swift and speedy escape. « H ow — how did you ever get it, Lonely ? " he gasped. " Get it? — why, J always get 'em, when I want 'em ! You'll see me in with another this afternoon ! " he boasted recklessly, with little thought for the future. Then, as Lionel Clarence shook himself together. Lonely cautioned him to be sure to get his seat up close to the band, even calling after the other boy, as he began to scurry and scramble across back lots, that he himself might drop in and meet him there, sometime after the show started. Alone, making his hot and dusty way out to the circus grounds, without his ticket and without money, Lonely experienced that chill- I20 LONELY O'M ALLEY ing reaction which always came in the wake of one of his " grand moments." Three times he was swept forlornly past the ticket-seller, without so much as catching the eye of his old-time friend ; twice he was driven wrath- fully and promptly outside the ropes. And time was flying. The crowd grew smaller, the shadows grew a little longer, the draught-horses placidly munched their hay, the sound of muffled music crept out through the rippling canvas. The Grand Entry had begun. Lonely circled the long, well-guarded ring of tent-stakes, broken, humiliated, thrice chas- tened, and vet for all his outward aimlessness, still tense of nerve and alert of eye. On the sunny southwest side of the great tent he crawled in under the line of huddled, heavy wagons, now empty and dismal look- ing, left waiting there for their midnight loads. Lonely had suddenly noticed that the guard who patrolled this sunniest and hottest side of the tent every now and then mopped his face with a huge red handkerchief. He most carefully and guardedly watched for his chance, — which came and went with A TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION izi each mopping ir.otion. I hc next time the red bandanna went up to the perspiring brow there was the flash of a hurrying figure between the back wagon wheels and the tent wall, the twinkle of a pair of dusty feet as this shadow THE RED BANDANNA WENT Ul' dove adroitly in under ^ waving canvas, and no sign of intrusion or disturbance as the uniformed guard walked past the spot, twirling his ^tick as he went. Lonely, in the grassy g'oom within, lay still for a moment, under a I nk of humanity- packed seats, cautiously looking about him 122 LONELY O'MALLEY for an opening in the serried avenues of feet before him. It took him but a short while to discover several, whereupon he did his best to make a hurried but minute character study of his possible neighbors, in so far as such a study could be carried on with nothing more than the several p&;rs of feet which dangled before or above him. He decided, at last, in favor of whnt was a rotund and comfortable-looking country- woman cf about forty, deciding that here was a pair of feet on which he could pin his faith and his future. Then he thrust his russet head through the two green boards which made up the tiers of seats, and clambered and twisted nimbly up into the vacant place. The stout country-woman uttered a startled, " Lord bless my soul ! " and peered down at Lonely, in not unnatural wonder. The youth on his other side looked envious, for there is no hero like unto the hero who can hook into a circus. Lonely smiled up at the stout country- woman with his most winning and wistful A TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION 123 smile, shot through with wordless melancholy, and was deciding that all was well, when he noticed one of the clowns, dressed up as a "country jake" and having great fiin with the later arrivals who sought for seats, whispering to a uniformed guard just inside the ring, and unmistakably pointing at him. As the guard made his way in through th half-dozen crowded rows, Lonely promptl) and inspiredly decided on his course of action. "Come out o' that, you ! " the guard shouted angrily at the boy. " Me ? " said the pensive and placid-looking Lonely. " Yes, you ! You stole in here ! Come on ! " Lonely put a calm and trusting face up to the stout woman breathing somewhat heavily at his side. " Why, maw, I come in with you, did n't I, maw?" The country-woman breathed still more heavily, for a pregnant second or two, and Lonely smiled sleepily, although he knew at that very second that his fate hung nicely in the balance of blind chance. But he had not altogether erred in his 124 LONELY O'M ALLEY choice of a colleague. She flushed purple, to the roots of her well-frizzed hur (though whether from rage or from mere maidenhood modesty Lonely could never decide), and look- ing straight at the big guard she said : " Why, of course you did, Willie ! and 1 'd like to see that big brute lay a finger on you ! And there were sudden erics of" Sit down!" and " Down in front ! " and as the guard drew back and the end of the Grand Parade brought a sudden influx of spectators, Lonely seized the occasion to slip away and migrate to more settled quarters. He founa che open-mouthed and entranced Lionel Clarence, huddled up as close to the bass-drum as he could get, at one moment rocking and weeping tears of mirth over the introductory antics of the clowns and at the next gazing rapturously up at the crimson- clad La Belle Leona, little dreaming that the dust-stained boy at his side had that very morning worn th tights which now gyrated and twinkled so perilously high up on the swinging trapezes. And Lonely even forgot to tell about it, as A TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION 125 he settled back triumphantly in his hard seat, and under the heated, odorous, mysterious, enchanting dome of rippling canvas, watched the airy and nymph-like CavaroUa prance daintily out on her tight-rope. S0 nuny Jreamt mu$t fail kj. Dear, So miiny Springs to Autumn turn. That you and I, slow \iiir /^y scar. The wisdom of our youth unlearn. That stranger wisdom when tt me y'ou it emed a golden butterfly Who all sour cureless life should he A child of Earth's too of en sky. CHAPT* U '/ In uihuh tht King lomis into his awn LONELY awoke, the morning after the Show, dreaming that he was leading the circus procession, on a white horse decked out with a saddie-cioth of gold and wearing ostrich plumes above its ears. He had just ordered the red-and-white clown not to make faces at Annie Eliza, when a piercing scream came from that young woman of unmatched loveli- ness, who sat on a white stool in the snake-cage, with languid serpents coiled and twined about her spangled hips. For somebody had fed chewing-tobacco to the snakes, and they had gone mad, and were squeezing their mistress to death, squeezing her until she grew visibly longer foot by foot, before Lonely's very eyes. The town constable and the fire brigade came rushing up to effect her rescue. But Lonely waved them aside, and with one hand on his hip, and amid thunderous cheering, entered the cage, and blinded the snakes by putting mus^d in their eyes. After which he 130 LONELY O'MALLEY beheaded them, one by one, and poured red lemonade over the snake-lady, who promptly came to, and cried over him, and amid more cheering presented him with twelve chocolate mice, which he was most woefiilly anxious to eat before the sun melted them. And all of this seemed natural and decorous to the wakening Lonely, for he was invariably the hero of his own dreams, and as invariably came off with flying colors — except when he ate too many green things and thereby suffered from colic and nightmare. In fact, Lonely was debating whether or not to accept the snake- lady's offer of marriage, when he fully awoke and found himself half out of bed and his mo- ther calling in to him that Gilead had broken out and was in the Gubrills' garden ^in. Such a dream, Lonely felt, was augury of an auspicious day. And, in fact, he had scarcely eaten the second canal through his plateful of corn-meal mush — Lonely always ate his porridge first into two canals, and a lake in the middle, just as he always made animals when he poured his molasses over it at first — when some one whistled and hey-ohed to him over the back fence. THE KING COMES INTO HIS OWN 131 she'll tackle anything from a tom-cat to a terrier This was a proceeding so unusual that he only half finished his breakfast, and hurried forth to discover Dode Johnson awaiting him in the alley, with a raccoon in a little lath- barred dog-kennel. The two boys looked at each other; no words passed between them, and yet each spoke in a language older and plainer than words. 132 LONELY O'M ALLEY « Hello! " said Dode, timidly. " Hello! " answered Lonely, tentatively. " Wonderin* if you wanted to buy a coon ? " the other boy began. It was only one of the polite conventions of all such circles, and as such the other boy accepted and understood it. " Tame, or fightin' ? " he asked, casually. " Fightin* ! She '11 tackle anything from a tom-cat to a terrier ! Lend her to you if you like ! " « I 'm afraid Pop 'd kick — he says he 's goin' to shoot my goat, if I don't get shut of it pretty soon." By this time the ice had been broken, and Dode was plying Lonely with questions about the Show. These Lonely responded to magnanimously, though with some hauteur, for he began to see that things had changed for him, and that the taint of the Outlander was now wiped away. Yet Lonely could not look upon the owner of the raccoon as a re- presentative chief; he was too youthful and small of stature to be accepted as Chamboro's hostage of concession. And there were old scores to be wiped out. >^%^^'%j^i^-IilHk^l^ll^Ifl THE KING COMES INTO HIS OWN 133 It was a good two hours later, when Lonely was in the midst of his regular Saturday morn- ing task of washing down the b^tce-shop win- dows, that the entire town gang hove in sight, jingling the earliest pocket-money of the season after assisting, at the rate of a penny a box, in gathering the f.rst harvest from Old Sam Kettlewell's strawberry patches. The usual spirit of abandon, peculiar to such occasions, did not hang over the scattered little berry-stained crowd as it drifted nearer the bakery. They drew up on the opposite side of the street, outwardly impassive, yet doubly ominous because of this seeming unconcern. Although some of the younger boys showed signs of yielding to the eternal allurement of the little show-window, they were promptly and mutteringly restrained by their elders, who ranged themselves along the sidewalk and continued to stare impassively at the New Boy. And the New Boy, to the careless eye, still seemed absorbed in washing down his window- panes. Yet none of the signs and portents from over the way were lost on Lonely, whose heart, if the truth must be told, was almost in his mouth, while his knees more and more ,34 LONELY O'MALLEY showed signs of a most unseemly and un- heroic shakiness. For there was one thing which Lonely could not abide, and that was suspense. Once well in the heat of a fight, he could rush on to the end, blind and reckless; once having flung himself upon the turgid stream of opposition, he could battle exultantly on to the last breath. It was the stillness before the plunge, the squeamish hesitation and meditation upon the brink, which was so odious to his young soul. To this, later in life, might indeed be traced many of his mis- fortunes, litt' : and big. But still there was no advance from the gang, now not thirty paces away. There re- mained to Lonely only one tattered shred of consolation, through all that miserable length of suspense. That was the consciousness that he had at last shown himself to be worthy of their envy and their steel. He knew that now he could get all the fighting he wanted. But he also knew that another minute of this sort of suspense and uncertainty would surely send him bolting into the little bake- shop, a coward and a fugitive. So he did what seemed a most heroic thing, THE KING COMES INTO HIS OWN 135 but what was, at heart, the very flowering of arrant cowardice, springing as it did from his sheer terror of all indetermination. He turned, and with a passionate little swear-word, let fly his rubber window-cleaner, straight into the thick of the storm-cloud which refused to let forth its bolt on him. There was a second of nimble scrambling aside, and the iron-shod rubber hit with a resounding thud on the fence-boards be- yond. Then the storm-cloud flashed forth its lightning. This it did in the form of Piggie Brennan, for two long years the leader of the town gang, the well-tested and duly accredited king and chief of his little tribe. Being already coatless, he paid sufficient tribute to tradition by flinging down his well- frayed straw hat., and walking directly and sav- agely over to where Lonely awaited his coming. It was plain that this was not to be the mere shuffle and bluster of the every-day boy fight " I kin lick you ! " said Piggie, with pro- found and purposeful conviction. "Then get at it! " cried l.oncly, as he put up his guard and wondered whether or not the 136 LONELY O'MALLEY enemy, already shod against the stubble and thistles of berry-picking, would try kicking. The boys swarmed across the street, and circled in about the two squared-up opponents. Piggie Brennan had the advantage of a longer reach, and a good twenty pounds in weight, but there had been enough whispering about as to the circus prowess and gymnastic leats of the New Boy to make the outcome suffi- ciently uncertain. In the mean time, and after a fashion quite unknown to the youth of Chamboro, I .onely had begun dancing and jumping agilely round and round the heavier Piggie, very much as a delirious bantam cock might. In feet Piggie was just marveling at this performance, hith- erto unknown to him, when he felt a sudden sting between the eyes, and for the first time realized that he had been hit. This caused no consternation among his followers, for the amount of punishment which the rotund Piggie could stand had long since become proverbial. Piggie only grunted his surprise, swung about, and a moment later the fight had begun. Now, Lonely had never earned the name THE KING COMES INTO HIS OWN 137 of a born fighter, — a fact which earlier in his career had been a source of much disappoint- ment and chagrin to his belligerent father. I KIN l ie K YOU ! Timothy O'Malley. Indeed, before Lonely had even emerged from the petticoat to the knickerbocker era his father, especially during a period of mild inebriation, had played at LONELY O'MALi-KY fisticutFs with him, not only teaching him how to feint, and guard, and uppercut, and deliver half-arm jabs, but also giving him copious and exhaustive lessons in how to stand punish- ment as an O'Malley ought. These lessons in time became so trying to the pupil that his frightened mother often hid the willing enough Lonely under the bed, and wept in secret on those unhappy days when he was found and dragged forth. Nor did the boy care for fight- ing; the only thing that appealed to him was the intoxicating sense of delight and pride which crept through him, like wine, or the very ichor of the gods, when he found hirr^elf face to face with success. No sop was too small for his Cerberus of self-glory, so that when he did fight he liked best to fight before a crowd, effecting, if possible, a dramatic denouement and an even more dazzling finale. And no- thing, of course, could be further removed than this from true heroism. Added to this. Lonely was the possessor of a sadly ungovernable tem- per, when pressed beyond certain bounds, and, what was even worse, he had long fed on the pomp and glory of leadership in his old-time village of Cowansburg. THE KING COMtS INTO HIS OWN 139 " Does kickin' go ? " Piggie breathlessly de- manded of his following, as he guarded and wheeled about after the still gyrating Lonely. "Nope," said Redney McWillianis for the crowd, seeing that the New Boy was bare- footed. One uay earlier in his career, and Lonely would never have been treated with this untoward consideration. But a boy who had been a part of the Circus, for even an hour, was something to take seriously. Lonely realized that such a decision on so mooted a point was a favor to him, — and it was a feather in his cap of vanity. " Let him kick, the saphead ! I can lick him, kickin' and all ! " he cried, magnificently, as he saw the heavy blows of Piggie fall short of his own alert little back-jerks. Piggie's answer to this airy concession was a prompt and stinging kick on the shin-bone, for as a kicker the butcher's son was a finished artist. The sharp pain of this brought the New Boy to his senses. He gave over his bantam- cock antics, and closed hotlv in on his adver- sary. Then the fight began in dead earnest. But over this old and unlovely scene of two young savages pounding and tearing at one 140 LONELY O'MALLEY another tooth and nail let us draw the curtain. All boyhood, it is true, is sternly competitive ; all boyhood is an eternal arena for the test- ing of muscle and wit. But life's sternest battles, alas, are not fought with fists. So why describe the sparring and dodging and rolling and twisting, the gasping and puffing and writhing ? Suffice it to record that Lonely, feeling still confident of his powers, beheld Annie Kliza emerge timidly from her gate, and fearing the fray might end before her arrival on the field of action, held off for a temporizing moment or two. His reward for this was a prodigious punch on the nose, which, naturally enough, started that organ bleeding profusely, and through the tears that it brought to his eyes, I sadly interfered with his sight. This fact Pig- gie took immediate advantage of, with three quickly repeated home-thrusts. Lonely, under these, felt his cold, pitiless purpose suddenly j, buried beneath a shower of falling stars. He I struck out blindly and wildly ; he felt the blows i still raining mercilessly in on him ; he made a ' last grim effort to land one of his often-vaunted Cowansburg upper-cuts, utterly failed in this, ^, I' THE KING COMES INTO HIS OWN 141 leaving an opening which even the well-winded Piggie could not resist. The next moment, con- sumed by a sudden passion to escape, to collect his wits and gather his wind once more, Lonely turned and fled, — fled incontinently to the bake-shop door, beaten, bleeding, humiliated, chased in over his own threshold by the sur- prised and exultant Fig^ie Brennan. Lonely 's flour-covered father, with a great pan of loaves on his shoulder, came in from the bake-oven just as his offspring came in from the street. Blood strt": ! ^•d from the boy's discoloml and swollen nose ; his body was convulsed with fierce and passionate little sobs. "And what's the meanin' o' this?" cried Lonely's father, as he eyed his offspring, coldly, up and down. "That b — big b — b — bully out there licked me ! " wailed Lonely, trying in vain to stanch the ruddy flow which was making sad havoc of his blue checked shirt. "Who — what bully?" cried Timothy O'Malley, dangerously, coming out of the gloom toward the front of the shop. " Piggie Brennan — that — that great big 142 LONELY O'MALLEY fat bov there!" sobbed the defeated warrior, quakingly pointing out the victcM*. "That little rent — that mtaerable under- sized puddin'-head ? Now you get out and lick the daylight out o' that kid» or 1 '11 lick the daylight out o' you ! " « I can't do it. Pop ! " wailed the New Boy, miserably. " Git at him, or I '11 whale the life out o* you ! He opened the door, and reached down, s i a rage, for his oven poker. Lonely shot through the door, as fi .'n a cannon, and all but knocked Annie l-h/a over as he went. It so happened that Piggie was minutely and proudly explaining just how he had effect the fi^ blow, when the sheer terror-bom momentttm Lonely 's flying body caught him im^j in ti^ pit ihr stomach. It wsHi SO unlooked-for so undreamei * that the crowd droppt I ck aghast. Evt Piggie's jaw fell at the sig'^' of t dxmm and gory and desperate face be re hi " I 'm goin' to kill v no\<. ely screamed at him, and in tnt vc i of thf; king CI) .) ! OWN 14 J ft'i Jespa •.' flu Ills vveary l ay upon the stiP pen-riu. chili ictor. Fh - N Boy paused only long enough i iulow th« Annie Eliza was looking on, to r. THAT BIG BULLY OUT THERE LICKED ME member that his father was watching him from the shop-window, to warn bunself that tikis was his last and only chance. Piggie J romptly and effectively swung out with his long right arm, but Lonely took the 144 LONELY O'MALLEY blow with joy, and jumped in for more, half crooning and half wailing as he fought. It was a fight the like of which had never been witnessed in all Chamboro before.' It went down in the annals of the town, along with the drowning accidents, and the big fire, and the wrecking of the Minnie Steincron the bridge abutment. It lasted until thegaspingand still astounded Piggie Brennan found himself with only one eye to see out of, with a loose tooth and a grotesquely swollen lip, with a sore body and a swimming head, held determinedly down in the street-dust while a shrill and altogether insane young voice cried over him, — • That our poor hero had, alas, a taint of venality in his veins u funher borne out by the ftnjily tradition of a fight of his, years before, with an aggresnve and overbearing country cousin, who, indeed, pommelled Lonely unmerci- fully. The defeated one, however, on being offered twenty- five cents and half a watermelon by a purposeful maiden aunt, returned to the fray, as in the Piggie Brennan encounter, and soundly and unexpectedly trounced the bully. The only thing Lonely remembered, or cared to remember, about it, was that he ate the half-watermelon, and strutted around the rest of the morning with the shell of it on his head. THE KING COMES INTO HIS OWN 145 " Had enough ? 'Nough ? " — punctuating each query with a too well-directed fist. And when Piggie, in a muffled and gasping voice, confessed that he had had enough, Lionel Clarence, who had arrived on the scene just in time to see the finishing stroke, being eager to exhibit his recently acquired prowess, auda- ciously challenged Piggie himself, while Lonely continued to limp up and down in front of the speechless gang,shrilly and drunkenly demand- ing that some one step forth and fight with him. This no one seemed willing to do, even after Lonely's individual challenges, carefully repeated up and down the line. So the New Boy stepped to the sidewalk, and turned to his new-made fiefs with a sudden grandly impa- tient sweep of the arm. "Now move on, you kids, while I finish my job here!" At which oflP-hand yet dramatic climax the scattered little cluster of boys moved oflF and melted away, while Annie Kli/a dutifully brought back Lonely his rubber window- cleaner. That trembling youth, with a smeared but happy grin through the glass at his not altogether displeased parent, waited only for 146 LONELY O'MALLEY solitude before escaping to the cool assui^- ment of the back-yard pump. Yet history would be false to record thi? as the end of the combat. For Piggie's wounds rankled in his memory, and two days later, as he stood in the doorway of his father's meat- shop, he beheld Lonely weighed down with a clothes-basket heaped with bread, — the faith- ful Plato having developed an unlooked-for attack of the blind staggers. Piggie accepted this as the opportunity of a lifetime, and as the baker's son walked by in his innocent and unsuspecting pride of superiority, Piggie, in the security of his own home circle, swung vigorously out and soundly kicked his late conqueror. Lonely dropped the basket, and made for his assailant. That youth, who had felt so well protected by the shadowing wing of the parental roof, fled into the store. It so chanced that his father was busy in the refrigerator, at the moment, though it is doubtful if even the elder Brennan could have stopped Lonely's fiery pursuit. Seeing himself helpless there, Pi^e bolted for the stairway which led up to the Brennan place of residence, immediately THE KING COMES INTO HIS OWN 147 above the shop. Up these stairs Lonely still pursued the fleeing Figgie, through the dining- room, and into Mrs. Brennan's bedroom, where the fugitive was finally seized ofi and INNOCFNT AND UNSUSI'F.CTlNt; soundly pommelled, after which he was led downstairs by the forelock of his tumbled and 148 LONELY O'MALLEY frowsled hair, where he was not only made to gather up the scattered loaves of bread, but was ordered to purloin from the parental coun- ter a generous slice of Bologna sausage, which Lonely consumed placidly and with much zest, as he made his rounds. In fact, it must be confessed that Piggie through this incident became the victim of continuous and ever-increasing extortion, at the hands of Lonely and Lionel Clarence alike, until Mr. Sampson, looking into the matter of his son's too frequently occurring dietetic dis- turbances, wrung from the culprit a complete confession, and later had a serious talk with Butcher Brennan on the matter. And in this ironically and secretly igno- minious way the King of Cowansburg came into his own once more, from that day on being reckoned, either openly or tacitly, as the leader of the town gang. // strms so long ago that zve Across the years fur get. And waif, anJ still remember not So long i/go, anil sft Across those out Ian J April hills tenth's thousand void s seem To eall still past the bars of Birth, The barriers of Dream ! I i CHAPTER VI In which Uantl Qartnct makes his tscapt IBELIKVE there is something ^00^ about that boy ! " said Mrs. Sampson, with con- viction. " He 's the most finished type of pagan I ever clapped eyes on ! " answered the Reverend Ezra Sampson, with equal conviction. " But after all, the boy's heart 's in the right place," protested the mother. Which can seldom be said of his body ! Mehetabel Wilkins tells me that he comes and tortures her daily, hanging by his toes fi-om the big maple in front of her house.' " But what harm does that do Meheta- bel ? " It 's all the boy's artfully contrived punish- ment, for impounding his goat. She tells me that it 's slowly driving her crazy, the awful sight of that boy swinging up there by his two toes, head down. She even offered him a fish- ing-pole of split bamboo and a custard pie, if he would stop." isa LONELY O'MALLEY " Yes, he is pagan ! " sighed the mother. " And always will be," added the Preacher, remembering certain shrugs and gestures with which Lonely had resented a late attempt at timely guidance and advice. "I would give a great deal to know what will grow in that weed-garden of idleness twenty years from now ! " said the Preacher's wife. And she sighed again. " He 's so like a wild animal, — ts soon as he sees a door close on him he starts to fret and fidget," she went on. " Yes, and his barbarian young soul hates restraint just the same as his bartMrian young body ! " added the man of the cloth. Only f h t morning Mrs. Sampson and Lonely had been closeted together in the sewing-room; there she had made a patient and serious effort to get somewhere near the heart of the abashed boy. Yet when any approach was made to the matter of his general morality and the higher life of the spirit, Lonely only squirmed and squinted, or hunched up one shoulder and listened meekly to the end. So Mrs. Sampson had been forced to go back to the original object of the conversation, the unsatisfactory LIONEL CLARENCE ESCAPES 153 condition of Lionel Clarence's health and his sudden untoward fretfulness. Old Doctor Ridley, in fact, had suggested that Lionel Clarence be taken away from his books for' a few months, and be made to knock around and rough it a bit. And surely, thought Mrs. Sampson, as she put the reluctant Lonely through his catechism, here was a child who held the key to rough and rugged health. " I could do something with him, mebbe," confessed Lonely, with airy condescension, " if you 'd only get them curls o' his cut off!" "And you would try to stand an example to my boy ? " " Sure," said Lonely, eagerly. " I 'd learn him tumblin* and slack-wire work in less 'n a week ! " " Do you still smoke, Lonely ? " "'Most every day," answered the boy, truthfully. "Got to do it, swimmin*-time, to keep down fever and ague ! " " But surely that is bad for you ? " "Yep, cane is — turns your blood into water ! I go in for grapevine, mostly, with punk for swimmin' days ! " / 154 LONELY (yMALLFY Once more the mother of Lionel Clarence J ,^ ^ sighed helplessly. " Do you fight?" " I 've quit fightin', in this town ! " an- swered Lonely, the scarred and victorious, an Alexander with no more worlds to conquer. And al- though the outcome of their private talk was somewhat uncer- tain, and the most that she could report to her hus- band was " That he at least lives up to his barbarian code," she finally decided that Lionel Clarence should be handed over to the temporal care of Lonely, shot down his ^larry LIONEL CLARENCE ESCAPES 155 The New Boy entered into his tutorship with such pride and enthusiasm that Lionel Clarence's mother still again protested there was something good about the boy, and in her gratitude of heart overfed him on jelly-roll and ginger cookies. Her first qualm of doubt came unexpect- edly, a day or two later, when she was quietly and busily picking green currants for a deep- river pie. Seeing an unexpected stir and movement at the back of the garden, she peered circum- spectly through the bush, and there beheld Lonely, with drawn bow and arrow, calmly stalking one of her Silver Dorking hens. She saw him shadow the mildly protesting fowl from bush to bush, and when at last a favor- able chance offered, deliberately take aim and shoot down his quarry. Before she could quite recover from her astonishment, the boy had seized the stunned chicken, promptly wrung its neck, and disappeared with it, through the hole in the back fence. That Lionel Clar- ence later joined in the dance about the pot, and made away with more than half of the carcass, and vowed it was the finest chicken iS6 LONELY O'MALLEY he had ever eaten, were facts which, naturally enough, were never revealed to Mrs. Sampson. Lionel Clarence, however, was not destined to remain long under the dulMout guardian- ship of Loficly O'Malley. His fretfiilness increased, his usually abnormal appetite ftW away, he complained of headache and sore throat, and when old Doctor Ridley was fin- ally sent for it was only too plain to that assuager of Chamboro's ills that the boy was suffering from a well-developed attack of measles. Lionel Clarence's Grandmother Horton was hurriedly sent for, and came post-haste to Chamboro to help in the nursing. The house was kept dark and quiet, and Lonely, pend- ing the closing of school for the summer holi- days, found this second solitude weigh heavily on his exuberant young soul. The newly arrived grandmother, indeed, would not even allow Lonely on the premises, and daily reported that Lionel Clarence's fever was worse, and flurried and worried about, drawing blinds, and issuing orders, and demand- ing silence. And Lionel, imprisoned in his hot and stuffy little room, looked petulantly LIONEL CLARENCK ESCAPES 157 out at the dreamy blue sky, and heard the play-cries and the street sounds, and hunted for cool spots on his pillow, and whined and cried a great deal, and devoutly wished that after all he had r'n off with the circus and been a pink lemon-idc rnitn. It was a hot ar ' cloudless day in June. The tree-tops stirred laziiy, the bees droned murmurously about Chamboro's empty gar- dens, the shadows stood flat and black on the almost deserted streets of the little town. Lonely could stand it no longer. He se- curely tied Shivers, so as not to be followed, and then, making a wide detour, noiselessly and circumspectly entered the Sampson gar- den b\ way of the well-known hole in the back fence. Under the shadow of the pear-tree he whistled three times. Receiving no answer to this summons, he gave vent to a muffled owl- hoot, pregnant, stirring, unmistakable. A moment later a languid head was thrust out of a carefully curtained window, and Lionel Clarence was whistling down at him, weakly but gleefully. He was in his white 158 LONELY O'MALLEY night-gown, and there was an ice-bag bound about his flushed forehead. "Sick?" asked Lonely, with fine superfluity. "Sick o* staying cooped up here," said Lionel Clarence, wrathfolly, with considerably more energy than Lonely had looked for. Now one of the keenest disappointments of Lonely's life had always been the feet that he was not afliicted with some great and incurable malady.' During all the first part of the small- fruit season he firmly argued with himself that he had consumption, often not being able to take a deep breath without pain, and often feeling with gratified concern about what he deemed the lobe of his left lung, a good two inches below the waist-line. At other times, especially after swallowing countless cherry- stones for the delectation of two entranced country cousins, he decided that his threatened ailment was one of the heart, and against the ■ Once, on going to visit his Grandmother Lomely for the first time, he had sought to overcome this drawback by walking with a persistent and pathetic limp, for one whole week of dissimulation wantonly and patnonately adhe ing to the statement that he had been a lifelong luflerer from hip disease. LIONEL CLARENCE ESCAPES 159 day of his sudden and untimely death pre- pared a long and elaborate list of benefactions, disposing of everything from his new inven- tion for making clay marbles ' to a box-kite • The following is a partial list of Lonely 's several in- veiituMu: An improved water-wheel, to be used for operating churns, sewing-machines, etc. The power was usually carried in through an open window, by means of a light clothes-line, running rather spasmodically over many spool- pulleys. When not atuched to anything, both water-wheel and power-line and spool-pulleys spun and rattled away bravely enough; but the invention was never seriously adopted by purblindly conservative grown-ups, so was di- verted to routing a home-made wind-mill which otherwise refiised to turn without the aid of water and wind com- taned. A pair of flannel shoes for Stumpy, Annie Eli/a's lame hen, deprived of her toes through frost-bite. While usually placid and con.panionable, Stumpy, when shod, un- deviatingly hid in the lilac boshes and sulked. An Eolipile motor, made of two oil-cans mounted on trunnions, with a small boiler attached. Though of no great industrial value, Lonely took the greatest pride in this little engine, in which he imagined lay embodied some key to the refrnmation of all steam power. His schtow knew no bounds, acccHxlingly, when he discovered that a scribe named Hero of Alexandria had minutely described his engine, one hun- dred and fifty years before the Christian Era. A dog-harness and cukivator, to expedite the hoeing and weeding of kitchen-gardens, etc. As no dogs sufficiendy i6o LONELY O'M ALLEY which had been reputed to be the strongest " puller " in all Chamboro. So he gazed up at Lionel Clarence envi- amenable to discipline could ever be found, to operate this really excellent im^ement, it fell into disuse. An ini|»oved canmm, made of brass pumpn^Under, mounted on two barrow-wheels. Powder sufficient for its proper loading and discharge had never been secured. A new and greatly improved method of making Angle- Worm Oil — loi% looked ^lonudwntostefiectuallulmcant for all intending circus perdmaen. Itt only drawbKk was its over-pungent odor. An automatic "bite-announcer" (for use while fishing fiw mud-cat), made of an dd toftiMi spring, with a slight bell attached. When stuck upri|^t is a stump or dock-crack, it warns the most sleepy-lieaded fiiAernMB just whm to pull in his line. A rotating icitc-messenger. A new lbrm(^bttliet-mouId, especially adapted for Indian war6re. A new and improved method of fastening on Indian Feathers — of naturally restricted commercial value. And I»t, but by no means least, a Flying-Machine, made of huabm fishof^pales, unrtwelia canet, many old linen sheets, numbo-less strings and pulleys and springs, and always awaiting just one last pulley or brace or bolt to be finished and perfect. It seems scarcely necessary to add tliat this FIjn^-MKtoie and itt over-sanguine maker had many falls in eelMH^ mea^ from the t<^ of stnw-stacks and stables. LIONEL CLARENCE ESCAPES i6i ously, wondering why luck should be so against him. " Been having any fiin? " asked the patient, wistfully. "Swimmin'^and all that !" answered Lonely. Lionel Clarence made a clicking sound, with his tongue i^inst the roof his mouth, which was meant to convey his poignant apprecia- tion of such joys, as well as his regret tkm. they were now beyond his reach. He leaned further out of the window, pull- ing off the ice-bag as he looked down. " S'pose you gettin' lots of jelly and stuff? " asked Lonely, cheeringly. The patient shook his head sorri)wfully. " They 're half starving me up here ! " he declared, with rising wrath. Lonely twjk his turn at hesKi-wagging, sym- {Mthettcally. " And shut up in this poke of a rcwrn all day ! " lamented the invalid. ** You dmA*t look so sick ! " said Lonely. " 1 don't believe I am ! " said Lionel Clar- ence, slowly, and with some mysterious in- ward illumination. He wriggled still further out into the air of i62 LCWELY O'MALLEY freedom, looked cautiously about him, and then said with great determination: " I 'm going to hook away from here ! I 'm all hot and sticky and itchy, and / 'm going to have a swim ! " The other boy half-heartedly warned him back, yet, even while telling him it was a pretty bad thing to be sick, enlargii^ vividly and enthusiastically on the heautifel warmth of the water of late, and the new spring- board the gang had put up over the diving- hole. The natural outcome of their talk was that Lonely meekly obeyed Lionel Clarence's reck- less and imperious order to put the ladder up to the window, and while this was being done he himself was poking a pair of wobbly legs into his Sunday velvet trousers. Then he rolled up the bed-rug, and, along with one of the pillows, thrust k artfiilly down between the sheets, so ihm when covered at the lop with a handkerchief and ice-bag, it would take a second glance to discover that the muffled bundle was really a sleeping patient. This done, he crept carefully down the LIONEL CLARENCE ESCAPES 163 ladder, which was later restored to its place by the driving-shed, and in two minutes more was following closely on Lonely's heels in a sk«rt cut for the swimming-hole. The breeze had died down, the noonday sun was at its hottest, the river lay shadowy and limpid and alluring. Lonely's heels had already flashed up in the air and disappeared into the quiet depths just under the new div- ing-board, and the feci of the shallower water to Lionel Clarence's tentative foot was both mildly cool and cogently alluring. "Do you think I 'd better, Lonely?" he asked, with his mind already made up. The other boy shook the water from Ills russet hair, just emerged from Umt^mg bo<«^, grunted, turned easily on his btck, and #M«ttf there luxuriously, now and ^n emitting dmn between his pursed-up lips a litde fountain-like jet of sparkling water. " Do you think I 'd better risk it ? " repeated Lionel Clarence, already up to his knees. " 'Course; come on mav as well have the game as the name, now vou 're here!" anil Lonely lav there motionless, blinking placidly up at the strong sunlight. i64 LONELY O'MALLEY The sick boy took his « duck " with a gasp, recovered his balance, and struck out for raid- stream with that loose-jointed vigor peculiar to the beginner. " Is nt it great ! " he gasped, as he made his way through the buoyant and limpid coolness, as near to the glory of flying as mortals are allowed to come. He clambered up on the old black-walnut root in the middle of the nyer, and there sunned himself contentedly, with his thin young legs swaying gently back and forth in the stream. There Lonely whiled the time away giving exhiWtions of the many fashions of water- travel. He showed Lionel Clarence the awkward and archaic " cow-feshion," and then the methodical, spatty, business-like overhand stroke that went by the name of "sailor- fashion," then he showed what "steamboat- fashion meant, lying well out on the top of the water, and churning it foamy with his quick heel-strokes. Then he «' laid his hair," first on one side, then on the other, then ex- actly in the middle. Whereupon the sick boy said the sun was too hot for him, and slipped down into the " 1)0 YOU I HINK 1 'l) BETTER kISK 11? " 1 6b LONELY O'MALLEY coolness again, where he declared that every bit of itchiness went out of his skin, that he felt all hunky-dory there, and that he was even game for a handicap race back to shore. Back in the shallows once more, they had the most glorious of water-fights, smiting the smooth surface with the heel of their hands, and sending it rattling like buck-shot upon one another's streaming head and shoulders. Then, at Lonely's timely suggestion, both fell to smoking punk, earnestly and assiduousK-, to guard against any possible attack of fever and ague. And just about the precise time ttm Lionel Clarence was being initiated nm the systerks of the back-dive, his zeakits md solicitous grandmother, having fanned his supposedly sleeping hcv for a good hour and more, came to the conclusion that the patient was over- sleeping himself, and must promptly he fed. So, having ordered up his broth and lirv- wuter, she hesitatingly gave a gentle little shake to the pitient, uho straightway fell apart in her astounded hand. Th< ^ ■/ ' ht]J what most certaiidy seemed to he- :i dis membered grandson, ^ arm's ler^-th, catching LIONEL CLARENCE ESCAPES 167 her breath hysterically, and battling srvcral minutes for air, before she could call for help. A hurried search was made. But the patient was not to be found. The household was aroused, Leena was sent helter-skelter off for Doctor Ridley, and the search was extended to the outbuildings and the garden. By this time word had flown about that the Pre!*cher's son had made his escape, in delirium, and a sudden little wave of commotion swept through the slumberous town. All business came to a standstill ; searching parties were hurriedly formed, while every nook and cor- ner of the Sampson household was being looked over and over, ineflfectually, for the third and fewth ^ne. It was old Captain Steiner who reported tha*^ )x had seen two boys in the river, just above the s«inuma§-hoie, and thereby caused a pre- cipitous migntk)!! acroM commons and vacant lots and hay-fields, down to the shadowy river- iMmk, where nearly all Chamboro arrived, just in time to see ^ presumably delirious Lionel Clarence take a neat back-dive off the spring- board. 1 i68 LONELY O'MALLEY "It's — it's my Lionel Clarence, flinging himself in I " The lad's father went pale, as he broke into a run, and pantingiy calloi back to old Doctor Ridley, puffing at his heels, the startling news that his son could not swim a stroke. Yet a moment later they saw the newly shorn head emerge from the w ater, saw the confident stroke and the business-like splutter from the lips. They both stopped spvtchless on the brink of the swiniming-holc, scarcely able to believe their eyes, still too consumed with conflicting emotions to speak. Lonely, who had caught sight of the advanc- ing army from a distance, had taken a discreet long dive downstream, then another and an- other ; and coming up under a canopy of wild grapevines, had scrambled ashore and secreted himself in the uppermost boughs of a leafy willow. There he remained, squinting out at the sudden hub -hub, wondering if they would find the clothes he had cached in a hollow log, to escape the danger of " chawing beef " at the hands of the Upper River gang and the men from the Tile Works, who had the habit of not DICTATING A TKUCE only tying small boys' shirts into tight knots, but of soaking them in water and pounding the knots with stones, to insure each already tena- cious knot against easy undoing. MHCROCOPV RMOUmON TVT OiART (ANSI and BO TEST CHART No. 2) 170 LONELY O'MALLEY And Lionel Clarence, finding himself so dramatically discovered, wisely and doggedly swam out to midstream, where he mounted the black-walnut root, and where he remained until a truce was made and his own terms were finally agreed upon. Leena and Lionel Clarence's grandmother were crying audibly, by this time, declaring it would all be the death of the boy, and pleading for some one to plunge in and rescue the poor lad before it was too late. But old Doctor Ridley pulled up his coat- sleeve, and thrust his hand down into the water of the swimming-hole. " Tut, tut ! " he exclaimed. " It 's as warm as new milk ! " And he established a dangerous precedent in Chamboro therapeutics by publicly attesting that it would n't do the boy a bit of harm, and that he was vastly mistaken, indeed, if it would n't cool his fever off a bit. So Lionel Clarence, having been induced to paddle ashore, as the women in the searching party discreetly withdrew, was carefully mui- fied up in a lap-robe, and driven home in the Barrisons* phaeton. LIONKL CLARENCE L.iCAPES 171 He was plied with many questions as to what had possessed him to run away in that fashion, and at just what stage he had come back to his senses again, and just how he had fallen into his miraculous knowledge of the art of swimming. But to all these questions the sleepy patient gave only vague and wandering answers. He had no desire to discredit the delirium tradition, which was given new twists and turns as it traveled from household to household. It was discussed and amended and contradicted, and in time even ascended to the dignity of one of those highly abstruse and quite unsolvable psychological problems ' over which the more ' Another equally entrancing problem, which lung kept Chatnboro at its wits' end, was the question as to how three small sun-fish found their inexplicable way into one of the freshly dug post-holes of Judge Eby's cow-pasture. Some held that these three fish came from subterranean sources ; others just as heatedly maintained that pluvial deposit explained their presence, while still others vacillated between scratching their heads in utter bewilderment and half-heartedly believing that some overburdened kingfisher had dropped them in flight. The simple truth of the matter was that the tight-lipped and unbctraviii i .onclv had dumped the three fish from his bait-pail into the post-hole, on his way home from the river. 172 I.ONELY O'M ALLEY learned heads of Chamboro pondered and argued and disputed for many a month to come. Two weeks later, however, when Lionel Clarence secretly unearthed a pair of velvet trousers and a little white night-gown from the hollow log where they had lain so long, he found that the Upper River gang had already been there, and had visited on him the tight- est and hardest assortment of knots in the history of the Hole. So he decided, at Lonely's mild suggestion, that the two gar- ments should remain in the log for 4II time, and nothing more be said about them. If Doctor Ridley had his suspicions in the matter, that kindly old assuager of pain and anxiety said nothing about them, in public. When he was sewing five neat little cat-gut stitches in Lonely O'Malley's shoulder, how- ever, after an unhappy performance in knife- throwing (in emulation of one of the peerlessly beautiful Mexican ladies attached to the circus side-show), the shrewd old practitioner put a number of more or less disconcerting questions to his patient, as to Lionel Clarence and his swimming abilities. Getting nothing out of LIONEL CLARENCE ESCAPES 173 the boy, he ventured the remark that Lonely had a streak of yellow in him. " The yellow that is sometimes almost gold ! " he added to himself, as an after- thought. Then he reached in under his coat- tails to that reputedly inexhaustible pocket from which came most of Chamboro's lemon- drops and horehound lozenges. CHAPTKR VII In which Ltntly gets Rtligion with a ytngtoHct SEVKN fully armed and blo':dthirsty Apache Indians, having surrounded and captured the Overland Mail, dragged there- from the solitary passenger and tied him to a stake in Judge Eby's cow-pasture. Under the chicken feathers and war-paint of these Apaches might be detected the exult- ant features of the Baxter Street gang, while the Overland Mail looked suspiciously like Alaska Alice's go-cart, hauled by the patient Gilead. It scarcely took a second glance to discover that the heroically daring and resolute captive was Lonely O'Malley himself. A pile of sticks was placed around the feet of the pale-face, and while the Apaches in- dulged in a second vociferous war-dance, a match was touched to the waiting fuel. This, of course, was the signal for the Rough Riders to swoop di vvn to the rescue. But a fresh breeze was blowing, and the Rough Riders insisted on being nothing if not convincingly 178 LONELY O'MALLEY dramatic. The mounting flames singed the down from Lonely's bare legs. While the Apaches and the would-be rescuers still fought desperately, hand to hand, the flames began to lick cruelly ip at the now terrified boy's trousers-legs. He shouted and called in vain. Equally in vain he strained and pulled at the stake to which he had been too well tied. Then, with a sudden sickening pang, the thought came to him that he was to die there, that in another minute all his life would be blotted out and he would have to stand before the Judgment Seat of his Maker with all his great misdeeds on his head. From his earliest childhood his mental conception of this Judgment Seat had been a grimly concrete one. It was a great black oak chair, which stood high above the sky-line, like a sombrely towering island above the horizon, and on each side of it rose two great desks of black oak, on which stood two ledg- ers bound in red leather. At each of these open ledgers, on a high black stool through the legs of which clouds came and went, sat a stern-faced angel with a goose-quill pen, calmly turning over pages and writing down little LONELY GETS RELIGION 179 black marks after hundreds and hundreds of names. In so doing, Lonely solemnly believed, they recorded every single sin committed on earth. At his own name, he always thought, the sterner of the two angels often shook a despondent head, for the line of dots, he knew, was almost endless, being carried grimly on from page to page and threatening some day to invade even the inside of the back cover. There was nothing grotesque in the image to the boy ; on many occ^ions, in fact, the vision of the implacable ange! with the goose- quill pen had served to keep him to the straight and narrow path of rectitude. He could uot explain, however, whether it was from teach- ing, hearsay, or picture-books that his concep- tion of this Judgment Seat had first arisen. So, in his moment of peril, it flashed through him that his line of black marks was a hope- lessly long one, being carried countlessly on, unlike all others, from one big pageful to another ; and with a second and deeper pang of terror he realized that he was not fit to die. His black young life had been fairly stippled with mendacity; and liars, it had been written, shall inherit Hell. I So LONELY O'M ALLEY Yet die he might very easily have done — for both Apaches and Rough Riders were now gazing at him with horror-stricken eyes — had not Butcher Brcnnan, driving homeward with three spring lambs, chanced to see and size up the situation. He caught up a bucket of water from Judge Eby's water-trough, and scatter- ing boys right and left as he came, doused the burning captive from head to foot, kicked away the still burning brands, and then focused on his hapless son Piggie that wrath which should have descended diftusedly on the heads of the entire band of Apaches and Rough Riders together. Kven as it was, Lonely lost his eyebrows, his forelock, and the front of his checked calico blouse. For a few days, too, his singed and blistered bandy legs were secretly anointed with soda, sour milk, moist blue clay, melted lard, witch-hazel, and, in fact, every healing and soothing lubricant which artfully and cir- cuitously evolved household advice brought forward from the rest of the still sorrowing gang- But long after the soreness had passed away, and the sandy eyebrows had cropped out LONELY GEIS RELIGION iHi once more, Lonely's imagination harked back along that channel into which it had been so suddenly and so vividly plunged. He had stolen and robbed and lied. The days of his youth had been days of sin and idleness. The <»JTCHER BRENNAN DOUSED THE BVRNING CAPTIVE 1 82 LONELY O'M ALLEY Although these brooding thoughts some- what darkened the days that followed, they did not readily quench the old pagan and irresponsible spirit of the boy. When, for example, he and Pud Jones decided to add to their earthly stores by early morning labor in the strawberry patches, it was decided that Pud should awaken Lonely by the time-honored method of pulling on a string tied to the lat- ter's great toe, and left danghng downward through the open window. Pud, in a sudden spirit of facc riousness, was not content to give this string the gentle little jerk allowed by tradition. For, after a sturdy pull, he decided, indeed, to climb up the string, and only its eventual snapping, followed by a muffled howl, rendered this feat out of the question. It brought Lonely out of bed with a bound, however, wrathfully hopping about on one foot and nursing the injured member while he cried down inaudible imprecations on the boy rolling and shaking and writhing so spasmodically below. Nothing more was said of the matter until they parted for the day, when Lonely gently reminded Pud that he was to be awakened at LONELY GETS RELIGION '»3 five, the next morning, as before. Whereat Pud chuckled inwardly, and straightway de- cided to bring Red- ney McWi 1 1 iams along to see the fun. Before going to bed that night Lonely filled a wil- low bread-basket with wood ashes, well mixed with the softest and mushiest of those potetoes which a picking over of the bakery bin, weeks before, had cast out to unconsid- ered dissolution. To the handle of this basket, well hidden on his inner window-sill, he tied the piece of dangling string, and went to bed to sleep the deep and happy sleep of the artist well satisfied with his work. His one regret was that he had not awak- ened to witness the outcome of his retributive plot. He discovered, though, that neither NURSING THE INJURED MEMBER 184 LONELY O'MALLEY Pud Jones nor Redney McWilliams attended school that morning, that neither of them had gone picking strawberries, and that the willow bread-basket had been vindictively kicked round and round the little yard until it was in tatters. When he later found out that the two boys had spent the entire morning at the swimming-hole, he sniffed once more, with zest, at the advanced dissolution of the back- yard potato pile, hunched up a contempla- tive shoulder, gazed down at his swollen toe and wondered if after all that meant another black mark in thn ' '"^ red ledger. During those idle, empty days which inter- vened between berry-picking time and the midsummer holidays, when the boys of Cham- boro would be turned loose on the world again. Lonely O'Malley was more and more driven in on himself. His last shred of avail- able material had been used up for that octo- pus like air-ship which suckea away his time and his worldly wealth and gave nothing in return. Lionel Clarence, after his illness, was still capricious and languid ; the companionship of Annie Eliza was to be resorted to only after a secretive and periodic fashion ; Shivers and LONELY GETS RELIGION 185 Gilead, even as the Baby itself, soon palled on his newly stirred and brackish spirit, where all the marsh-gas of his stagnant young soul seemed to add more and more to the latent explosibility of his cramped and soured little life. When the sudden yet inevitable change came, it came from a quarter least expected. Em'ly Bird and Lulu Bird, having quar- reled with Jappie Barrison and Nora Eby as to the true meaning of the familiar " N or M " of the elementary catechism, indignantly absented themselves from Sunday School and decided to hold independent religious service each Sunday afternoon in the sand-pit, down by the river, just above the ice-house. Here Em'ly Bird read a chapter from Re- velation to Annie McWilliams and Peewee Steiner, and then solemnly called on Lulu Bird for prayer. After this a hymn was sung in the dragging, high-pitched, childish voices, and Em'ly, surrounded by her following, tear- fully recounted her persecutions, after the fashion of that sombre Sunday School library heroine who for the moment held sway over her shifting affection, telling of her hapless 1 86 LONELY O'M ALLEY home, of her misunderstood life, of her blighted worldly hopes, and her forgotten vanities of the flesh. But from that day forth she was to lead the life of the spirit. She was to succor the weak and help the widowed and ^therless ; she was to forgive her enemies, even Nora Eby and Jappie Barrison ; she was to be meek in spirit, and always to do good unto others. Here, finding the list of her potential virtues unexpectedly exhausted, she fell back on her Sunday School book, and in a slow and labored voice read to them the death-scene at the end of the story. This started Peewee Steiner crying con- vulsively, to be joined later by Annie McWil- liams and Lulu Bird, though Em'ly did not give herself over to the luxury of grief until the last sad lines had been read. Then with a sudden hysterical rapture of concern she pleaded with her tearful companions to lead new lives while yet there was time, that they might escape the torture of the Lake of Ever- lasting Fire. Em'ly's passionate apprehension seemed to take on itself the spirit of infection, for Annie McWilliams flung herself on her knees and LONELY GETS RELIGION 187 prayed aloud for her soul, then and there, the tears of contrition streaming down her cheeks as she openly confessed to all of those past sins which she could remember. Then Jappie Barrison choked back her own sobs, and less raptly and more shamefacedly told of her own misdoings, while Lulu Bird rocked her body back and forth and begged that the world should not come to an end until all her sins had been washed away. Then Em'ly and her neophytes kissed one another, and finding that the mysterious passion which had shaken their young lives to the root had already passed - .d died away as strangely as it had come, th lid their Bible and Sunday School book under a ledge of sand, and escaped back to the world of real- ities again, wonderingly, a little frightened of one another, and of themselves. All of this strange ceremony Lonely O'Mal- ley heard and saw from the half-hidden mouth of his sand-pit cave, where he stood, spell- bound and speechless. It even made him feel creepy, tingling with the same little pricks of the skin as those which ran over him when errand or acd- i88 LONELY O'MALLEY dent took him past the graveyard late at night. It was all so intangible, so insubstantial, so bewildering to the untutored imagination. It was a voice from beyond the hills of reality. I^onely crept stealthily down into the sand- pit^ and with not a little trepidation exhumed the buried Bible and Sunday School story. Then he made his way carefully back to the cave, where he flung himself down and turned the two books over and over in his hand, guardedly, apprehensively, as though either of them might still hold imprisoned some ter- rible and occult power for good or evil. It was the Bible which he first thrust away from him, hiding it well behind him back in the cave. For was it not the great solemn Book which stood on parlor centre-tables, the book from which terrible sermons were preached, the very arsenal, to his barbarian young mind, of all those stern « Thou Shalt Nets "which so imperiled human existence, and so beset with danger and dread youth's free and natural course ? It is true that he had had his accidental dips into the more rudimentary phases of I.ONEJ.Y GETS RELIGION 189 scriptural lore. On a few rare occasions he had even attended church, of his own free will, creeping into the huge and shadowy Cowans- burg edifice with a hunted and startled look, to be overawed by the tremulous roll and thunder of the pipe-organ, and to be charmed into emitting from his cacophonous young throat an intoxicating verse or two of the choir's hymn. But church, he explained in his more intimate moods, always *' choked him up." It gave him the same feeling as did the little white satin-lined coffin in the show- window of Chamboro's leading furniture-dealer and undertaker — a dim and shivery sense of depression. His Sabbath School training, un- happily, had been most irregular and spasmo- dic, and always suspiciously synchronous with the advent of the annual pi>.nic to Cowan's Grove. Indeed, his last term of attendance had been brought to an untimely close through a purely innocent and above-board retort of Lonely's, who, when asked by his teacher if he was not delighted to have a little baby sister arrive in his family, honestly and openmindedly asserted that he would much rather have had a pup. This remark created such an uproar that 190 LONELY O'lVl ALLEY the Superintendent was summarily brought on the scene to inquire into its cause, and gleaning some little inkling of Lonely's utter depravity from many startling and contradictory explana- tions, ejected our embittered young barbarian from the class and from the Sunday School itself So it was Km'ly Bird's romance, bearing the dubious title of " Agatha Doring's Long Ordeal," into which Lonely first dipped. It was a startling new type of story to the eager and avid-mind<^ boy, — like neither " The Head- less Horseman" nor the "Swiss Family Robinson," for it told, in short sentences and easy words, of the suffering and heroism of Agatha Doring, tortured and ill-treated by an unconverted maiden aunt, who often sent the child to bed supperless, simply for I^eing true to her own conscience, and often beat her, simply because she was so scrupulously honest. But in the end, after many troubles, included in which was an almost fatal attack of brain- fever, Agatha was the means of leading the maiden aunt to grace, even while casting seeds of piety far and wide along her every-day path of life. LONELY GETS RELIGION 191 Lonely pored over the hook until the end was reached, until the sun was low in the west. Then he gazed out, through the half-lights of PORED OVER THE BOOK UNTlt THE END WAS REACHED the dingy little cave, into a new and wonder- ful world. To do good, like Miss Agatha Doring, to greet every one with a quiet and gentle smile, to have your elders look after you approvingly, i9a LONELY O'MALLEY to protect the innocent young birds and plants, to bring jelly and read fiury-ules to little girls suffering from an incurable sickness, to step in, and, with a reproving word or two, to stop the stalwart bully from beating the smaller boy, to argue triumphantly with the village infidel, as did Agatha, and worst him on his own ground and lead him meekly and humbly to the life of the spirit, even to go gloriously without a supper now and then, for the sake of some proudly and stubbornly hidden right — all this seemed so easy and so alluriug to Lonely O'Malley, as he walked home through the shadowy summer twilight, with swelling breast and a firmer tread of the feet. He even pictured himself as holding revival meetings in the Market Square, with a sea of upturned feces smiling their approval and gratitude up to him, as he swayed them with the force of his oratory, and brought them one by one to that life of the spirit about which Agatha had talked so much. Supper was over and the table cleared av/ay long before he had reached home ; slowly and unconsciously a subtle change came over the tenor of his mood. LONEI.Y (JKrs RKI.KJION 19J He foraged fretfully and resentfully about, demanding to know if there was anything lit to eat in the house, and asserting, in no un- certain language, that he was dead sick of cold bread and milk, that the rhubarb tarts were sour enough to make a pig squeal. Then, with a sudden pang of contrition, he remembered that this was not the way in which Agatha Doring bore her trials. So he con- sumed the remainder of his meal in silence and proud humility, remembering that from that day forward he was ordained to be misunder- stood and ill-treated and misjudged. A few minutes later his mother heard him bustling about the wood-shed, searching for soap and shoe-polish, slicking down his hair, and doing his best to sponge ancient and innumerable spots oft his dust-stained Sunday clothes. "Lonely O'Malley, what 're you sprucing up that way for, anyhow ? " his astounded mother demanded, for such things were new in the career of her t\'cr-changing son. He fell back into his old attitude of silent humility, and addressed his parent as " mother," even as Agatha Doring would do. 194 LONELY O'MALLEY "Mother, I'm a-goin' to church!" he asserted, pleased beyond words at the startled look which this declaratioii brought to the other's face. " Lonely, you ain't sick, or nothing ? " cried his mother, suddenly, turning his face to the light. " No," he answered, sepulchrally. " No, 1 not sick ! " "Then wh are you acting up this way, fixing up, and talking about going to church, and all that?" " I am seeking for the Light and the Truth ! " answered the spirit of Agatha Dor- ing, through the mouth of Lonely O'M alley. He rolled his eyes a little, as he said it, and even came back and closed the door after him, gently and slowly. And as Lonely had always been an enigma to his own mother, Mrs. O'Malley accepted the new mystery for what it was worth, though a blind and wistful ligh^ came into her vacant eyes as they followed Lonely out through the warm night air, down the little path, and on through the murmurous silence of the village street. LONELY GKTS RKLKJION "Me poor boy ! " was all she said. A ^ Lonely, even though he had heard it, would never have understood it. " Me poor hoy ! " Lonely was in time for the sermon. lie made vague guesses as to just what Lionel Clarence's father meant, and certain simpler phrases now and then came home to him. But the ge i:ral unintelligibiiit} of the ser- mon only added to its mysterious charm. It was oracular, symbolic, to be interpreted to fit the passing moment, to be translated to suit the changing mood. It had much to do with the need of prayer and confession, w hich was the exteriorization and alienation of all inner sin ; and if it left Lonely unsatisfied in mind, it tended to soothe him in spirit. Karly the next morning he was bad in he cave, poring over the little calf-skin Biblr spell- ing out the words as best he could, mo' i ■ . the mystery of the symbols far too gt^ ^ fus his child- nind to grasp. " And I stood upon the sands of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy." 196 LONELY O'MALLEY It was writing the like unto which Lonely had never before read, and he went on, from verse to verse, spellbound. " If any man have an ear, let him hear." " He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity : he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints." And he read on and on, unconscious of time and place, gasping over the seven angels with the seven plagues, quailing over the fall of Babylon, rejoicing over the chaining of the Dragon, and thrilling at the jeweled wealth of the new Jerusalem. It was a fire-brand to the dry straw of his starved imagination. What seemed the waste acreage of his misspent youth, burning itself shamefacedly away, only added to the vital heat of the quick transformation. He went back to the first of the book, and read it as carefully, yet emerged from it as dubiously uncertain as from the last of it. Some of the faint echoes of modern science had fallen on his inattentive young ears. The whispers of modern skepticism had crept absently into his preoccupied mind. LONELY GETS RELIGION 197 " I 'm going to get at the bottom of this here Adam and Eve business!" he said to himself, with great determination, as he made his way boldly toward the study of the Rever- end Ezra Sampson, and requested the privi- lege of a private conversation with that amazed and somewhat perturbed scholar. " Is God a liar ? " was the boy's first ques- tion, as he faced the clergyman, in the quiet- ness of the little study. " God, my boy, is the light and the truth," answered the man, forbearingly. " But does God say one thing and then go and do another ? " demanded Lonely, with unrelaxed severity. The clergyman made sure that the door was well closed before their talk went any fur- ther. Into what channels it drifted only the minister of the gospel and his pagan young interlocutor ever knew, though it left the former in a strangely disturbed state of mind, while eventually adding little or nothing to the spiritual satisfaction of Lonely himself. Kzra Sampson, in fact, on meeting old Doctor Ridley that very morning, confessed to him his perplexity and the unlooked-for 198 LONELY O'M ALLEY turn which had come in the beni. of Lonely's aggressive young mind. " Tut I tut ! " asseverated the old Doctor, easily. "Don't try to pick open the bud before it unfolds ! " " But his curiosity is unlimited, and his questions are astounding, simply astounding!" " I hen let him worry and chew over 'em for a while — it '11 do his spiritual teeth a world of good. Take my advice, Kzra, and don't pack the boy full of doctrine. It 'd seem too much like trying to teach a five-year-old girl the full duties of married life ! " " But this seems more than a mere ebulli- tion of morbid fancy. My wife claims that he is for, very far, from being the vicious character he may seem, at first sight. And I must confess that in many respects he is an extraordinary boy, a very extraordinary boy." "He'll get over it, Ezra; he'll get over it ! He '11 fall in love, or turn pirate, or want to be a soldier, and then the two over-blown bubbles of fancy '11 somehow touchj and both of 'em will collapse." Yet Lonely did not get over it quite so soon as the sage old practitioner prophesied. LONELY GETS RELIGION 199 He borrowed what religious books he could from Lionel Clarence ; he took to Bible-read- ing, of an afternoon, with his old-time enemy, Miss Mehetabel Wilkins, and made it a matter of conscience to accept no more than one cheese-cake at the end of the solemn conference in the little antimacassar-strewn sitting-room. MATTER OP CONSCIENCr TO ACCEPT NO MORE THAN ONE CHEESE-CAKE 200 LONELY O'MALLEY When Mr. Sampson was told of this sus- tained and seriou- interest in things eternal, he suggested to his wife that they have the lad in for supper, and do what they could to get on a more friendly basis with him. " It would indeed be gratifying to feel that we were the instruments of leading this darkened boy out into the light ! " said the man of the cloth, with a sigh. " And I '11 have Leena make the freezer full of chocolate ice-cream," added his wife, inconsequentially. This stern but whole-souled woman had once been heard to confess that nothing gave her more joy than the sight of half a dozen hungry small boys devouring one of her dinners. "He has been a wayward youth ! But even the darkest mind seems to have its divine glimmer ! " " He 's a young rip ! " said Mrs. <^ nson, with quiet conviction, following he i line of thought. " And I fancy he will be a young rip, for many a day to come ! " " There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth— " began the clergy- man, reprovingly. LONELY GETS RELIGION 201 " Well, I 'II have some fresh pound-cake and currant-loaf for him," said the placid apostle of materialism, from the doorway, as she went back to her jam-making. Lonely ate supper with the Sampsons, accordingly, in his best black clothes, with his hair plastered decorously down over his ears, and a quaver of emotional tension in his more carefully modulated voice. Indeed, such a settled smile of meek and wistful melancholy played about his features that Lionel Clar- ence demanded to know what was making him such a stiff, and had lurking suspi- cions that Lonely had been eating Bordeaux Mixture again off the Gubtills' gooseberry bushes. The Preacher's son thought that this supper was to be a rare treat, and that, being the official recognition of his newly found chum, it would find Lonely in his lightest and most engaging vein. Never was boy more doomed to bitter dis- appointment. It is true that Lonely did ample though somewhat uneasy justice to the chocolate ice- cream, to the currant-loaf and the pound-cake, 202 LONELY O'MALLEY to say nothing of ample helpings of Mrs. Samp- son's justly renowned quince preserve. But these were now the mere accidentals and inci- dentals of existence, which the excellent Lonely schooled himself to accept casually and absent- mindedly. His interest in the foreign mission field, however, seemed unbounded. He even pointedly inquired of his host if there still were left many leper colonies where mission- aries could go and lead lonely, martyred, and heroically horrible lives. Lionel Clarence looked at his guest and gasped. Could this be the same boy who had taught him to spit through his teeth ! And Lionel Clarence, with sudden unright- eous anger, kicked the new Lonely O'M alley under the table. Lonely, at this, only smiled wanly and sadly. Lionel Clarence some day would see things as he did. His eyes would be opened, and then he would remember and be sorry ! But as there were still many points of dogma about which Lonely was almost ludi- crously unschooled, Mr. Sampson invited the boy to attend his regular Wednesday evening class. LONELY GETS RELIGION 203 Lonely had judiciously disposed of his col- lection of birds' eggs, wondering how he had the heart, even in his unregenerate days, to indulge in an amusement so cruel to any of God's creatures. He had likewise for all time given up smoking, and one rainy afternoon in the Harrisons' stable even reproved Lionel Clarence for his surreptitious and unseemly indulgence in the weed. It gave his heart a wrench to think that he had to part with his old friend Gilead, but as he went over the long list of the goat's trans- gressions, he saw there was no help for it, and wondered just how and where he could get rid of an offender so notorious ami so steeped in all the cunning of well-seasoned crime. His first inclination was to build a funeral pyre, ami offer him up as a living sacrifice, after the fashion of the righteous of olden times. This seemed to him, however, both an unalleviated cruelty and an uncommendable monetary sac- rifice. So he temporized over the point until, to his unspeakable relief, he discovered that Abraham himself had been an honored and respected keeper of goats. Finding his case bolstered up with so substantial a precedent. 204 LONELY O'MALLEY he firmly decided to retain Gilead in his ret- inue. But he no longer took outward joy in Gilead's unseemliness of action and appetite. The boy whose spiritual eyes had been opened even showed no sign of anger when Shivers rescued for the fifth time from the river the Widow Tiffins's three drowned kittens, which Lonely had as carefully though hurriedly re- placed in their watery grave. Even when Gilead ate a goodly part of his newly pasted house-kite no word of reproof fell from the boy's lips — though in times past all such transgressions had marked sorry days in the predaceous existence of his meek and ever faithful pet. One of Lonely's sorest trials, in his efforts to lead a new life, was his diurnal watering of the decrepit Plato — a task, by the way, out of which he had once wrung not a little excite- ment. For Plato, whether because of some mere caprice of the spirit, some mysterious weakness of the flesh, or some pertinacious association of idea, or, perhaps, even some long-continued abuse at the hands of a former owner, had to be soundly kicked in the stomach before he would drink a pail of water. LONELY GETS RELIGION 205 So what seemed at first sight a sheer cruelty, and had been the cause of much indignant protest at the hands of uncomprehending neighbors, was in reality a kindness. For with- ATE A GOOD PART OF HIS NEWLY HASTED HOUSE-KITE out this resounding thump on the ribs the muscles of Plato's gaunt throat seemed stricken with paralysis. Once the essential kick had been adminiEtered, Lonely had often noticed, a look of mute gratitude crept into his eye, his 2o6 LONELY O'MALLEY nose went deep down in the pail, and he drank freely and eagerly. But to the ca8uistic-^;rown Lonely a kick was a kick, and many were the deliberations and devices to force the perverted Plato to refresh himself after some more enlightened and humane procedure. The obdurate Plato, however, had little or no idea of conduct, and Lonely piously de- cided that this was to be one of the thorns in the side of his new-found beatitude. It was something to be borne in meek and unprotest- ing silence, along with the taunts and gibes of the Gang when they came upon him unexpect- edly in the comfortable and lumbering old rockaway, along with Miss Mehetabel Wilkins, on the way home from a day of cherry-picking in the country — as a reward for that new and deeper seriousness of mind so rare and yet so becoming in the young. On this occasion, it must be recordt the smug and serenely satisfied face of his old-time tutor in sin so worked on the feelings of the dusty Lionel Clarence that he climbed boldly up on the back of the old carriage, for the avowed purpose of punching Lonely's head. LONELY GETS RELIGK)N 207 But his loose-waisted l)iouse was stuffed to repletion with Karly Richmond cherries, and as he leaned over the empty back scat he felt a sudden gush of winey rivers down his body, and he discreetly let go his hold, trying in vain to shake the cherry-juice from his trousers legs and even his sodden boots, where, later in theday,it solemnly convinced his Grandmother Horton that the boy was already in the second stage of scarlet fever. Lonely, indeed, was being pointed out, all up and down the streets of Chamhoro, as the boy who had been converted ; and in this gracious publicity, of course, he took no little delight. He even raptly arose from his bed, late one night, and, seeking out the home of Samuel Brennan, the butcher, demanded of that rotund materialist and apostle of all ven- tral delights, at two o'clock in the morning, if he was saved. He was peremptorily told by the elder Brennan to get to the devil out of that or he would have the hide whaled off him. And Lonely went resignedly, though not altogether disheartened, for the next day his exercises in evangelism were extended to different citizens ao« LONELY CMALLEY of Chamboro — though not in any case with immediate or flattering success. Lonely began to see what many another man had seen long before him, that his dead pasf was not quite dead to him. The record of his earlier life was a dark one. It would take years and years, he felt, to live ir down. Perhaps it would be better, even, if he should go abroad, somewhere in the South Pacific Islands, where one wore goat-skins and lived on cocoanuts and bananas, and where the natives still fought among themselves and resorted to cannibalism, and where there was always good swimming, and sharks' fins for dinner. The South Sea Islands being out of the question. Lonely did the next best thing, and penetrated to the terra incognita of the Upper River Tile Works, where he went about among the stolid laborers, reminding them of the general depravity of their ways and the utter sinfulness of their speech, — until he was picked up bodily and placed on a wheelbarrow covered with blue clay, and dumped alertly and ignominiously into the river. "Come agin ! " bawled down the burly day- kneader after him. 210 LONELY O'M ALLEY Lonely gasped and puffed, and struck out into deeper water. " Yes, I will come again," he cried back, defiantly, treading water, " and you '11 be sorry for it ! " " And what will yez do, bein* in such a state o' grace ? " taunted the other, leaning Titan-like on his grimy barrow. " Wait, and you '11 see ! 1 in a state of grace — but — but mebbe it won't last!" he added, darkly. It was only the advent of Mr. Sampson's regular Wednesday evening meeting that kept Lonely from wavering from the narrow path once trodden by the saints. As had been requested of him, he came promptly on time, with his hair once more slicked down and a pensive smile once more playing about his sad young lips. The murmur of wonder and approval which greeted his appearance was uncommonly like the first taste of blood to a rampant young tiger. His mood of Massochistic humility passed away from him ; the old intoxicating passion to be in the lead, the old madness to excel LONELY GETS RELIGION 211 came over him, and by the time he was called on to speak out, candidly and unreservedly, his eye was dilated, his cheeks flushed, his hands fidgety and clammy. One fragmentary sentence, vague, cabalistic, impenetrable, trom the previous Sunday's ser- mon, was still ringing in his ears. " To be under conviction of Sin has always been the first of the formal steps that ended in conversion to the Newer and Higher Life ! " And he was under conviction of sin, sin deeper and darker than the mind of man could conceive, as he told his hearers at the begin- ning of his tempestuous and passionate per- oration. And he went on with his confession of guilt, each iniquity seeming to be more and more elaborated and dwelt on and fondled over, until he appeared to glory in his own utter de- pravity. But so exultant did his evil become, so hopeless his utter diabolism, that he was gently but sternly interrupted by the I'reacher himself, who obviated an impending torrent of righteous indignation by promptly calling on Miss Mehetabel Wilkins to address the meet- ing. 212 LONELY O'M ALLEY Lonely held up a hand, airily, as though to warn bacic the preacher, the impatient Miss Mehetabel, and the glowering and justly out- raged widow Tiffins. "But that ain't all — oh, that ain't all!" the rapt bc j went on, shrilly and breathlessly, intent on unburdening to the uttermost his blackened young soul. " When old Br — - I mean, when Mister Brennan found that garter-snake in his ice-box, who put it there ? Who broke the three panes o* glass in Judge Eby's conservat'ry ? Who shot and et the Gubtills' rooster, and stole bologny, and cussed and swore and lied and smoked and let the steam out o' the sawmill ingin ? Who put the womper in Widow Tiffins's cistern? Who — " But precisely at this juncture, a pregnant glance having passed between Ezra Sampson and the glowering widow, the latter seized Lonely by one prominent ear, and sweeping down the narrow aisle with him, plumped him vigorously and humiliatingly into one of the empty wooden benches. There Lonely, finding himself disgraced and undone by a sudden spasm of unncplainable weeping, fled miserably away from the flaring LONELY GETS RELIGION 213 lights and the circle of wondering onlookers, — fled shame^ed out through the open door into the cool night air, where it seemed to him that he had awakened from a dream, and only HE WAS PUT IN THE INFANT CLASS the prickling closeness of his Sunday best clothes told him it was a painful reality. Yet he still groped blindly after his unat- tainable ideal. Indeed, in fulfillment of an ear- lier promise, he appeared at Sunday School on the following Sabbath afternoon. There, after a course of brief questioning, in which it de- veloped that he knew neither any three of the Ten Commandments nor anything whatever 214 LONELY O'MALLEY of the Shorter Catechism, he was put in the infant class, along with gorgeously appareled little girls of six and seven, and squirming lit- tle hoys who still wore dresses and sailor collars. This was too much for Lonely O'Malley, who had nursed visions of standing up beside the Superintendent, and eloquently telling the entire school the full and truthful history of his conversion, and the depths of crimes and wrong-doing from which he had been rescued. During this recountal, he thought, he would sway the multitude with the force of his elo- quence, and little girls would gasp and cry to be taken out, and little boys would wag their heads knowingly at erch iniquitous detail from the pages of his past life, and after that all the teachers would shake hands with him, and the prettiest one of them all would invite him home to tea, where they would have cheese-cakes and hot muffins and pop-overs and strawberry jam in abundance. That was the vision which had floated be- fore the self-effacing Lonely O'Malley 's eyes; when, in reality, he found himself thrust down into the lowest depths of the lowest class, LONELY GETS RELIGION 215 among a serried swarm of tongue>tied babies and mincing girls, who did not even know the name, let alone the record, of the new Cham- pion of Right in their unsuspecting midst. Lonely grew fretful and irritable, and made paste balls of his lesson leaflet, and sternly fought back the vague wish that he might escape to the swimming-hole for one good dive off the new spring-board and then a back- drop or two off the old sycamore roots. His new teacher somewhat sharply re- quested him kindly not to fidget so much, and asked him if he always squinted that way, and seemed astonished that a big boy like him should not know that Jordan was a river. And to cap the climax she irritably stopped Lonely (who had for the moment forgotten his sorrows in the beguiling intricacies of an entirely new church tune) from joining in an( :r verse of the closing hymn, if he could sing no better than he was doing." The shame and ignominy of it all was too much for Lonely 's pride. It struck the last ' of Lcnely's obsessions was the fixed idea that he — the luneless and tone-deaf — was some day to lead an orchestra. 2i6 LONELY O'M ALLEY blow at the root of his altruism. He guessed he was one of those who lived by the sword, as the verse in Revelation had said, and he guessed, too, he was going to die by the sword 1 There was no sudden and moving climax to his fall. It came slowly, surely, and yet inevitably. The over-thick lees from the fer- menting wine of life fell away and settled once more. And he 'vent back to his old pagan tra- dition and his old pagan code. Perhaps he was not unhappier for it. At any rate he was freer and more natural ; there was no attitudin- izing and primping, no more morbid intro- spection and self-abasement. And even though there may be those who claim that Lonely went back among the un- regenerate, it was not that our poor hero stood an especially and hopelessly bad boy : it was only the code that was wrong, the tradition that was still pagan and puerile. But from this time forward there was a change in Lonely O'MalLy. He had emerged dank and sodden from those darkest and yet those divinest currents of human feeling, and it was to be many a long day before that LONELY GETS RELIGION 217 ablution flowered into anything more tangible than a deep-seated hatred for antimacassars, rockaways, and Sunday School books of the Agatha Doring type. It is also worthy of record that he packed away, with that solemn and studious sense of finality which should mark all last burials, his tight-fitting and prick little black suit, once proudly known as his " Sunday Best." He buried it deep in his mother's bottom bureau drawer, under many layers of faded winter blankets. And he hoped with all his heart and soul that he would never see the darned old rags again ! " Oi>, me poor boy! " sighed Lonely's mother, as she came upon them once, many a year later,and carefully refolded and replaced them, bedewed with a seemingly inconsequential tear 0/ two. But your eyes were turned to tbt fluting bird. And your brow zvui dratvii uith thought i And I pulled six daisies out of the turf And asked far the thing you sought. * That soUmn old bird, ' ' you idly mused, " He''s singing the whole das long — That silly old bird — what good zvill it be To him, when he ends his song!" CHAPTKR VI 11 In which Ltntly uUs a Story or two LONKLY had just made a new box-kite for himself, and having borrowed the entire stock of wrapping-string from the bake- shop to give it ample wind-room, it now hung a little dot of white high up in the tremulous blue of the early afternoon sky. It was the end of June, and the last day of school. In an hour or two the turbulent classes would be tumbling joyously out to their final freedom, and great undertakings would soon be on foot, and plans made, and journeys pro- jected, and grave secrets passed from friend to trusted friend. Already timid little boys, in the general carnival spirit which crept over the sleepy little gray kitten of a town, were flipping notes across the aisle to properly indignant little girls, who wrote " Smarty " on a slip of paper and flipped it. back. Already young orators were stutteringly delivering themselves of their disjointed recitations, and an ink-well or two was being emptied down 222 LONELY O'MALLEY somebody's back, and the ubiquitous " spit- ball " was being volleyed back and forth. Ana Lonely, knowing that his long- imprisoned knights and retainers would soon be flocking about him, was dreamily content with life and his box-kite, sleepily watching the fleck of white as it floated up in the blue ether, hazily wondering if his flying-machine would ever soar to such heights with him, and even more hazily speculating as to whether or not one could ever slip into heaven, with just the right sort of air-.>hip, especially if one made a suffi- ciently wide circle about two ominous black oak chairs (with fleecy clouds drifting slowly in and out between their legs) whereon sat the two figures, writing with goose-quill pens. Annie Eliza appeared on the edge of the Common, saw the kite, and approached Lonely purringly, toeing-in as she came. Two days before, at a tea-party of cut-up green cucum- bers and carrots, she had confessed to Lonely her intention to become a Trapeze Lady, but had expressed her willingness to give over her career, and follow Lonely singly and faithfully, for the trifling gift of Shivers and what re- mained of his bottle of perfume. l.ONLI.Y 1 tLLS A S 1 ORY OR rWO aij I'he boy on the Common now had the kite tit ! lown to his sunburnt bandy-leg, and was siv.'^i and carefully cutting out round pieces of St! iT cardboard, to be sent up the taut kite- string as " messengers." \ lis tongue was thrust out a little as he worked, ami it nioveil syni- patiietically from side to side at every stroke of his knife-hlade. "Oh, Lonely, let me feel how it pulls!" begged Annie KUza, as she crept up closer to him, blinking raptly up at the blue depths that tented in her sunny world. " Could n't ! " he answered, curtly. " Just one iitt/e pull ? " Lonely shook his head resolutely. I'his kite-flying business was not a thing for girls to get mixed up in: you had to mind your P's and (J's when you were flying a box-kite, they pulled so ! " Why, first thing you know she'd start pull- in' extra hard — and then where 'd you be?" "Where?" echoed Annie Lli/a, drawing back a little. " Yanked over into the river, or mebhe Watterson's Crick, before you could remember to let go ! " 224 LONELY O'M ALLEY " Does it/>«//that bad?" **/ made it!'* said the kite-flyer, with laconic self-complacence. ** Goodness gracious ! " said Annie Eliza, looking up into the blue sky once more. Lonely emitted a gentle little ruminative sigh. "Why, that box-kite is nothin'. I had a house-kite, once, in Cowansburg, and I had Winnie Douglas come and hold it for me, while I was stoppin* Gilead from eatin' one o' Pop's harness traces." Whenever Lonely O'Malley saw red, as he was doing at that moment. Veracity shuddered on her throne. " Go on ! " said Annie Eliza. Lonely tested the tension on his kite-string critically, pulled it in a yard or two, with a great show of exertion, and still further played for time. For Jappie Barrison and Betty Doyle and the Bird girls were coming across the Com- mon. The larger Lonely 's audience the more rapt was his recital. " I left her there holdin' that big house-kite o' mine," went on Lonely, " and first thing 1 knew, along came an extra strong puff o' wind. LONELY TELLS A STORY OR TWO 225 Gee whittaker ! — there was Winnie Douglas whipped up over the walnut-trees, on the Cow- ansburg Common, hangin' on for all she was worth, and a-hoUerin' for nic to come and get her down, hollerin* away there all the time she was driftin* out of sight ! " " W — was she killed?" "Just her good luck she was n't ! " commented Lonely, beating off the lee coast of bewilderment, and heatedly demanding of his imagination just what did become of Miss Winnie Douglas. "Was she drowned?" demanded Jappie Barrison. " Nope 1 Just 's she was goin' over Harding's Hill she hooked her toes on a crab-apple tree, and they came and got her down, with ladders!" *• WHIPPED UP OVER THE walnut-trees" * 226 LONELY O'MALLEY "Was she scared — much?" somebody demanded. " Scared ! She had to be shut up in a dark room, with wet towels and things, to keep from gettin* softenin' of the brain ! " " Tell us another story," said Lulu Bird, " Who 's tellin' stories ? " demanded the indignant Lonely. And as Lionel Clarence came panting up at that moment, the Plutarch of Cowansburg turned his attention to more fitting company. " Whew ! She does pull ! " cried the envious Preacher's son, as he tor >. . ■. taut and hum- ming line in his hand. Lonely modestly conl i-v.J that it was n't altogether a slouch of a kite. « Won't you tell us another story ? " reiter- ated Lulu Bird, patiently, as the three girls sat down and spread out their skirts about Lonely. A look passed between the two boys, tele- pathic, fleeting, and yet eloquent. " You might as well," said one look. " What 's the use? " said the other. " Tell them about the time that she-lion got loose in Cowansburg," suggested Lionel Clar- ence, to whom the tale had been graphically LONELY TELLS A STORY OR TWO 227 recounted, a month or two before, up in the O'Mallcy haymow. "Oh- that was nothin' much," deprecated Lonely. " Was it a mad Hon ? " inquired Lulu Bird. "Just a common man-eater," explained Lonely. A sudden shrill chorus of cries bore wit- ness to the fact that school was out ; and two minutes later scattered bands of children were racing and curveting out into the green freedom of the Common. Old Witherspoon, the town constable, eyed them closely, for ex- perience had taught him that on such occasions law and order were often forgotten. Cap'n Steiner and Cap'n Sands hobbled across the greensward to a shady seat close be- side the kite-flier. A tug puffed and churned noisily down on the river ; a robin fiuted and trebled and piped across the breezy afternoon. It was a good world to be sdive in. " Go on with abcnit the Iton," commanded Jappie Harrison. A curious boy or two joined the circle of listeners, and having critically tested the pull of the new box-kite, clustered indolently about 228 LONELY O'MALLEY Lonely, and kicked their languid heels and chewed at the sweetish white inner stalks of the Common grass. " See if you can make goose-flesh come on Pinkie Ball," suggested Lulu Bird, encourag- ingly. Pinkie Ball was an easily impressed and somewhat emotional little boy upon whom all tales of horror brought the creeps. When Pinkie's skin showed "goose-flesh," during the telling of a ghost-story, the artist knew that all was going well with his work. " I won't stay, if it 's goin' to be about ghosts ! " wailed Pinkie, showing signs of ter- ror, yet irresistibly chained to the spot. The central figure of the little circle grew impatient. It was only something that happened to me over in Cowansbui^," he said, ofiP-hand. " To me and a man-eatin* lion over there." Lonely drank in the silence that followed. A sufficiently dramatic pause having elapsed, he went on. "I was just pikin' home from Connor's grocery, with half a pound of allspice, and half a pound of cinnamon and black pepper, 230 LONELY O'MALLEY and a lot of stuff like that. I was just pikin' along home, when some men ran past me, wavin' their arms and tcllin' me to look out. They did n't stop to say what for, but just scratched gravel for all they was worth. Gol- ley, how that old fat man did run ! " broke in Lonely, with a reminiscent light in his eye. "Well, first thing I knew there wasn't a soul to be seen on the streets, and I says to myself, that there pickle factory's on fire again. And I was just walkin' along between the two rows of empty houses, wonderin' what on earth was up, when I turned round the cor- ner, careless-like — and / saw something standin' there in front of me ! " « It — it was n't the lion ? " gasped Pinkie. Lonely paid no attention to the interrup- tion, tending even as it did to anticipate his coming climax. " I stopped stockstill, and felt my hair stand on end, and looked. Then I rubbed my eyes, and looked again. But still That Thing stood there, right in front of me, with its teeth showin', and its tail lashin' from side to side, and its mane all bristlin' up." LONELY TELLS A STORY OR TWO 231 *' Then it was a lion ! " gasped Pinkie, triumphantly. " Quick as a wink I could see why all those men had scooted out. It was one of the lions got loose from the circus tent, a real Assinian lion 1 " " An Abyssinian lion ! " corrected Lionel Clarence. " I always shorten it up, to save time," said the explicit historian, testily. " Well, go on," said Jappie Barrison. " I stood there hc\VL that lion, wonderin' what to do, when I saw him kind o' hunch up and get ready to spring. I was n't exactly scart ; I was just mad at bein' stopped on my way home, when Pop told me to hustle. So, as I saw that lion was gettin' ready to jump, I just up with my package of pepper, and let him have it square in the nose ! " A murmur of surprise ran around the little circle. Lonely laughed dreamily at the memory of the episode, absent-mindedly testing his kite- string as he went on. " How that old lion did r'arup! I jumped off to one side, just as he made his spring. It came 232 LONELY O'MALLEY out about as I had figgered. All that pepper 'd made the lion as blind as a bat ! And when he turned round and jumped for me again, I was twenty feet off to one side, watchin' him sneeze as he come down ! and there he was, jumpin* and jumpin*, not knowin' where I was ! " " Could n't he smell you ? " demanded Lulu Bird. "Smell nothin', — with a pound o' black pepper up his nose ? He just kept roarin' and howlin' round there and jumpin' for the spot where he 'd seen me last. So when I seen I 'd fixed him all right, I sent word up to the cir- cus folks to come and get their animal. And when they come hustlin' up with the cage, I showed *em just where he was goin' to make his next jump. So they slipped the cage up where 1 showed 'em. Next jump he landed clean inside; and there he was, shut in neat as a whistle." " But I got a great old lickin' when I got home," added the impartial and impersonal historian, "for lettin' the chili sauce get spoiled, for want of them spices ! " "Tel! us another story!" reiterated the over-ingenuous Lulu Bird. LONELY TELLS A STORY OR TWO 233 "Something about ghosts," suggested Jappie Barrison. "YouVc never seen one o' thmt have you ? " demanded Pinkie. Lonely looked around, apprehensively. There was no mistaking the hct that his glance meant to convey to them that it was a good thing it was broad daylight, and they were there all together on the Common. " I had a ghost folly ' me once," said Lonely, dropping his voice. " Go on ! " said Lionel Clarence. Lonely shook his head disapprovingly. " I don't like talkin' about that kind o* ' Lonely, I might here add, had in his vocabulary cer- tain words all his own. Thin, he always saitl '« folly " for *' follow." In the same way something always •« snuk up on him ; " a «« drizzly day " was a " grizzly day " to him; he described the process of rinsing as "wrenching;" a " ripple " on the water was always a " rifHe; " by «« kill- dec," of coutfe, he meant a "kill-deer;" and anything that was superlatively fine was always "slickcry." Like- wise, he was often heard to ejaculate : " Don't brandy words with me! " " Noise," to him, was always " noinse," "lightning" was "lightling," and his "shoulder" was invariably his " soldier." The ward " vinegar " was hope- lessly beyond him. 234 LONELY CMALLEY thing. It ain*t always safe!" he added, husk- ily, meaningly. Pinkie Ball began to worm his way back into the outer circle. ** Oh, go 0» / *' said one of the bolder spirits, impatiently. Lonely hunched up one of his shoulders in a shrug that plainly intimated that their blood was to be on their own heads, should disaster befall them. " It was in the old Guiney house, that stood just about a mile outside o' Cowans- burg," began Lonely, slowly. " "That bouse was banted! " Ominous shakes of the head followed this declaration. " None of the town gang 'd go near it, not even to gather walnuts. And there was bushels of *em goin* to waste there, for the house was empty, and even grown folks wouldn't pry round there none, I can tell you I And it was so dark and quiet and lonesome-like that when you shoved in through the bushes, and you put your foot on a stick, and it cracked — why, the sound 'd nearly make you jump out of your skin. Well, Speck Litsey and me LONELY TELLS A STORY OR TWO 235 decided we were a-goin' to find out about that ghost. Saturdays we 'd crawl in through the fence, and wriggle in past the burdocks, and shove through the bushes, and each time we 'd get able to come a little nearer to the house itself without tumin' tail every minute a squir- rel ran up a tree. "Well, Speck and me were nosin' round there one Saturday afternoon, wonderin' what made that house look so uncommon like a big white tombstone, when Speck drops flat down on his stummick, injun-fashion, and pulls me down after him. ' Did you see her ? ' he whispers to me, kind o* blue around the gills, and shakin* as though he had the fever-' n-ague. * What ? ' I says, tryin' to look up through the bushes. But Speck, he hauled me down. * Don't you take no risks like that, Lonely,' he says, with his teeth a-shakin*. And 1 began to feel kind o' creepish and queer-like, it was b^nnin' to get so dark and quiet in there. Then Speck he says *Hssssh ! ' all of a sudden, and I peeked up through the mullein and ragweed, and then / seen it ! " "What was it?" demanded Pinkie Ball, with blanching cheeks. 236 LONELY O'M ALLEY " It was a woman, all dressed m vi^hite, walkin* round and round and rr iiiid die hi^me, moantn' and wringin' her hands, and c vin' sonwthing awful. But tinc was n't alL WKcr ^e come to the veramb latlin', tastead <^ walkin* round it, or dimbin' ovei^ it, she jttsi walked right through tit smme as tt^ugh it w * smoke ! "* 1 guess I 'II cii f'r home! ' Spee,. savs to me, drawin Hack uf >! ih tht .ceds. i h.^t made me kind ■* mad 'Speck,' - I, ' 'm a-goin' to fit out i^t's rry. that wo- man, or bus savs i "* Don't \i)U lio it, I .ot y, sav>^ ^ 'id he b^^n to cry, and said i e d give nu wo pouters and a agate alley if 1 'd go as fat the fen^ with him. ***A11 right, Speck,' lys I, 'you gd home if ytHi wast to Bet ion't you say nothin' this gho t< any of the rest of the ^ng!' " \ s>d SpcL promised, and crawled bat k Ehi^oi^ th hes a blamed sight quicker tiiii he ' Gome n nd squeezed through the fenct ft me there alone with that woman *alkm nd and round the house, wringin' 'A}> UY TELLb \ STORY OR TWO 237 her nds and carrytn' on fit to make your hair siand up on end. " JiMt to make sure o' things before I wen any further, 1 gnil)bed a good-^ized stone ou o( the old gra^ e' valk, and let it fly at he. hard as I ccm 30, just as she come watlin' and cryin' roui corner of the house. It seemed kind o' i at first, hut if she was a reg'ler, out- and host, 1 knew it wasn't goin' to do her an> ru.rni, and if she was just foolin' and carryin' on that way for show, she would he gettin' what was coniin' to her. W'll, I let drive right ar her, and it took her plum in the waist. But it xvcnt clean through bety without stofpirC ! And I could see a line of sparks v^ere it lit up against the basement stonework, idnd o' blue, and sulpliury, and queer-lookin*. " Then I minded hearin' old Marm Wat- kins — she *s the colored woman who used to wash for the Litseys — tellin' Speck no ghost would ever walk over a cross, and if ever he got caught overnight in a graveyard, just to make a circle o' crosses round himself, and no ha'nt 'd ever get near him. So 1 went back to the road fence, and 238 LONELY O'MALLEY nailed two old pigots together, crossways, with a hunk of stone for a hammer. Then I crawled back and waited for my chance, and put that cross plum down in the woman's path, right between a grape-trellis and a corner of the house, where she 'd have to step over it, for sure. Then I stood back in the shadow of the house, and waited for her to come round to the front again. And it kept gettin' darker and darker, and I tell you what, I kind o' wished I was good and safe out o' that ! "When she seen that cross the woman stopped, kind o' puzzled like, and looked up kind o' fretful, and rubbed her nose kind o' inquirin', and I could hear her askin* herself over and over again why somebody 'd killed her that way in cold blood. So I stepped right out in front of her, at that, and asked her what was a-troublin' her so much. She sud • Land's sake, who 's that ? ' rubbed her nose again, kind o' hesitatin', and started backin* away. Then she stopped, and looked, at me kind o* sad for about a minute. Then she said 'Folly me,' and led me right into the old white house, and up the old stairs, slow and solemn, LONELY TELLS A STORY OR TWO 239 and pointed to a spot on the front bedroom floor. And // was blood ! " An inarticulate cry burst from the rapt Pinkie, whose mouth was open even as wide as his eyes; Lonely returned *'THBRB HAt MIH tOMK tOVt DBBO DONE HERE " 240 LONELY O'MALLEY was a butcher-kni^, all covered with bloody too! " ' There has been some foul deed done here ! ' I says to the woman. And she nodded her head three times. Then she told me to folly her again, and led me all the way down through the big dark house to the cellar, and it was jam-crack full o' queer noinse in every room ! Ar!d she pointed at some bricks in the floor there, and made a sign for me to take 'em up. And when I 'd dug down for about a foot, I come across a long, black coflin. Gee, I felt queer. But I was n't goin' to quit when I 'd gone that far. So I unscrewed the top of the coffin, and — and — " " Oh, you 're just trying to scire u? ! " cried the elder Bird girl, cynically sktoticn], Lonely's half-closed eyes suddenly opened to their full width; the dreamer had been shocked into reality ; this unexpected note of unbelief had broken the bubble of his ecstasy. " You shut up, Em'ly Bird ! " And Lonely was begged not to leave his tale standing at such an unsatisfying crisis. " Who said 1 was try in' to scare you ? " LONELY TELLS A STOrV OR TWO 24^ demanded the irate historian, however, eyeing thee«9wd, one by one, indignantly. " I Mieve you were j\m makii^ tlwt all up, Lonely O'Malley!" s«d Ew'ly Ik a, stoutly. " Oh, go on, Londy ! " «ned Betty Doyk. " Em'ly always does try to spoil everyt^ag f * Instead of going on, Lonely slowly aoi de- liberately reached behind him, and from s a "jay," it was a more or less common practice to " mitch " from Khool, and when a boy ••snitched" he was, of course, following in the footsteps of the old EngUsh snitcher or informer, — while the ever-Ainilisr " cheese it " came from an argot quite as antique. 254 LONELY O'MALLEY more than a Red Indian. « When he 's a good boy he 's a dead boy, in so ^ as his youth has been eternally lost to him— just as a good Red Indian 's a dead Red Indian. As for me, I want 'em bad, and like to see 'em bad ! " But, ah, Lonely, Lonely, no matter how that kindly old man of medicine and timely advice and horehound drops may try, he can never hold you up as a model for the young ! And no matter how I attempt it myself, Lonely O'Malley, no matter how I extenuate, and re- press, and extol — how, indeed, am I ever to paint you as a hero should be painted ? How shall I even make you seem half sensible and rational, and not as shatter-pated and mad as a March hare ? For on the very day when he had crawled in under the Johnsons' bam to rescue a home- less cur with a broken watering-can tied to its frenzied tail, and had been bitten at without resentment, and had worked patiently and sturdily over the knot, and had fed and con- ciliated the homeless one, — on that verv same day, I repeat, he had not only wandered ecstatically off, while consuming green snow- apples in the Sampsons' driving-shed, into LONELY TELLS A STORY OR TWO 255 devious gross fictions as to certain wcirci ad- ventures and perils which had once beset his father in the Klondike, but later in the day, while basking in the prince of a jug of lemonade and a plate of Mrs. Sampson's tea- cakes, he had lied, deliberately and consciously — lied voluntarily, opesly, and unnecessarily. The gossipy and garrulous and yet religion- loving Widow Tiffins, the secret aversion of the long-suffering Sampson household, was there; and had not only driven the Preacher himself into the upper regions of the house, but had prolonged her loquacious visit well on into the afternoon, until Mrs. Sampson, in desperation, had called in Lonely and Lionel Clarence, in the hope that an audience so diversified might cause the lean and terret- eyed widow to turn to topics less maliciously personal. But still she had tarried. A moment's silence had finally fallen on the little comjMuiy as a door blew shut in the June breeze, and Lonely had just sunk his teeth into a fifth tea-biscuit, when the humanly peevish voice of the descending and sadly deluded Prcaclw sounded from the front stair- way. as^i LONELY O'MALLEY " Has that old cat gone at last, my dear? " A second and a more awful silence followed tfcis ill-timed question. But Lonely looked up unperturbed. " Ma went over an hour ago ! " he called placidly up to the approaching minister, now halfway down the stairs. Then the boy looked blandly and soberly into the Widow Tiffins's ferret-like eyes. "You know Mr. Sampson always calls ma the old cat — 'specially after she threw that hot water on Lionel Clarence! " he explained, with unruffled composure. Lionel Clarence was on the point of heatedly challenging this strange statement, when his mother pressed another tea-biscuit on him, and bent a face of very vivid red over the lemonade pitcher, stirring viciously at the sugar in the bottom. But the yawning chasm had been bridged, the unsuspecting Widow Tiffins had caught up the broken threads of her discourse, and the Preacher himself had at least somewhat recovered himself before he reached the parlor door. From that time forward not the minutest LONELY TELLS A STOHY €« TWO 257 reference was ever made to the incident. Some latent strain of sympathy in Lonely forever restrained him from bringing it up. Once, and onct only, the eyes of amn and the hoj came together. In that glance two timelcM traditions, two ancient ctmiizatiens, focvmui and met. It was the barbarian Hdlenic Code looking into tile eyes a£ tlK Hebraic; and relttmntly h must be c a wfesac d that it was the gaze of rhe mature man thacisll before the gaze of the diminutive ytKing pagan. Kven two days later, when the Reverend K/.ra Samps<'>n caiw face to face with Master Lonely O'Malley, as the ia'ter, having drawn in a pungent mouthful ing its skull and cross- bones in the very face of the solemn old town of Chamboro, you would have pooh-poohed the idea, and even inwardly chortled a bit, for If ever there was a sober and staid and sleepily respectable old town it was Chamboro. And It ever there was a quiet and slumberous and unromantic stretch of water it was this same Watterson's Creek. For some twenty circuitous miles it wound sleepily down through gardens and orchards and farm-lands, to join the even sleepier river on which rafts of logs and strings of honest and hardworking scows, and even a bustling steamer or two, decorously came and went ~ "An' not one o' them carryin' so much as a boardm'-net ! " Piggie Brennan had exultingly noted. Dunng midsummer the waters of the nver were the alluring yellow of sweet stag- nation, except, of course, at the bend just below the slaughter-house, where the upper town swmiming-hole was. Here they were of a somewhat darker hue; but bless you water ,s water the world over ! And at one side of this swimming-iiole there was a big old wide-rooted buttonwood, which was just the THE GREYHOUND STEPS KOR l'H 263 thing for diving; and on rhc other side was a priceless mine of hhje clay, soft, 00/v, irre- sistible. Yet the argosies that floateii up ami down those staid and unruffled waters, it must be confessed, were chiefly cargoes of brick and sand and limestone. Even the Greyhound herself, in the days when she was still respectably known as the Ma^e Watson and had no thought, indeed, of ever flying the skull and cross-bones at her masthead, had journeyed under many an igno- minious burden of red brick and plastering sand. But for two long years, before drifting into those dark and evil habits which were to prove such an unlooked-for disgrace to her old age, the Maggie Watson had lain aban- doned, just under the railway bridge, with tadpoles and wrigglers disporting themselves between her battered decks, and Chanjboro's one cab-driver calmly and impudently using her as a platform whereon to wash down, of a Sunday morning, his imperishable old four- wheeler. Here, for two years, she had been gazed on passively yet regretfully. It was with the advent of Lonely that the beginning of the more a^ressive policy coin- tMOOCOPr RBOUmON TBT CHAtT (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 3) 264 LONELY O'MALLEY cided. Then, day by day, numerous horse- shoe nails worked at the heavy iron padlock that kept her a prisoner beside the piles of the old bridge. Here she was examined, and talked over, and even belabored as to her chain-bound stern and pried at as to her pon- derous bow. But still she clung tenaciously to her old mooring, while Chamboro's newly awakened dreams of piracy went unrealized. But in what land, since boy drew breath, can piracy be kept down ! It comes as implacably and mysteriously as the mumps or the measles. It 's an atavistic taint in the blood, a vagabondic diathesis — a regurgitation of savagery, inno- cently relieving our colic of civilization, and the sooner it breaks out and is over and done with the better ! And all of this brings me round to the pi- rates themselves. Yet who, indeed, would ever have suspected them ! Who could ever have foretold that weak little Willie Steiner, who daily took a spoonful of emulsion for the jam that came in its wake, was to dig three good feet of the pirate cave in the creek bank, hid- den away in the scrub willows, just above the Cemetery ! And who would ever have dreamed THE GREYHOUND STEPS FORTH 265 that the chubby-faced little Pinkie Ball, with a burst of energy that brought rivers of sweat out of his fat young body, had carried fence- LfTTLE PINKIE BALL CARRIED PENCE-BOARDS boards all the way from the Wilsons' orchard for li ' boarding-in and shoring-up of this same cave, whose roof had previously shown a fre- quent tendency to collapse on the heads of the startled pirate band, whenever in solemn con- 266 LONELY O'M ALLEY clave assembled ! Who would have imagined that Piggie Brennan, the hero of a hundred fights, now that he was daily to be taking his life in his hands, had secretly fallen to wearing sundry small gloves and bits of hair-ribbon under his copiously patched merino blouse ! And how was the Rector of All Saints to understand the trepidation of his son Lionel Clarence, already destined for the ministry (in his mother's eyes) when three prolonged owl-hoots followed by two low whistles came mysteriously from without the Rectory window of an evening, and turned the pink-tinted qui- et ess of the library into the gloom of a prison for one stifling and rebellious young heart ! Or who was to explain to the rotund old With- erspoon, the town constable, just why he was no longer kept busy putting out smu('nres in vacant lots and bonfires under wharves, and why there were no more Indian massacres on the Common, and no more of those strange circus exhibitions, which had threatened the destruction by fire of not a few of the more commodious barns and stables of Chamboro ! From the day, however, that Capt^n Lonely O'Malley and Pud Jones first discovered that THE GREYHOUND STEPS FORTH 267 the Ma^e Watson might be purchased for the sum of three dollars, cash down, a subtle change came over the youthful hearts of Cham- boro. The immensity of that sum, it is true, staggered the boys not a little. The following afternoon it was talked over in the cave. The boy who was already destined for the ministry, but was known of late beyond the precincts of the Rectory as " Slugger," had thoughtfully brought with him an ample jar of his mother's last year's pickled peaches, and while regaling themselves on this delicacy the entire party thrashed the matter of the Ma^ie Watson out to the bitter end. Pinkie Ball — most of whose pennies found their prompt way into Pratt's confectionery — saw no fun in wasting money on a pirate ship, when it ought to be taken by force of arms. " Who ever heard of pirates huyin' a boat, anyway ? " he demanded, contemptuously. " If we 're real pirates, why don't we go an' capture her ? " " Then s'posin' you go out and find some- thing for us to capture ! " answered the Captain, with the honor of his band to uphold. 268 LONELY O'MALLEY " What 's the mattei with buyin' her first," said Redney McWilliams, already elected First Mate, his utterance somewhat choked by an especially large and succulent peach, "and then givin' her away to old Sanderson, or somebody, and capturin' her back ? " The extremely aged gentleman to be thus honored, however, was so sickly and decrepit that it was a matter of history that his daughter cut up his meat for him ; and the suggestion was discarded as unworthy able-bodied pirates. " Well, there 's one thing," said Willie Steiner, through his pocket handkerchief ; *• I 'm sick o' this here cave. There 's nothin* funny about havin' a cold in the head all the time!" " You were crazy enough to git her built I " scoffed the Captain. " Well, but I 'd like to know where the fun is sleepin* in a cave when you 've got to have pains in your joints all the time !" " And I don't see much use in a place that chokes you up with jmoke every time you make a fire ! " objected Piggie Brennan. " And you 're not feelin' scart about bein* raided all the time, at sea — I mean out on rHE GREYHOUND STEPS FORTH 269 the Crick ! " said timorous Freddie Stevens. " Besides," he added, after a pause, " it does n't seem so much like stealin', when you come and take things with a ship ! " Freddie's conscience was troubling him be- cause of a pound-cake which certain rats had made away with, from the second shelf in Mrs. Stevens's pantry. " I think you 're making an uncommon pig of yourself over those peaches, Redney ! " interposed the Preacher's son. " You don't have to pay out good money for caves ! " said Pinkie, sadly. " It's too muddy and dark in here all the time, anyway ! " added Biff Perkins. "You weren't all talkin' that way about three weeks ago ! " said the Captain, as he strode back and forth, with one shoulder hunched up, and his arm over his chest. And so they squabbled on until a vote was taken on the question, and even Pinkie swung round with the majority, and it was unani- mously decided that the Maggie Watson should become the property of the gang. But from that day on, mind you, she was to be spoken of and known as the Greyhound, 270 LONELY O'MALLEY a compact which wp.s duly sworn to and elabor- ately signed for, in blood, along with sundry other items also duly laid down with equally impressive ceremonies. There was no time to be lost, they felt, for those halcyon days, the summer holidays, were already at hand. It was the season of blue skies and warm evenings and strange unrests, the season of lazy afternoons and disturbing dreams of (u-off things, th^ season when a passion for water and roving is born, when the world is big and wonderful and echoing with alluring voices, when the touch of shoe- leather is an abomination to the foot, and a garden-hoe is a sordid emblem of slavery. It was the time when the fat old constable grew more watchful and wary, when river-booms were unchained, and orchards were ravaged, and when young vagabonds, not two years out of skirts, rebelled against the cruel bondage of home life, and were apt to make for the woods to be Indians. But with the purchase of the Maggie Watson — there, it slipped out before I could stop it! — with the purchase of the Greyhound, all of these trivial things were forgotten, and THE GREYHOUND STEPS FORTH 271 a new and richer coloring tinted existence. For purchased she was, though just how, it would not do to question too closely.' It is only known that back yards and garrets and cellars were ransacked for bottles and rags and metals and bones, scoured and ransacked as they had never been scoured and ransacked before, that early vegetables were mysteriously peddled about the foreign parts of the town, that copper bottoms were deftly taken from boilers which had, indeed, merely been laid aside for repairs, and that even flatirons had been known to disappear as though by magic. Sunday pennies that should have gone to the clothing of the heathen were grimly held back. Bills were peddled, and errands were run with an alacrity never before discovered in the small « How Lonely rsdsed a goodly portion of this purchase money is, perhaps, worthy of passing note. He tooii a contract from Judge Eby to remove from a driveway several cwdsof field-stone — a task of many days for one boy alone. Lonely, however, having organized a fire brigade among the gang, built a good-sized bonfire in the nearby ditch, — and the zealous brigade, in feverish and deter- mined attempts to smother this conflagratiiHi, seized on the nearest stones, and pcrfaroed a week's work with' ut even knowing it ! 27a LONELY O'MALLEY boy of Chamboro. Pet rabbits and pigeons were sorrowfully barter d away, — three differ- ent times was the faithful Gilead sold and resold, — and at last it all ended in the transfer — under the greatest secrecy — of the Grey- hound to her new owners. She was takci; OLEMTtY POLED UP WATTERSOn's CREEK one quiet moonlight night from the shadows of the old railway bridge, and as silently poled up Watterson's Creek to a screening clump of willows, not more than an owl's hoot from the cave itself. That moonlight migration marked the Great Divide in the life of the Maggie Watson. Yet before she could become the Greyhound, THE GREYHOUND STEPS FORTH 273 great changes had to take place. Bulwarks had to be built up around her, as befitted a fight- ing craft. In her stern a cabin had to be con- structed, and in doing this the Captain in- sisted that the rudder-stock be lengthened, so that while handling the tiller he should be able to stand grandiosely exalted on that little upper deck of the cabin roof. These additions, it must be explained, gave to the Greyhound the ponderous statelincss of a Spanish galleon. The pirates later tried to do away with this impression of heaviness by the angle at which they set up the Grey- hound's masts. But rake these two masts as devilishly and debonairly as they could, the old-time purveyor of brick and sand, natur- ally enough, refused to shake off her look of phlegmatic and even sullen ponderosity. And when her first sailing test came about, she not only refused most stubbornly to respond to the tiller, but even in the fiercest gale of wind loomed slowly and solemnly onward, with the funereal stateliness of a coal barge. Still not despairing, her crew went lustily to work and rigged her up with oars, four on a side, somewhat after the fashion of 274 LONELY O'MALLEY a Venetian galleass. Once under way, and es- pecially when the Captain and the First Mate assisted with poles from the stern, she moved at a surprisingly brisk rate of speed, although it did rake a power of churning and straining to get her started. " But won't she be a peach for rammin' ! *' cried her Captain, joyously, as he watched her loggy side crush an orange-crate i^nst a boom-end. It was only the pirates themselves who ever knew just what this transformation entailed. What sly dismantling of fences and chicken- coops ! What purloining of screws and nails and sca.itlings and odds and ends of boards. What nail-bereft woodsheds that leaned awry ; what fences that stood suddenly bare and skeleton-like ; what sidewalks that tripped you up quite unexpectedly, because of an unwhole- some absence of spikes ; what soulless rend- ing of good linen sheets for the making of sails, what strange disappearings of clothes- lines for the manufacture of rigging! And what sawing and hammering and pounding and blistering of hands and bruising of thumbs, before it was all brought about ! THE GREYHOl Nl) STEPS FORTH 17s But even mo«- momentous than all this was the arming and provisioning; of th.- Circy- hound. It was the latter undertaking that n-AMDWC OIIANDI08ELY EXAtTED OM THAT LITTLE UPPER 276 LONELY O'MALLEY pro?;ressed so spasmodically, for the more appetizing the acquired delicacy, it seemed, the more mysteriously rapid its disappearance. The things that came to hand most readily were the very things least wanted. Freddie Stevens, for instance, found no apparent difficulty in supplying an unlimited amount of chow-chow and sweet pickle, but where were they to look for more substantial dishes with which to enjoy such delicious condiment ? — though it must be admitted that three live chickens had squawked their last within the Greyhound's darkened cabin ! An untried cook, however, had neglected to remove more than the feath- ers from the prize, with a result that they were nibbled at somewhat disdainfully, Piggie Brennan being the only member of the crew who could go in for them with any gusto. A sort of Nemesis, indeed, seemed forever on the heels of those brave young pirates. If four custard pies mysteriously disappeared fi'om a pantry window, they vanished with even greater mystery when once brought aboard the Greyhound. If there was a pound of gingerbread to be eaten, the Captain called THE GREYHOUND STEPS FORTH ?; ; in vain for men to man his ship. If there was so much as a jelly-roll in the provision chest, you were sure to find the voracious First Mate absent from his post. The final result was that l>oth Captsun and crew had to fall back on early harvest apples and an occasional mess of boiled potatoes, garnered from water- side gardens when the owners thereof were wrapt in sweetly unconscious sluaiber. When the apples were over-green, they were baked, or rather half-baked, in the old cook-stove whose three rusty joints of purloined stove- pipe protruded uncommonly like the muzzle of a six-inch gun from the port side of the Greyhound's cabin. Not that this gallant ship did not carry arms more deadly ! Every man who walked her decks was armed, if not with sling-shot and bow and arrow, at least with a key gun. If you have never used or known a key gun, of course you cannot understand just how deadly it is. 'T is made from an old key, hol- low of shank, and the bigger the key the better. A touch-hole is supplied by filing through to the inner end of the hollow, a few grains of priming powder are sprinkled on this 278 LONELY O'MALLEY touch-hole, and when well filled and aimed, it has been known to hit a target six good paces off! Its one disadvantage, however, was the frequency, I might say the inevitability, with which it burned your fingers. Yet this did not shatter in the pirates that mystic love of fire- arms and powder which burns in the pagan breast of every young boy. To describe it, or to account for it, is impossible. Love of woman may come later; love of gold may eventually supplant it. But never can the most golden hair or the most golden hoard re-awaken that first, fierce, primal thrill which comes of beholding the smoke-stained grim- ness of a secretly acquired old rabbit-gun ! Besides his key gun, which swung from almost every pirate's belt, their arsenal could boast of two bullet-moulds, several feet of lead piping, a Flaubert rifle, out of order, an air- gun, six sling-shots, two hatchets, and three broken garden-rakes, which were to serve as boarding-irons, to say nothing of several bot- tles filled with gunpowder and rigged with dangerously swift-burning fuses of home manu- facture. Most of this gunpowder, I may add, had been illicitly secured by Binney Penny- THE GREYHOUND STEPS FORTH 279 father, whose ^ther was a veteran duck- shooter ; and had involved the disgorging of several hundred loaded cartridges, — a deed BACKED BY A MASKED AND SCOWLING MAN for which Binney was doled out fit and proper punishment many months later. Nor must we overlook the brass cannon — gun and car- riage weighing fully three pounds — even though sagely and securely spiked by a wise ago LONELY O'MALLEY parent before it ever came into the possession of the pirates. It frowned down from the bow of the Greyhound in a manner most menac- ing, however, and more than one little girl had been known to turn pale when it was held threateningly against her palpitating bodice, backed by a masked and scowling man de- manding if she had no more than those three apples in her pocket ! And, on the whole, the cup of happiness of our pirates would have been full to overflow- ing, but for one thing. And that was the sad fact that the Greyhound was given to leak- ing so ungallantly. They had nailed up her rents, they had plugged and caulked her cracks with oakun^, and had ruined a dozen suits of clothes in painting her with pitch and t^r and red lead. But still she leaked. All through her meteoric career in fact, she never knew what it meant to possess a tight bottom. Day and night, when afloat, a man had to be stationed at her pumps (secretly appropriated from the McWilliams's cistern) ; and many were the miseries and heartburnings this perpetual and irremediable failing gave rise to among her saddened crew. THE GREYHOUND STEPS FORTH 281 Captain Lonely O'Malley stoutly main- tained, however, that all pirate ships had to leak, especially after they 'd been scuttled three or four times ! To Annie Eliza {Groiuittg Someivhat OUish) Ah, Mistress Annie, though you throw Each girlhood game away, I see, aUt:, '/ will come to pass That othtr games you 'II play ! Novo you *ve outgrown yiur skipping-rope. And your last lisp or two. By sterner name will go this game Tour teats have given you ! (' Tteill not be dolls and dishes. Dear, For you, alack-aday. So wise must grow that you 'II soon throw Mere toys — and me — am ay ! ) Tou 'II break each cup and tea- thing up, — Tou 'II lose your taste for tarts. And as you 've played with dishes. Dear, Too soon you 'II play with hearts ! CHAPTER X In which certain Pirates are unexpectedly pursued IT was a sultry, close day in July, and even old Cap'n Sands, who had seen the sun beat down on Chamboro, on and oft', for some seventy long years, could recollect no hotter weather. " Leastaways, Henery," he qualified, " fer this time o' the year ! " In this old Cap'n Steiner, mopping his brow with slightly palsied hand, was not inclined to agree. There was a day in Seventy-Nine, he held, that had seemed a sight hotter to him — the Sunday week after the sawmill was burned and Bill Rankin's wife was taken with a stroke on the Market Square, and the whole town said it was a touch o' sun. "Well, right here suits me well 'nough ! " said old Cap'n Sands, placidly. He was the more corpulent of the two, and he fanned himself languidly with his well-worn panama hat. They were seated in the shade of the maples on the Common, that stretch of open a86 LONELY O'MALLEY green between Watterson's Creek and the river, gazing ruminatively down the sweep of shimmering yellow water toward the far-off freedom of the Great Lakes — the wider seas they had braved and known for so many years. Indeed, forty summers before, they had both had a hand in the planting of the very trees under which they sat dreaming autumnly of old times and old friends. This had long been their fevorite seat, under the useless old cannon, just at the point of the Common, from which no craft creeping up or down the river could escape their sharp old eyes. And they knew every craft that sailed those waters, from dug-out to excursion steamer, and had known some of them for half a century. When, therefore, Cap'n Steiner's eye wan- dered up the glazed and mercury-like surface of Watterson's Creek that hot morning, and beheld an utterly unknown craft creeping down towards the river, he drew Cap'n Sands's startled attention to that fact, and to- gether the two old cronies hobbled down to the dilapidated Common Whurf, and leaning on their sticks, looked anxiously out at this PIRATES ARE PURSUED 287 strange vessel, each with his keen eyes shaded by a sHghtly unsteady hand. " Kin you recollect that craft, Silas ? ** asked Cap'n Sands. UN YOU KECOLLECT THAT CRAFT, SltAS 288 I.ONELY O'MALLEY Cap'n Steiner looked again, and waited for some time before he answered. While he waited the strange, dark craft crept down closer and closer to the Common Dock. Cap'n Sands was studying her ensign through his highly polished old marine glass. ** Seems to lie uncommon low in the water ! " commented Cap'n Steiner. **No, Henery, 1 can't say as I 've seen her a-fore ! " She swept still closer. Then, i^inst the glare of the sun, they made out high on the roof of her cabin the armed and befeathered form of the Captain, with his tiller firmly in his hand, his feet planted well apart. A minute later they caught the glitter of the brass cannon in her bow. Near by paced the First Mate, every now and then sweep- ing the horizon with his glass, surreptitiously munching at a ginger-snap. Then the two startled old captains made out eig;ht small boys — eight small boys tugging and pulling at eight unwieldly and strangely shaped sweep-oars. Their faces were red and wet, and their mouths were oddly puckered up. Beside them, as though prepared for instant use, unmistakably lay firearms and boarding-irons. PIRATES ARE PURSUED 289 As the strange ship drew still closer the two silent watchers made out a dashing turkey- feather in the hat of each member of the crew. They also discerned that the Captain's face wore a dark and unchanging scowl, and that his voice was unnecessarily hoarse as he called out his word of command. The two old captains exchanged glances. «« Hail 'em, Henery ! " said Cap'n Stciner, shaking a bit. Cap'n Sands raised his hand to his mouth, and let forth an old-time bellow. " Ship a-hoy ! W at ship is that ? " Eight startled oars hung poised in the air. There was a hurried consultation on board. Two heads in particular tried to hide them- selves behind the bulwarks. Was it right for pirates to say just "ho and what they were ? "Why, bless my soul! If that ain't my Sarah's boy! My young grandson, sir, and look at him ! And his mother 't nally sayin' he's too delicate in the chest to pick the potato-bugs ofF'n the vines ! " It was Cap'n Steiner who spoke, blinking down at his weakling offspring with startled 290 LONELY O'MALLEY eyes. Cap'n Sands himself suddenly grew serious of face, and with his stick pointed out a certain small boy with a very red face, who dropped his oar for a moment to wipe a very moist forehead with a partly roUed-up gingham shirt-sleeve. " Why, I 'm an old sinner if there ain't Charlie Ball's boy ! And Charlie jus* sayin' over to Rankin's how that boy o' his was born tired ! " " An' on seek a day ! " exploded the other old seaman, overcome. Before they had recovered from their shock the Greyhound slipped silently and mysteri- ously away, as all pirate ships should, no matter how flattering such salutations may seem, coming as they did from the oldest sea-dog in all Chamboro. Cap'n Steiner stood leaning on his cane, gazing after them pensively. Cap'n Sands at first showed signs of becoming suddenly apo- plectic, growing purplish about the gills and shaking with some silent and concealed emo- tion as he pounded his stick on the planks of the old dock. Then he swore softly, many times, and looked in the wake of the disappear- PIRATES ARE PURSUED 29 » ing vessel. A pensive shadow flitted across his leonine old eyes. « Henery, as I 'm an old sinner, them be pirates — out an' out pirates ! " And again mirth overcame him, and he struggled with a tendency to choke, and wagged his head helplessly from side to side. Then he stopped and mopped his brow. « And sech a day, Henery, sech a day ! " And still again the old stick smote the planks as his eye followed the gyrations of eight unwieldy sweep-oars, silhouetted against the glaring shimmer of the water. The two old men slowly climbed the bank once more, puffing back to their seats under the shade of the maples. " Pirates they be, Silas ! " assented the other, almost sorrowfully. " Armed to th* teeth, an* a-lookin' for something to capture ! " He gazed regretfully after the odd little black craft. A leaf or two, untimely withered, drifted lazily down from the green boughs above their heads. " Mind them days, Silas? Mind them days, when ive was up to such jinks ? " he asked, musingly. 292 LONELY O'MALLEY " He-he-he ! Do I mind em, Henery ; do I mind 'em? Well, now, I guess I ainU forgittin' them doin's ! An' d* you mind the time we captured little Katie Wilson, and were a-goin' to hold her for ransom ? He-he-he ! " " That was a powerful energetic wallopin' old man Wilson was a-givin' us for it, too ! " There was a silence, and a song-sparrow sang thinly from one of the far-off maples. " D' you mind, Silas, what a purty girl Katie was, them days ? " Cap'n Sands's hands were under the tail of his alpaca coat^ and he sneezed boisterously. " Yes, an uncommon purty girl, Katie ! An* dead this twenty years, Henery, dead this twenty years ! " " You come and cut me out there, you old dog! Mind how she got mifty, 'bout my sayin* she was a purty poor-lookin' captive and ought to spruce up and wash some o' that taffy off *n her face ! " Mind, too, how she got just a leetle scart, first, when we captured her and were a-tellin* her she was goin* to be held for ransom ? And what a power o' bawlin' she did a-fore we started feedin' her on horehound taffy?" PIRATES ARE PURSUED 293 "Dead this twenty odd years, Silas!" repeated the other, reminiscently. "That's so — that's so!" said Cap'n Steiner, softly, listening to the distant song- sparrow. " A purty girl, Katie ! " The two old heads wagged together, silently. " Them were great days, Silas ! " Silas was thinking of certain things lost in the maze of old memories, and did not answer. Then he looked down at the river once more, — the river that ran with so many memories for him, and the expression ot his wrinkled old face changed again. He leaned closer to his companion, and whispered something in his ear, — something at which Cap'n Sands chuckled and shook, even while wagging his head disapprovingly. " Ain't we just a leetle on in years for them sort o' jinks, "'silas?" he asked, in mild dis- sent. For answer he was given a playful dig m the ribs, "Tut! tut! What's an odd year or two? It *d limber us up a bit, Henery ! " « Mebbe ! " said the other, weakly. 294 LONELY O'MALLEY "Think wc ain't spry enough ? " "I ain't known a bed of sickness this twentjr-eight years past, Silas Steiner ! " re- torted the other. Cap'n Steiner, what with his rheumatism and his mid-winter bronchitis, could make no such boast But his spirit was indomitable. Then let 's git after them young rapscal- lions ! " " A purt-e-e-ee hot day, ain't it, Silas ? " was the other's last feeble objection, as Cap'n Steiner linked an arm through his own and the two hobbled hastily and yet secretively across the Common, and with numerous sly (diggings of ribs and holding of sides crept down Thames Street. Once inside Cap'n Steiner's front gate, they circled cautiously through the shadowy orchard, like two guilty children, dodging from tree to tree and finding it no easy matter to sneak past the coldly inquisitive eye of Miss Arabella, busy gathering a mess of butter-beans for the Widow Starbottle, from the Captain's trim little garden. Just at the foot of this garden, which sloped gently down to the river's edge, the old PIRATES ARE PURSUED 295 Captain kept that one stanch and trusty friend, his rowboat. Year after year it re- mained a vivid and spotless green, painted twice a season by his own scrupulous hand. Just why it was called the Katie Wilson, however, none of the younger generation of Chamboro ever knew. That was a thing of many years ago, an echo of old and far-off affairs, unknown to the busy adventurers of a ruthless present. They only knew that it was in this rowboat that the cheery old Captain, every Sunday afternoon when the weather was fine, made his way for a laborious mile and a half up the river, to Colonel Taylor's place, where the two old-timers sat in the summer-house and partook smackingly of a bottle of the Colonel's well-aged port wine, reputed to have mellowed \n a carefully guarded cellar since the time the Taylor femily first tame out to the New World. On his little landing-wharf, of two spotlessly painted planks, Cap'n Steiner took off and folded up very neatly his white alpaca coat. This he tucked away carefully in the bow of the boat, and beside it placed even more care- 296 LONELY 0*MALLEY folly that ponderous old muzzle-loader from which more than one Chamboro youth of predatory tendencies had tasted the bitter sting of rock-salt, mostly about early apple-time, — and especially when the Captain's graft of Brandywine Pears on his Strawberry Reds showed the right d^ree of succulence. Then, with not a little caution, and some stiffness of limb, Cap'n Sands stepped into the Katie Wilson and dropried, perhaps a little unexpectedly, down into her comfortable wicker-backed stern seat. " There we be ! " cried Cap'n Steiner, leap- ing nimbly aboard. But the Katie Wilson was unused to such unlooked for agility. She careened and dipped, and for a critical moment held the old Captain balanced on his toes, ap- parently undecided whether to dive headlong into the water, or drop rather shamefaced down into his seat. Once comfortably settled, how- ever, the green boat was pushed stealthily off from shore, and with a face that might almost be said to wear a scowl of dark and resolute purpose old Cap'n Sands gave a word or two of command, pulled the little tiller-cord, and swung their craft round in pursuit of that PIRATES ARE PURSUED 297 undreaming demon of the deep, the Grey- hound ! "The young limbs — he-he, we'll show *em, eh, Silas!" he chuckled as he watched the steady and regular rise and fall of the other's neatly painted little green oars. *' We Ul show A Grown-Vfs Toast Here 'j to each Girl of Long Agtt Once loved, and lost, alack. Just big enough, or iaJ enough, T$ itpe a ieggur beuk! II / toast the True Love, and the Last, The oaiHtliest, and the Worst: But here '/ /• Her, aertjs the years. We kissed emi hvel the first ! CHAPTER XI In which the Greyhound is ignominious fy overhauled DEVIOUSLY, and in dark ways, docs Destiny move. Why was it, that serenest and quietest of days, under a dome of July's most tranquil azure, that there was no befriend- ing voice to warn Mistress Pauline Augusta Persons of the danger that hung over her, of the calamity that awaited her ? Three times, that morning, she had been solemnly wedded to Curly Persons, the cocker spaniel, before an altar erected for the purpose behind the chicken-coop. After each ceremony she had generously taken her somewhat restive and altogether unimpressed bridegroom for an extended wedding-tour, around the block, in the gardener's wheelbarrow. Then, tiring of courtship so one-sided, she had returned to her three dirty and battered dolls, and wandering down to that forbidden but well-loved pile of sawdust just below the ice-house, was happily engaged in conduct- ing funeral services, crooning brokenly to 3oa LONELY O'MALLEY herself as she paired the last sod down over each of her sadly chipped and late-departed children. While she still bent with much satisfaction over those three little mounds in the sawdust, and was carefully erecting a tombstone of cedar shingle to the memory of each of her lost ones, a pair of small but grotesquely tattooed arms were suddenly thrust round her plump waist, and a bold young pirate bore her struggling and kicking form to the deck of the waiting Greyhound. " Push off, men ! " cried the Captain, ner- vously, yet huskily, as he clambered over the bulwarks with considerable difficulty, Pauline Augusta being decidedly round and plump of figure. Here at last was an adventure worthy of their steel. Here was something worth cap- turing. Pauline Augusta was the Mayor's daughter, and as such ought to bring a hand- some sum in ransom money. But they had not drifted out to midstream before that young lady b^an to realize just what was happening to her. As she beheld the Greyhound slowly glide farther away from THE GREYHOUND OVERHATTLED 303 her home territory, and as she looked into the dark visages that surrounded her, she put two chubby hands up to her eyes and began to BORE HER, STRUGGLING AND KICKING bawl, and bawl with a vigor that startled and disconcerted even the bold pirates them- selves. The First Mate ran in alarm to the pro- . iii I m 304 LONELY O'MALLEY vision-chest and held temptingly out before her a large pot of currant jelly, and, what was to him, a heart-breaking slice of seedcake. But still Pauline Augusta bawled. Then preserved cherries were shown her, and pickled walnuts were held closely under her nose, that she might perchance smell of their deliciously pungent odor, and forget her tears. But still she bawled, louder than before. It was no time for half measures. The Second Mate was for putting her in irons, and locking her down in the cabin. But the First Mate was of the opinion she would begin breaking things there, and like as not eat everything up on them ; and then where would they be ? — especially if they had to stand a long pursuit, or the ransom wasn't paid right off ! The crew looked furtively up and down the river. It was a dangerous game they were playing. " Here, you," said the Captain, in desper- ation. " We *re pirates, and if you don't stop that yellin' we *li hang your father ! Then we '11 hang your mother, as well ; and if that don't do any good, we '11 hang the servant girl, THE GREYHOUND OVERHAULED 305 and the gardener, and the — the whole lot o' you! " Better hang her^ and right now ! " growled Pud Jones. At that Pauline Augusta broke out with renewed vigor. Her lusty cries went echoing from bank to bank, and soon brought wonder- ing women to open doorways, and barking dogs to the water's edge, and open-mouthed children to the top of the river slope. The Captain gazed up and down the river, for once nettled and undecided. " I guess, men, we 'd better make for Ran- kin's Woods," he said, hesitatingly, looking with troubled eyes at the weeping figure of Pauline Augusta. " O-o-o-h ! O-o-o-oh ! I wish I was home ! I want to go home ! " bawled the frightened child perversely. " An* I wish you was home too 1 " said the Captain, devoutly. For who ever heard of a captive carrying on in that silly way ? There was n't a pirate story ever written that had any bawling in it ! And Lonely tried to explain to her that on the payment of two thousand dollars in gold she 3o6 LONELY O'MALLEY was to be promptly handed over to her parents once more. He even intimated, for her fiirther comfort, that any dastard that spoke in aught but gentle words to her should promptly swing from a yardarm. All this Pauline Augusta in no way under- stood; but while she was wearing her grief away, and was beginning to smell with slightly more attentive nose at the many delectable things with which her captors had surrounded her, the old town of Chamboro was left in the well-churned wake of the Greyhound, and the midsummer loneliness of the upper river lay before them. Suddenly one of the panting rowers dropped his oar. " Say, you, we 're bein* chased I " he cried, shrilly. And twenty-two round and startled ey^s were turned in the direction of his gaze, where the nose of a femiliar-looking green boat crept slowly out from the nearest point. " Why, there 's Grandpa Steiner ! " said one of the oarsmen, weakly. Pauline Augusta's expiring sobs were com- pletely stilled. All eyes watched the green boat intently. THE GREYHOUND OVERHAULED 307 "An* there's old Cap'n Sands!" cried Pinkie Ball, with openly disturbed counte- nance. « Say, Lonely, don't you think they 're after us?" asked one of the crew, irreverently, of his Captain. " Order, there, men ! " thundered the Cap- tain ; still looking out of the tail of his eye, however, at the approaching green boat. " I say we sneak for Rankin's Woods," suggested Redney McWilUams. The Captain pulled his hat lower over his brow, and looked at his men with unspeakable scorn. A fine idea had come to him. « If this ship is goin' to be taken, there 's only one thing to do ! She 's got to be scuttled, and sent to the bottom ! " It sounded so grandiloquently fine that for a moment or two it smothered all criticism. « Aw, what 's the use o' talkin' that way. Lonely ? Did n't we have to pay three dollars for her — and sweat precious hard for it, too — and have n't we been workin' hard enough riggin' her up, ever since ? " It was Piggie Brennan who lodged this sin- cere but unofficial complaint. 3o8 LONELY O'MALLEY " Don't brandy words with me ! " retorted the Captain, with great dignity. " Brandy," as a verb, was one of those words peculiarly his own. "And where '11 we git hold of another boat?" demanded BifF Perkins. "And think of all that good grub bcin* wasted ! " dolefully went on Pi^e Brennan. Several craven spirits even dropped their oars, and attempted to desert their posts. " Stand by your oars ! " roared the Captain, as loudly as an uncommonly tight belt would permit. And one by one the crew went reluc- tantly back. In the mean time, foot by foot, the green boat was bearing down on them. "Stand by there. Greyhound!" cried a shrill old voice suddenly. How Capttun and crew thrilled with some- thing that was more than mere fear at those wonderful and historic-sounding words, — " Stand by there ! " — How many a Spanish Main skipper had hearkened to the same dire command, in days gone by! It was worth going through, even though they vatre cap^ tured and bound, in the end, thought Lonely, with his keen sense for dramatic values. He THE GREYHOUND OVERHAULED 309 strode grandly back and forth on his cabin roof, intoxicated with the magnificence of the situation. " Now, men," he cried, with airy defiance, his hand on his hip, " now, men, show *em a clean pair o' heels I " And eight anxious-eyed youngsters doubled up and tugged at their oars until eight small faces were a uniform crimson. " It *s all right for you up there to talk that way, Lonely O'Malley, but I tell you I 'm gittin' water-blisters ! " complained the rebellious Dode Johnson, between strokes. "Together, men!" cried Lonely, drunk- enly, inwardly bemoaning the craven spirit of his crew. " If you was doin' a little of this rowin', you wouldn't feel so gay!" said Biff Perkins, sulkily. " Stend by there. Greyhound, or we '11 put a ball into you!" cried the pursuers once more. "Say, Piggie, do you think they're just foolin' ? " asked one of the ci v, a little tremu- lously. Piggie was busy with the pump, and did not have bream to answer. 310 LONELY O'MALLEY By this time the enemy was alongside. For the first time the Captain and crew of the Grey- hound saw that the privateer was really and truly armed. " Say, Lonely, had n't we better pull down that silly skull and cross-bones ? " su^ested Billie Steiner. " Remember your oaths, men ! " was the Captain's unrelenting reply. The crew of the Greyhound would have fled in a body, had flight been possible. As it was, eight stalwart seamen stopped rowing, and looked with unhappy eyes at the enemy on their gunwale. " Prepare for boarding ! " said old Cap'n Steiner, hoarsely. " Ay, iy, sir ! ** answered Cap'n Sands. The green nose of the Katie Wilson bumped the sturdy side of the Greyhound amidships, whereat the entire crew of the latter bolted for their cabin, locking themselves se- curely in and peering with anxious faces from the little square window in its side. Cap'n Sands made use of the crook in his walking-stick as a boarding-iron, while his fel- low privateer made fast the little boat. Then i THE GREYHOUND OVERHAULED 311 the two old men climbed none too nimbly on board. It had been a stiff row, and the noon- day sun hung hot and relentless over the quiet river. Together the boarding party of two saluted, gravely and gallantly. Captain Lonely O'Malley of the good ship Greyhound gazed indignantly after his cow- ardly crew. " Cow'rdy custards ! *' he muttered, under his breath. Then he turned to his captors, with his arms folded over his chest. " Well, sirs, what will you ? " he demanded, drawing the peak of his cap down, and him- self up. That, he remembered, was always the way they said it. " This good ship, sir, by right of capture 1 " answered Cap'h Steiner, saluting once more. " And also this fair lady ! " added Cap'n Sands, with an irrepressible titter, turning pompously to Pauline Augusta, who stood looking on, with slightly distended mouth. " And two thousand bars of Spanish gold ! " added the other old Captain. The master of the Greyhound flushed with embarrassment. Ii 312 LONELY O'MALLEY " I guess wc ain't got any gold," he con- fessed, bashfully. But there 's pickled wal- nuts and jelly ! " Pi^e Brennan, meanwhile, repenting of his flight, had edged back to his Captain, and stood with woe-begone face at the thought of such confiscation. The two old sea-dogs went forward to con- sult. " By gad, Silas, I 'm a-thinkin' we never did that thing better, in our own day ! ** It was Cap'n Sands who spoke thus mag- nanimously. Cap'n Steiner was rubbing a barked leg, ruefully. He was feeling too peevish, at the moment, to agree with the statement. Far away, a long mile down the hot river, the one o'clock whistle sounded from the saw- mill. It was like a school-bell to the ears of truants. The two old Captains started up, and looked at each other half ^uiltily. "And Miss Ai ila is gittin' to be that naggy-minded, when I'm a bit late for dinner !" Cap'n Steiner lamented. " And me, egad, with Lawyer Martin to see THE GREYHOUND OVERHAULED 313 about that new Rankin lease ! " said Cap'n Sands, unhappily. " Better be pikin' back, had n't we, Hen- ery?" " I guess we had, Silas, guess we had ! But it does come kind o' hard, leavin' all this booty ! " Then Captain Lonely O'Malley of the Grey- hound strode forward with a suggestion to make. Tnsomuch as the lady they carried as captive was the daughter of the Mayor of Chamboro, and was being held for a ransom of two thousand dollars in gold (and had already eaten forty cents* worth of provisions since coming on board, interposed Piggie Brennan), they, the Captain and crew of the Greyhound, were willing to surrender to their captors all claim to this said lady, on condition that no member of the crew of the said Greyhound should suffer aught of curtailment of his nat- ural life or liberty 1 This, after some show of reluctance, was impatiently agreed to, and Captain O'Malley retired to draw up the necessary paper. The two old sea-dogs and Pauline Augusta clambered down into the little green boat, LONELY O'MALLEY each and all of them thinking sordidly of dinner, rather than of further adventures on the high seas. A PAPER, SIGNED IN RED They were just on the point of casting off when the commander of the Greyhound appeared on deck, sucking his arm. In his hand he held a paper, signed in red, which he gravely handed down to Cap'n Steiner. THE GREYHOUND OVERHAULED 315 And even then Cap'n Steiner did n't seem to remember and understand. He was, in fact, beginning to feel uncommonly tired and cross. ** It has to be signed, sir," explained the commander of the Greyhound. " Has to be signed, in blood ! " "Oh, be off with you — you young rap- scallion!" said Cap'n Sands, irascibly, for he too was beginning to feel strange aches and pangs. " Be off with you, you young limb ! " Then he added fretfully : " I tell you, Silas, I *m a-goin' to be a hull hour and a half late for dinner ! " Going home he settled back more comfort- ably in the stern seat, and tried to get a bit of a cat-nap, lulled by the ripple of the water against the drifting green bow of the little boat. "I guess we do be a leetle on in years, mebbe, for them kind o' jinks," said Cap'n Steiner, plaintively, tugging and puffing at his oars. " Jus' a leetle on in years ! " he repeated, with a ponderous sigh, as they drew in under the cool and heavy shadows of the old syca- mores. A Smmn for the l^cry Tomig If the Adam tn us ordains That we ca**t be eternaily good. Then bt us be kindtf at least, my sen. As devil tr saint , we sbtuld! II Tbo^ the heit of us wander at times Fr«m the path that is narrow and straight, Te be hmest in Sin, as in Saintliness, sir, mpes a half it off the slate! CHAPTKR XII /« which the Biter is somewhat bitten THE pirates of Watterson's Creek sat about the deck of the Greyhound, moodily flinging apple-cores into the stream. Their last ounce of mullein-leaf and Indian tobacco had been smoked away. A spirit of unrest had crept over the idle and impatient crew, as they waited the return of Pinkie Ball. That worthy had volunteered to purloin from an unsuspecting mother's sewing-room a whole rattan rocking-chair, which, carefully unwoven and cut up, ought to supply the crew of the Greyhound with smoking-material for at least a week to come. The pirates had been on an extended and enervating cruise of several hours, up the river, and were now anchored in midstream, as a precautionary measure against sudden attack, just above the shadow of the old rail- way bridge. A long and wavering line of cores, punctuated here and there by malignantly pale watermelon rinds, drifted slowly down with 320 LONELY O'MALLEY the languid current, and attested to the suc- cess of their raid on Farmer Quinn's apple orchard. But still the pirates were unhappy. The Greyhound had not proved a success ; and the rainbow tints had gone out of their piratical dreams. For a week eight sad-eyed small boys had been limping and crawling about Cham- boro with the bent backs and the halting gait of octogenarians. " The trouble with this old thing is," said Redney McWilliams, with considerable dis- gust, " she ain't got no speed ! " He spat through his teeth deliberately, on one of those little piles of sand which lay heaped upon the deck, with great forethought, i^nst the time when the Greyhound's timbers might become slippery with blood. " Rowin' ain't such fun, either 1 " added Bilf Perkins, looking pensively at the water- blisters on his hands. The Captain was deep in thought. That fact you could tell by the way his arms were folded across his chest, and by the unusually heavy scowl that darkened his freckled brow. « Men," he said, presently, striding back THE BITER BITTEN 321 and forth while he spoke, " men, we 've got to have a engine for this ship ! " Eight oar-wielding galley-slaves sat up and gazed at one another in open-mouthed amaze- ment. Of course ; an engine was just the thing ! Why hadn't some one ::hought of it before? But doubts began to suggest themselves. " Then we can have an awning put up," continued the Captain, airily, "and just sit there in the shade and go steamin' around and capture whatever we like. Then I guess we won't be hearin' so much aboot water-blisters and sore hands and all that stuff! " Lonely had tried in vain, weeks before, to instill Spartan views into his crew. He had eloquently advised that they all harden them- selves, first by sleeping on broken bricks, then by drinking only muddy water, and by eating things uncooked as often as possible. "An' we could have a whistle, too, could n't we ? " piped up little Binney Pennyfather, the youngest of the crew. " Cert ! " said the Captain. " And could make a swell after us, like the Lone Star ! " " Course ! " said the Captain. 322 LONELY O'MALLEY That the Greyhound could ever leave a swell behind her was too much for the credul- ity of her labor-worn crew. " Huh ! that 's all nice enough, talkin' big that way ! But where 's the engine comin' from ? " demanded Billie Steiner. " Where *d these apples come from ? " asked his laconic Captain. " Off apple-trees," growled BilHe. Then a spirit of gentle sarcasm crept over him. " Any of you fellows seen any steam-engines growin' on apple-trees up your way ? " Billie, together with the First Mate, had partaken somewhat too generously of unripe watermelon, and a dolorous stomach-ache tended to make him rather fretful. " You ain't fit to be on a pirate ship I " said his worthy Captain. « I wish I was n't ! " retorted Billie. " So do I," said the First Mate, dejectedly, as he returned fi*om a fioiitless inspection of the provision-chest. " If there was something to eat about a steam-engine, I guess Piggie *d be barkin' on the other side of the fence ! " commented Pud Jones. THE BITER BITTEN 323 The only reply to this was an apple-core that stirred the turkey-feather stuck bristlingly in Pud 's pirate hat. As the Captain strode perplexedly back and forth across his deck a familiar sound smote on his ears. He clambered up on his cabin roof, and peered down into the shimmering river-distance, with a face illumined. It was the Lone Star, Chamboro's one per- manent steamer, coughing and churning and wheezing upstream, with a small raft of logs at her heels. And at the sight of her every member of that crew understood just what his Captain's thoughts had been! The Greyhound had found an enemy worthy of her mettle. There was something intoxicating in the thought of ever taking a prize so ponderous. Yet every mau on the Greyhound knew there was no other craft propelled by steam in those waters, — with the exception, of course, of the great excursion steamer that came up the river twice every week. But the excursion steamer, for the time being, at any rate, was out of the question. " Golly, Lonely ! " said Pud Jones, fasci- 324 LONELY O'MALLEY nated and yet overawed at the thought, " un't she a pretty big steamer for us kids to talk about capturin' ? " The pirate Captain looked down at the Lone Star contemptuously. " We 've got to have her, men ! " he said, relentlessly. They saw the wheelsman push off from her in a punt, and scull about picking up loose logs, where his boom had disjointed. This left only old Brown, the engineer, on board. Having rounded up his logs, the wheelsman sculled back to the tug, where the engineer stooped down over the gunwale and handed him a tin pail. Then he sculled briskly ashore, and disappeared through the doorway of Allen's Saloon. Such a chance was too much for the Napo- leonic soul of Captain Lonely O'Malley. He climbed down from his cabin, and with a de- termined hitch at his trousers stalked for- ward. " Every man who 's for capturin' the Lone Star, this side ! " he said, coldly, yet challeng- ingly. There was a moment of hesitation and doubt. THE BITER BITTEN 325 followed by a murmur of questioning admira- tion. Then one by one the entire crew of the Greyhound came over and stood exultingly beside their Captain. No pirate likes to be called a coward. But — well, they were in for it now, anyway. Old Brown, the engineer of the Lone Star, was eating his frugal lunch from a wicker basket, on the starboard side of his little pro- peller, — as one might plainly see from the cant of her deck, for the worthy engineer was very fat. He was waiting, somewhat impa- tiently, for the return of the wheelsman and the tin pail. Then suddenly he thought he heard the creak of oars out in the river near by. Without so much as rising from his seat, he twisted his head around the back corner of his smoke-stained little cabin. As he thus exposed himself to the enemy, a flat-headed arrow, most carefully aimed, whistled past his right ear. And he beheld, at the same moment, a sight that almost made his honest blue eyes pop out. For crawling up to him, right under the shadow of the Lone Star, was a long black 326 LONELY O'MALLEY ship flying a skull and cross-bones, — a ship with eleven scowling men. on her carefully sanded deck. Old Brown, in fact, held a piece of cold boiled mutton in his hand, which he was in the very act of conveying to his mouth. In- stead of this, he let it drop unnoticed on the deck floor of the Lone Star. For what man is going to he altogether self-possessed when he sees no less than seven key guns leveled at him ? " Stand by there an' surrender," cried a shrill and threatening young voice, " or we *11 blow you out of the water ! " The corpulent old engineer said nothing, but still looked at them with dazed and pop- ping eyes. The n«ct moment the teeth of the pirates' boarding-irons had fastened like wolf- fangs on the bulwarks of the helpless Lone Star. It took but a second for the Captain, fol- lowed by his crew, to scramble aboard their prize. " I told you it was easy enough," said the Captain, sotto voce, over his shoulder, "if you only take 'em unexpected ! " THE BITER BITTEN 327 The pirates found it impossible to repress a cheer of victmy, as they swarmed down the deck of the enemy. It was then that the fat old engineer slowly wiped his mouth, and as slowly said some- thing, under his breath, which ought not to be repeated. Lonely, at the moment, was hur- riedly inspecting his new engine room. Then he turned to the enemy himself. " Of course you 're captured ? " he an- nounced calmly, yet mercilessly. " Yes, you 're captured ! " cried the delirious pirate crew, surrounding him. " Sure ! " said the engineer, meekly, brush- ing the crumbs firom his oily trousers-legs. ** Men, take possession ! " Then Captain O'Malley turned to the engineer once more, his forgotten gallantry coming back to him just in time. " I 'm sorry, of course, but I guess we '11 have to take you in tow ! They always do, you know ! " " Sure ! " answered the engineer again, stretching himself with a fine assumption of unconcern, which even the pirate Captain could see through. 328 LONELY O'MALLEY ** Here, First Mate, swing the Greyhound round aft, while I throw you a line ! " The only line in sight was twenty feet or so of logging-chain. It was too much for the strength of the pirate Captain. ** Give you a hand, Cap'n ? " mildly inquired the engineer, lighting up his pipe as he came forward. " Thanks, yes," responded the pirate chief, with a loftiness of tone that all but took the old engineer's breath away. " Keep an eye out, men, for treachVy ! " came the shrill cry of their leader, as he ordered his crew once more on board their ship. But the warning was uncalled for, and somewhat regretted when once it was uttered, for with his own hand the resigned old en- gineer slipped the chain through the iron- cased hawse-hole of the Greyhound and made his tug fast to her stern. As he climbed languidly on board again the wheelsman appeared, smoking a bilious- hued cheroot. " What 's all this here monkey work mean ? *' he demanded angrily. " Shh, Bill 1 " the engineer cried, holding up 330 LONELY O'MALLEY a warning finger. " We 're captured, man, can't you see?" Then he said something to the wheelsman which the pirates on board the Greyhound could not hear. But they saw the wheelwnan nod his head, slowly and dejectedly. He, too, they hoped, was ^ng to take his medicine like a man. Then the wheelsman went forward, still wagging his head, and slipped his bow lin^ off the pile to which he had tied, li next minute the pirates heard the sharp ' cUng ding" of the engine-room signal-bell. " Now vou 've got lis, boys, go ah id ' " i i was the old engineer speaking, v. ith his oily head stuck out of his little blackened doorway. Even as he spoke hts hand went up to the lever, and a moment tecr the screw oS the Lone Star was tkre^i^ t^ water a? »i*e Witt swinging briskly csit to mi^tream. The pirate crew ^»«d in petri&v ^ ment. Then they c«Be slawl ^ > their and tried in vain m cast M the chair 't held them. In vs n tht 'ded r r hatchets on the heavf lisks oi In vain TH AVT ^ BIT' EN j' th ta n 'Mya<. the ompt and eifi- cient 8itii^ ig the Grcyli and. In vatn thev ei^Ktsted their ammunition on the p«ii^k^ and imperturbable s«»m-boards of R^te down through the heart of Cha ro, where len and women and children, at ng ( n vr brid^, and docks, and river- 1 b-heid and Sughed at their ignominious h l^sess, rig down past Ellis's Brick ^ and the uy^ cr Lime Kiln they were towed, thr.e good miles from their anchorage. " Now, row back, you thievin' young row- lies Row back, and m^hLe that '11 sweat some )' se gay pirit notions out o' you ! " \nd the Lone Star cast off, and bustled unconcernedly down about her o^ private business, whistling a final brazen taunt as she rounded a shadowy bend and disappeared from sight. Forbidden Ground ff^ben tee wi re young, and small, and bad, We mostly spent our time ■■■ Our neighbors' orckards, though we had Our own fruit-trees to climb in We knew 'twas wrong, and so were glad: That fact, sir, lay the crime in ! To do the thing that's wrong seems Law, Law we, and Adam, found it I The chamber Bluebeard* s wife ne'er saw, Ob, how she hnged to sound it ! And how life's colts eat buckwheat straw mtb eight-railed fences round it I Those dreams for which we search and bleed Are things of untold blisses ; The love we always tvant and need Is the love one loses, misses ; The dearest lips are those, indeed. That never knew our kisses! CHAPTER XIII In which Youth is stripped of ks Gkry NOT a breeze was stirring. The after- noon was hot and humid and opales- cent. The last crumb in the Greyhound's provision-chest had long since been made away with. Never before had the current of the languid old river seemed so relentless, so in- domitable, 80 doggedly unflagging. The crushed and broken Captain had even suggested that he speed home by land, and return secretly with Plato and a clothes-line or two, that the Greyhound might be towed back to her anchorage after the fashion of the more humble and decorous canal-boat. But the mutinous crew would have none of this demeaning method of locomotion. The Grey- hoxxnd could do what she liked. They were going swimming. The disconsolate pirates of Watterson's Creek got only as far as the lower town swim- ming-hole. Here, after a brief but bitter battle, with missiles taken aboard for the pur- 336 LONELY O'MALLEY pose at the Brick Yard, the rightful possessors of that hole were sent scuttling ashore, to become united to their wearing apparel later, behind any friendly shrubbery and any con- venient fence-boards that might offer. The victors swung the Greyhound in under one of the big elms, canopied and fes- tooned with wild grapevines, and there made her fast. Then they stripped, to a man, in her little cabin. Piggie Brennan alone was somewhat tardy about removing his shirt, having dis- covered that the heat of battle had taken the color out of sundry mysterious little pieces of hair-ribbon carried gallantly in his bosom, and being anxious to avoid «cplanation as to how numerous vivid blue and crimson spots chanced to adorn his unusually fair slun. Then one by one the boys "took their duck," diving in rapid succession from the rudder-stem of the Greyhound, cutting the surface crisply, gasping and blowing and shaking dripping heads as they emerged from the cool yellow depths of the shaded water. Then their new-born energy took the form of a game of foUow-the-leader, consisting of YOUTH STRIPPED OF ITS GLORY 337 gleeful plungings from the cabin roof," bring- ing up bottom," " treading water," and ** parting the hair." Tiring of this, in time, the eleven young disciples of piracy drifted down to the swimming-hole itself. Here they had a game of squat tag, on land, only stopping to shriek and dance and gyrate, shamelessly and in uni- son, as the excursion steamer appeared round the bend and raced imperturbably past. Then they made a water-slide in the bank of blue clay, down which they tobogganed, feet first, flat on their backs. This clay was not of the purest, however, having certain small but sharp-angled pieces of flint running generously through it. One slide, and one only, proved sufficient for each member of the Grey- hound's crew. Then a goodly puddle of blue clay ooze was deftly kneaded into existence. This was joy- ously applied to eleven naked young bodies, until those children of sober Chamboro looked sadly like eleven expatriated South Sea Isl- anders. Then came the embellishing and ornamental phase, which with one pi'-ate consisted in mak- ing cryptic crosses and circles on all parts of 338 LONELY O'MALLEY his anatomy ; with another, zebra-like stripes from head to foot; with another, a close- grained effect such as one often sees on quar- tered oak furniture ; with still another a copi- ous sprinkling of French knots and polka-cen very quiet, and had said nothing, could no longer kt ep back the foolish tnrs. Then the mei. i.eDsly austere voice of the Reverend Ezra Sampson, the Rector of All Saints, sounded out above the murmur of the crowd. He was, obviously, addressing the phleg- matic old engineer of the Lone Star. " Mr. Brown, can it be possible, sir, that those are our boys, whom you have thus strangely secreted in your engine-room ? " " They be ! " answered Mr. Brown, not over-pleased at the Rector's tone of voice. « They be — the whole kit of 'em 1 " At that precise moment the Rector of All Saints caught a fleeting glimpse of what appeared to be his son, Lionel Clarence — more commonly known among his comrades of late as " Shag," or sometimes as "Slugger" Sampson. It was only fitting, as the leader 346 LONELY O'MALLEY of his flock, that Lionel's father should sternly take the initiative. " Lionel Clarence Sampson, come here at once, sir ! " the stern parent demanded. There was no answer to this, and after a moment's ominous silence the command was repeated. "Obey your fiithcr, Lionel, whatever the outcome, or however painful it may be for you," called Mrs. Sampson, who had been weeping a little toward the last. " Do you mean that, ma'm ? " asked the old engineer, pointedly. " Certainly she means it, my good man ! " It was the Rector who now spoke, a little impatiently. But still no boy appeared. "Shall 1 fetch 'im, ma'm?" gleefully suggested the old engineer. " No, he must come of his own free will 1 " « Mebbe ! " said Mr. Brown, softly, " meb- be!" " Lionel Clarence Sampson, come out from your hiding-place at once, sir, !»nd receive that chastisement which you have so richly merited ! " There was another painful silence, and then YOUTH STRIPPED OF ITS -GLORY 347 a tremulous and whining voice was heard to say: "Pa, I — I can't! We ain't — we aren't — Tou tell him, Mr. Brown ! " The old engineer stepped slowly over and whispered something in the ear of the Rector. " Sir ? " ejaculated the Preacher. Thereat the engineer repeated what he had said. At this the Preacher put up his hands; then, recovering his official dignity, whispered something in turn into the ears of those close beside him. Then there was more whispering, and only the men remained in the front ranks of the watchers, while messengers were sent hurriedly and mysteriously to all quarters of the little town of Chamboro. Long before their return, however, old Cap'n Sands and the Lone Star engineer had had a little private talk. This resulted in the old Cap'n's valiantly setting at defiance all municipal authority, and with his own incensed hand chopping down the padlocked cabin door of the Greyhound, declaring in no uncertain language, as he did so, that a certain fat-headed old constable was n't fit to herd she-goats ! 348 LONELY O'MALLEY But most of the older heads of Chamboro did not take the old Cap'n's view of the case. For more than one parent sternly and promptly boarded the Lone Star, and finding a son in that altogether too tempting state of prepared- ness, spanked hina vigorously, soundly, and publicly. Yet the crudest blow fell on Captain Lonely O'Malley himself. That worthy buccaneer, emerging from the engine-room, was kicked at inadequately by an inebriate father, only to escape into the arms of a tearful young mother, who seized him bodily and held him to her breast. In vain Lonely struggled and remon- strated ; in vain he wriggled and twisted, hot and tingling with the disgrace of such an ex- hibition. Still that young mother held him and wept over him, wept over him, in- deed, as though he I»id been an infimt in Mfms! And from Raidun's Doek Aat night eleven beid |»n^ wtm home throngh the nmsy sMts ^fChmmhomi some with aching hearts, all iwritadBng legs. With the passing of those little mAm, for eleven redoububle youths the i f M n anw paiif d mt nf piracy. From that time YOUTH STRIPPED OF ITS GLORY 349 on all such adventuring faded into the light of common day. And for all time, henceforth, it was ordained that one more door to the king- dom of enchantment should stand barred and locked to them. T6e Child who arried Not A bird of passage on the King T»M pruoti t« us akne! Where mm, in their far wandering, Hetve tbtse ^ht pmmt jlmmt And yet you filed all life with song. For one too happy day ! Then over seas, where Ton winged your Imtif may t How could we kiio'iV, O Child, you stayed A momentary gntst, Whose fond but fleetk^ freiente msdt These Unefy tktir rest? For, since you fared from us ^ain One our Aprils Uotk, One nottt m patr by yemr in vain Wt wemh the hkds tome hek ! CHAPTER XIV In whicbf at last,, we find a Htr» ILL-ADVISED, for many a week to come, was the man who mentioned piracy withm the four gates of Chamboro. Not that Lonely and his followers lost all that ancient and timeless exuberance of animal spirits which clings eternally to youth,— as the fire in the Barrisons' stable-loft, and the blowing up of old Witherspoon's garden wheel- barrow, with gunpowder, eloquently enough testified. But in Chamboro, just between early harvest apple-time and the muskmelon season, there was one particular spot round which the thoofbts and fancies of the boy-mind invari- ably and ever wistfully centred. This spot was CapV. Steiner's orchard. For in that well-guarded little riverside do main bloomed the one tree of Chamboro's forbidden fruit, a strange and legendary trang, of more than earthly trunk and leaves, wl»<^ made the old Captain s high board fe^, »ili- 354 LONELY O'MALLEY tantly sunnountcd by a many-pronged barbed wire, seem strangely like the wall which once shut the children of Adam out of the Garden of Eden. Some thirty years ago, while pottering about among his fancy fruit-trees, Cap'n Steiner had made an experiment. On a bough of one of his vigorous young Strawbeiry Reds he had grafted the sprig of a Irandywine pear. Then be had carefully bound the wound with grafting-wax and a fkm of Miss Ara- bella's old iannel petticott— AaAeia, ia duMe days, the older men htU\, was rarely comely and rosy-cheeked — and waited some- what doubtfully for the outcome. The strange marriage of aliens was an un- looked-for success. The Strawberry Red took kindly to the Brandywine pear, and before so manv years had slipped away the good people of Chamboro beheld a wonder growinr p in their very n/idst, a miraculous tree, one side of which bore abuncUnt harvests of Strawberry Red apples, wWe the boughs of the o^er nde were weighed down wkh a saocnlent wealth of Araniifwine poos. Nor wa> this Ir to the me^fyw md Imr WE FIND A HERO 355 cious mealiness of the one strangely blended and mingled the buttery and melting juices of the other, so that for years the divided youth of Chamboro had disputed as to which was finer, the Brandy wines from the south side, or the Strawberry Reds from the north side. These arguments were always accompanied by much pensive smacking of lips, and year in and year out many a young mouth had watered at vivid descriptions of old Cap'n Steiner's for- bidden fruit. Due word of this wondrous tree set Lonely O'Malley fo thinking. In time these contin- uously rapt and highly embellished recountals even prompted him to action. But there were difficulties. For twenty years and more, every boy in the village had nursed designs on old Cap'n Steiner's apples. Men who were growing slightly bald sdU rubbed th&e ves* and told nwfuUy how near, such and such a night, they came to getting a hat- ftil of ^ old fellow's Strawberry Reds. So pmperful a magnet had thip tree stood to pre- daceo«8y<^ that the old Captain had grown schooled in cnft, and in time had learned all the tfts nd tricks and dodges of his besiegers. 356 LONELY CMALLEY Now, town tnuiition undcvmtingly held, the old Captain sat it an open window throogh- out the month of August, with a spy-glass in one hand and a shot-gun loaded with rock salt in the other. There were signal wires, too, the town boys said, running mysteri- ously into the house, where so much as the touch of an intruding foot rang a little alarm- bell and brought forth the owner and the shot-gun. All this did not serve to discourage Lonely. If anything, it only tended to make him more fixed in purpose. He first spent several after- noons in reconnoitring, guardedly exploring the fence and prodding about for possible loop- holes. None was to be found ; so, foiled here, he resorted to strategy. He dug up and washed a goodly sized bunch of horse-radish, and, placing this n( atly in the bottom of a basket, boldly opened the great, sagging front gate, and as boldly went down the dilapidated old board-walk. He wore, as he did so, his meekest and most wistful look of innocence. But close beside his straight and narrow path he noticed a score or two of mellow red astra- WE FIND A HERO 357 chans, still lying seductively ruddy against the dark green of the orchard grass. The temptation was too much for Lonely. He side-stepped nimbly in under the tree. WITH A 8Py-GUA»$ AHO A tHOT-CUN "^1 -. ^ MKROcorr RBOtunoN mr cnait (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 358 LONELY O'MALLEY and, looking furtively about to sec that he was unobserved, quickly thrust four of the finest apples down into his blouse-front. Then he went on his way, innocently and calmly whistling his cheery discords. He stopped only when he found himself confronted by the suspicious and belligerent eye of Miss Arabella. Even then he did not quail, only he remembered, at the time, that certain small girls in the village, holding Miss Arabella to be a witch, always passed her with crossed fingers and scuttled away at her threatened approach. " I was wonderin' if you 'd like to buy some horse-radish ? " Lonely looked back at her boldly, thrusting up one shoulder and squint- ing blandly, although his sharp eyes had al- ready caught sight of an immense hedge b( horse-radish not a hundred yards away from him, against the east fence. " Stop that squintin' ! " said Miss Arabella, in a shrilly stentorian voice. " Yes, ma'm ! " said Lonely, meekly. " An' stop hunchin' ! " " Yes, ma'm ! " answered the boy, steadying himself up against the cistern pump. WE FIND A HERO 359 " Now, are n't you Lonely O'Malley ? " de- manded the old lady suspiciously. The boy nodded, wondering what was to come next. He was hoping, as sometimes had happened, that it might 1 . a slice of bread and butter, with peach jam on it. Miss Arabella looked at the basket, and sniffed aloud. " You 're Lonely O'Malley, are you ? Then you just get out of this orchard, as fast as them young legs can carry you ! " Lonely's jaw dropped in sheer astonish- ment. " Travel now ! " she cried, " or I '11 Lonely O'Malley you ! " And with a celerity quite unexpected in one of her years Miss Arabella reached in through the open door, and made after the fleeing Lonely with a broom. Now, the less designing type of boy would have bolted for the gate. But Lonely had not accomplished his purpose ; and having the utmost conftde e in his dodging and sprint- ing ability, he made audacious tracks for the river, circling well in through the orchard and keeping a iharp look-out for one pardc- 36o LONELY O'MALLEY ular tree, the Strawberry Red. In this way, pursued by the irate maiden lady, he made three fleet tours of the orchard, during each circuit audaciously picking up a red astrachan and stor- ing it away in his blouse. Then he dodged aside Mid slipped out through the A minute or two later he heard it slammed and locked after him. He had not discovered the forbidden fruit, but a new thought had come to him. The way to storm his enemy's ptwtion was obviously from the water-front. PVRSUED BY THE IRATE MAtUNLADT Hc SpCnt tOt WE FIND A HERO 361 rest of the next morning along the river-bank, just above the old Captain's orchard. There, while looking over the ground and perfecting his plans, he came unexpectedly upon Pauline Augusta Persons, sailing chip-boats at the river-edge. " You 'd better get home out o' this ! " he commanded, scowling darkly down at her. "Git!" he repeated. Pauline Augusta, beholding her old-time enemy thus threatening her, fled pell-mell to the near-by shelter of a clump of burdocks, amid which she pushed and squatted, quite motionless, somewhat after the ^hion of a very young robin. Her enemy scowled over toward her on<» or twice ; but vaster concerns preoccupied his mind. A raft of elm logs lay close in to the shore, waiting for the screaming mill-saw to rip them up into two-inch planks. Watching his chance, when the mill-men were away at dinner, he quietly loosened the piece of logging-chain which held the lower end of the • boom, and then silently pokd the raft down- stream. Opposite the upper corner of the old Captun's orchard he worked it close in lo the bank again, making it fast to a young willow. 362 LONELY O MALLEY Before him lay the open Garden of Eden, the garden wherein grew the forbidden fruit, and wherein lurked, he grimly reminded him- self, a very shrill-voiced serpent. The logs drifted down the languid current and filled up the boom space. One escaping truant he res- cued just in time. Then he made sure that the others were safe, calmly studying his would- be course, should his escape prove a hurried one. Finally he stept ashore, and crawled up the grassy bank that sloped so gently down to the water's edge. Here, he felt, was an adventure worthy of his steel. Lonely looked about, gopher-like, drop- ping flat on his stomach as the side door of the Captain's house opened. It was his one- time stay and support in things of the spirit. Miss Mehetabel Wilkins, bidding a "oluble good-day to Miss Arabella. When the coast was once more clear he •crept as far as he dared up the slopinr river- bunk. There he studied the situation at closer range. Tree by tree, his squintmg young eyes went over the orchard, until, at last, he caught sight of the forbidden fruit itself. WE FIND A HERO 363 There stood the old tree, halfway between the Captain's trim little boat-landing and his wide-open back door. On the one side Lonely could see the rus- set yellow of the Brandywine pears, on the other, the streaked crimson and yellow of the Strawberry Reds. Then, after the fashion of all famous hunt- ers and scouts, he dropped prone on the grass, face downward, and stealthily, foot by foot, vvormed his circuitous way nearer and nearer the tree. At intervals he lay motion- less, a brown spot on the parched brown of the open orchard grass. The busy rattle of dishes floated out to him, warning the in- truder that Miss Arabella was " washing up." Then whiffs of the old Captain's pipe- smoke drifted lazily through an open window. The guinea-fowl down in the chicken-yard cluttered and screamed. The sawmill whistled for one o'clock. As that brazen wail of sound died away, Lonely's arms closed about the rough trunk of the old Strawberry Red. The next second he was shinning nimbly up into its shadowy boughs. 364 LONELY O'MALLEY He swung his lithe body across a comfort- able-looking crotch, where he sat straddle and gazed in round-eyed wonder at the wealth about him, within reach of his hand, his to capture and devour, with only a few hornets buzzing appreciatively at one or two of the ripest pears. " Yum 1 Yum ! " said Lonely O'Malley aloud, in rapt anticipation. First he tasted an apple. He tried to make the resulting smack inaudible, but that was out of the question. Never could one of the apples of the Hesperides have tasted sweeter on the lips of Hercules himself than did that Strawberry Red to the mouth of Lonely O'Malley. Never had he bitten rapturously into fruit like unto this of Cap'n Steiner's. Then he tried a Brandy wine pear. His eyes rolled up ecstatically, his lips clucked and smacked, as he licked the too opulent juices from his sticky fingers. He reached for an- other and then another, selecting those round which the hornets buzzed thickest, the ripest and sweetest and juiciest, going back to the apples once more, and still unable for the life WE FIND A HERO 365 of him to decide which were the better, the Brandywines or the Strawberry Reds them- selves. Then something happened, something as unlocked for as it was disconcerting. This surprise took the form of Miss Arabella her- self, calmly and methodically propping the b8v' Cap'n Steiner's old canvas camp- cKrf. :.i8t the trunk of the tree in which Lon. y &at perched. A moment later the old Captain himself appeared, and Miss Arabella went over to the side veranda for her rocking- chair. The old Captain stretched himself out for his customary noonday nap. Miss Arabella put on her spectacles, opened her " Family Guardian," and asserted that she was ready for a good long spell o' reading before she was going to get settled down after that young varmint's leading her such a chase — the young whipper-snapper ! The young varmint and whipper-snapper at this pricked up his guilty young ears. The old Captain, leaning back in his chair, swore, softly behind his red bandanna, spread over his face to keep away the flies. 366 LONELY O'MALLEY " The young limb ! " he mumbled, wrath- fuUy. "If I had him here! If I — " " There 's no use getting het up, Silas, about that boy. He ain't here, so what *s the good o' swearing that way and saying what you *d do ? " Miss Arabella was on the point of continu- ing her discourse when a mealy Strawberry Red, falling apparently from its mother bough, smote her sharply on the head. « Goodness gracious me ! *' said Miss Ara- bella, feeling the spot. " 'Bout time this fruit was gettin' canned ! " But the irate old Captain sat up, waving his stick. He ' as about to enter into a de- tailed and impassioned account of what he would do, once the fit and proper occasion presented itself, when his eye chanced to fall on some half-dozen apple-cores lying scattered at his feet. His mouth remained open, but this time in silent wonder ; and he looked from the tree to the cores, and from the cores back to the tree, and then at Miss Arabella. Lonely, peering carefully down through the leafy shadows, could make out the strange look, but could not guess at its cause. WE FIND A HERO 3<»7 « Arabelly Stdner, somebody *s been a-eat- ing these Strawberry Reds ! " he announced, sternly, stooping for- ward and examining one of the tell-tale cores, turning it over critically with the end of his stick. "Tommyrot!" said Miss Arabella, deep in her "Family Guardian." STRETCHED HIMULF OUT rOR HIl NAP 1 368 LONELY O'MALLEY " Don't tommyrot mc, ma'm ! I say some- body's been at my tree! " And in proof of his assertion he thrust a well-munched core before her skeptical eyes. " An' the cannin' factory buyin* this fruit at four dollars a bushel ! " he went on, indig- nantly. But the spirit of peace had already taken possession of Miss Arabella's soul. « Well, what "s an apple or two, anyway, Siias? I s'pose it's been that O'Malley kid, or some other young thief ! " A lai^ ripe appl: ffll and went into a dozen pieces on the ba^k of Miss Arabella's rocker. " And it 's time them Strawberry Reds were picked, anyway!" she announced, with de- cision. She turned again to her " Family Guardian." The old Captain, finding his muttered thun- derings elicited no response, settled himself back in his chair, and was soon sending forth sonorous and rhythmical snores. Miss Arabella now and then turned a page. Lx)nely began to itch, and scratched himself cautiously. It was hot and close up among the dense foli^, and his leffs were getting stiff and cramped. VVK FIND A ' liRO 369 He wished he could get away and go in for a good swim. The hornets bu//ed noisily about him ; one even settled on the calf of his leg, and in a sudden terror of fear he wondered if it would sting him ; and if so, could he keep from hollering. It seemed to get hotter as timt wore on. By stretching his neck carefully he could c itch a glimpse of the Jimpid and cool-looking > ver water, ruffling and shimmering ir ihe after n or: sunlight. He scratched himself o. c more, and even wished he could go to sleep. The blue flies buzzed ; the bees and hornets hummed, the leaves stirred lazily; the relaxing little bare leg fell forward. A moment later Lonely was fast asleep up among Captain Steiner's Straw- berry Reds. His head drooped lower and lower: his body sagged comfortably down in the wide tree-crotch. The old Captain wakened, re- moved his red bandanna, and was gazing dreamily and contentedly up into the gloomy and cool-looking shadows of the tree, when suddenly a boy's hat fell, as from an open sky, into his startled lap. The old Captain examined that hat carefiii y ; 370 LONELY O'M ALLEY then he tiptoed cautiously over to Miss Ara- bella, who whispered back to the Captain, and shook her head in unison with him, and then hurried to the wood-shed for the garden-rake. Mounting perilously on the edge of his chair, the old Captain pushed back the screen- ing boughs, and revealed the unconscious form of the apple-thief, deep in his innocent dreams. The old Captain chortled wickedly, and rubbed his hands together. He left Miss Arabella on guard, and hobbled houscward for a clothes-line. " He-he, the young rapscallion ! The pi- rootin' young womper — we've got him ! My cookie-pie, we 've got him now ! " he chuckled, as he emerged with the hempen emblem of bondage. But about the sleeping boy the impending knot of bondage was never tied. The old Captain was suddenly startled by the shrill and terrified voice of Miss Arabella. His first thought was that Lonely had made good his escape. « Silas ! Silas ! Quick ! On them logs, there — there, above the landing! It's Pauline Augusta ! Be careful, child ! Oh, be careful ! " Miss Arabella was already hurrying toward WE FIND A HERO 371 the river-bank. The strands of hemp rope dropped from the old Captain's fingers. " Stand steady, child, stand steady ! Be still!" screamed iv.iss Arabella. Her fifty years of life beside that quiet old river and its rafts had taught her a little of the darker history of its shimmering, glinting midsummer water, and of the treachery of the sullen logs that floated so lazily on its shadowy surface. " Don't move, child ! Don't move till I get the boat ! " she cried again. And already one or two of the closer neighbors, wondering what could be the meaning of such outcries from the quiet old orchard home, were hurry- ing in through the high-posted gateway. But Pauline Augusta, herself surprised at so much noise and half-afraid to advance or retreat along the narrow boom-timber on which she stood, decided, in her moment of new-born doubt, to make for dry land. The round logs lay crowded together, providing a path between her and the grassy l»nk. As a new sense of terror took hold of her, she stepped recklessly from the squared and solid boom-timber to the logs that lay nearest her. Lonely, wakened suddenly out of an uneasy 372 LONELY O'MALLEY sleep, in which he had dreamed his flying- machine was breaking down on a cruise half- way to the moon, dazedly parted the thick apple branches and glanced down toward the river. He heard the child's sudden, sharp little cry ; he saw the log tip and roll and spin. A second later Pauline Augusta had disappeared from sight. A groan went up from the women, helpless with the horror of it all. The old Captain tremblingly flung off his alpaca coat, and was tugging resolutely at his waistcoat. " No, no, brother ! " Miss Arabella cried, clinging to him madly. " You 're too old, too old, — you must n't do it ! " The old Captain broke away from her. " By gad, ma'm — " But that was as far as he got, for a sudden crisp little splash fell on the ears of the frantic group. A darting shadow, crowned with an unkempt halo of russet brown, had sped down the sloping bank and cut arrow-like into the quiet water. It had seemed like the swoop and dip of a kingfisher. The watching group waited, motionless, WE FIND A HERO 373 speechless, as the arrow-like figure dove straight for the little line of bubbles that drifted out from under the lower end of the raft. A moment later a hand appeared above the water, then a sandy head, then a face. It took one short breath, and with an adroit kick of the heels went down again. He had missed her. The group on the bank gasped. After all, it would be too late. The seconds sped away ; he had not found her. Then a sudden sign of commotion dis- turbed the surface of the quiet river. Hands appeared, and two heads, scratching and clutch- ing and fighting hands, and two threshing bodies, strangely tangled together. « By gad, he 's got her ! " shrilled the old Captain. The sound of a woman's hysterical wailing rose through the quiet orchard, weirdly, uncannily. Inch by inch the boy was fighting his way toward the bank, all the while striving to keep that rolling head with the streaming and matted hair above the suribce of the water. "Git a barrel!" he panted, as his knee struck the oozy bottom. 374 LONELY O'MALLEY A dozen hands were ready and waiting to help them out. « Git a barrel ! " ordered the boy^gain, be- fore even his feet were on the grassy slope. « Yes, sir," cried Miss Arabella, insanely, as she flew to the wood-shed and staggered weakly back with an empty apple-barrel. Two of the children had already been sent off for old Doctor Ridley. Once, in Cowansburg, Lonely had witnessed and assisted in the time-honored and ancient method of resuscitation by barrel. And it was not until he had seen Pauline Augusta none too gently turned upside down, and well dipped and prodded, and then rolled in hot blankets and given a sip or two of cherry brandy, that he gave any thought to himself. « Gee whittaker," he said, weakly, " I — I feel kind o' funny ! " And with that he plumped down on the grass, helplessly, with his eyelids quivering, and his toes twitching spasmodically. Whether or not Lonely was about to fiunt, history will never record. Whether or not it was the stem old face of Cap'n Steiner which brought back a rush of very recent memories WE FIND A HERO 375 and caused that artful simulation of u'lter weariness, &r be it from his present biographer to say. But he was promptly given a generous, an almost too generous, drink of cherry brandy, and even before Pauline Augusta was carried off to bed in the quiet, cool house, his old-time self-content had returned to him. Yet he was glad to be let alone. He lay in the sun, steam- ing, alone and forgotten, dreamily watching the open sky and inwardly remarking what fine, warm-feeling stuff cherry brandy really was. Half an hour later, Doctor Ridley came out of the quiet and muffled house, his faded old eyes unnaturally bright, his fingers meditat- ively feeling through the two capacious pock- et hidden away under his black coat-tails. For once in his life that almost unfailing supply of horehound drops and peppermints, which had brought happiness to many a dozen children, was found to be exhausted. He had been hearing a thing or two about Lonely O'Malley. Again he felt fruitlessly in the depths of his pockets, looking short-sightedly about for the boy himself. 376 LONELY O'MALLEY He suddenly stood transfixed, in his quest for his modest young hero, both puzzled and startled by the scene which met his eyes. On the river-bank, outlined against the afternoon ^are of the quiet water, stood Lonely and Cap'n Steiner, speechless, each vindic- tively eyeing the other. The Captain's oak stick was in his upraised hand ; his body shook with the stress of some strange emotion. This, the wondering Doctor took note, appeared to be one of rage when he confronted thf* glowering boy. Yet when his face was turned away, in the direction of the Doctor, it seemed one of sternly repressed hilarity. " You — you young limb ! " gasped the Captain, faintly, looking from Lonely to hu tree of Strawberry Reds, and then back to the squinting and hunching Lonely once mwe. "You rapscallion! You — you piroodng young varmint! I*m a-^ing to whale the hide off you I" " Well, do it 1 " said Lonely, sulkily, look- ing as though he would be much relieved at such a procedure. " Silas ! " cried Miss Arabella from the side WE HND A HERO 377 door. " Silas ! Don't you be hard on that poor child ! " "He-he! He-he! Hard on bim-^thc worst young limb in all Chamboro! Why, whalin' *8 too easy for him ! ** EACH VINDICTIVELY EYEING THE OTHER 378 LONELY O'MALLEY " I declare to goodness, Silas Steiner, you 're a worse old tyrant than I ever took you for ! You leave off pesterin' that boy and let him come in and git some dry clothes and some- thing good to eat ! The Doctor walked slowly over and put his kindly old hand on Lonely's sandy, be- draggled, and very unhappy head. " Lonely, I 'm proud of you ! " was all he said. But it was enough. He looked down into the boy's rebellious and unfathomable eyes, still slightly unsteady from the effects of Miss Arabella's too potent cherry brandy. Then he looked out at the quiet river, and at the huddled logs and the spot over which had hovered so closely the wing of tragedy. " You 're not cut out for a hero, my boy, but you almost made one ! " he repeated, solemnly. Lonely grew even more uncomfortable. This being torn between the opposing forces of kindness and wrath was too much for him. He wished he could get away, and make tracks for the cave or the swimming-hole. Even the approach of Miss Arabella, with a glass of cider and a large slice of fruit-cake, did not alleviate his inward unrest. WE FIND A HERO 379 " Proud of him ! A hero ! Why, dammit, sir," roared the old Captain, " d' you know that young limb has been a-stealin' my Straw- berry Reds — the first young varmint to git at that fruit o' mine this thirteen year back — and under my very nose, sir ! " «* Tut, tut ! s«d the old Doctor. ** I could have overlooked that ! But when he comes a-struttin' up to me and tells mttCooX as a cowcumber, that he 's been at 'em — the — then I 've just got to let out ! " " Fiddlesticks ! " said the old Doctor. " Yes, fiddlesticks ! " repeated Miss Ara- bella. And she placed the cake and cider on the sundial, and stooped down over Lonely, unexpectedly putting her maiden arms hun- grily about the sodden figure. The boy himself looked about furtively, wondering if any of the women folks had seen it. The two old men walked slowly away, arm in arm, under the shadowy apple-trees. The Captain chuckled quietly, deep down in his throat. " Why, Doc, I believe I would a-bawled — a-bawled like a demned baby, if I had n't a-gone for him that fashion 1 " 38o LONELY CMALLEY " Fiddlesticks ! " said the old Doctor again. Yet the two old cronies continued to pace up and down together, arm in arm, under the fruit-laden trees, looking after the MUidy- headed boy m he was led away into the strange, shadowy house. There Miss ArabeUa and the Widow Star- bottle buzzed solidtously nbout him, imagin- ing that his all too obvious unhappiness was something of the body, and not of the soul. Even Lionel Clarence's mother wanted to know if Lonely did not feel proud of himself, and asked him for the fourth time just how he did it, and patted him on the head, and said he was one of Nature's little noblemen. " What t' ell 's all this rumpus about ? ** was the bewildered question which Nature's little nobleman was asking himself in vain. Then a door that led into the darkened bedroom opened quietly, and Pauline Au- gusta's mother appeared on the threshold. Lonely edged closer to Miss Arabella. "Say, Mis' Steiner," he mattered, under his breath, guardedly, **are we square 'koui those Strawberry Reds ? " Miss Arabella had completely forgotten. WE FIND A HERO 381 Yet she sighed a little as she looked into the shrewd, the guilty, and the altogether unhappy face of Lonely, — sighed as one might over a stain in a fine new gown, or at a cloud on the sky-line of a perfect day. " Yes, of course. Lonely ! Don't you see, you 're a bera now ! And there 's Mrs. Persons hunting all round for you ! " Lonely looked relieved, and as the grateful mother of the girl he had dragged from under the raft came over to him, he batted his eyes sol- emnly, and tried to look wistful, and pufifed out his chest with a new sense of dignity. The pale-browed mother took the thin and sunburned face between her two trembling hands. Twice she essayed to speak and twice she failed, the quiet tears welling up to her eyes, and rolling unheeded down her cheeks. Then she deliberately bent over and kissed the worst young limb in all Chamboro, on his hot and perspiring young brow. ** My hero ! " she murmured, inadequately. Her arms were lodced about the still sodden and shrinking little figure, to whom love was so alien and so unknown. He tried to writhe and twist away, but could not. 382 LONELY O'MALLEY " Ah, Lonely, Lonely, how shall I ever pay you back for this?" asked the woman, sob- bingly, with relaxing and sorrowful happiness. Bitterly, heroiodly, Lonely fought and stru^led against the implaoible tide of emo- tion that teemed engulfing him. His lips c)iiivered ; a smardng tear-drop or two coursed down over a freckly pathway. "What is it, dear?" asked the woman, bending over him. "7 — / waiCt to go swimmirC" murmured Lonely, huskily, inadequately, but honestly. And at this precise point. Master Lonely O'Malley, I must leave you at last, a hero, — hybrid of good and bad, as are all earth's heroes at heart. It may be only for your brief little day, but still I leave you, a hero. For to-morrow, I know, the eternal boy will r«u- sert itself, th* old blood will break out, the glory will be feded, the halo will be either sadly awry or altogether missing, the saint will be &llen from its snowy niche. To-morrow, alas ! you will be knee-deep in the old restless wickednesses, — yes, up to your generous young ears in all the old evils, WE FIND A HERO 383 tripping and stumbling and falling ^vith the tame restless young feet over the same old in- exorable temptations, a child of those wayward impulses and dreams which make you so sadly unsatisfying) so human, and, I dare say, so commonplace ! tat mnt^it pce$$ RttetrMyttdmndtrinUd bj H. O. HtngMm A* C#. CmuOriit *, Mt$t^ U. S. A.