། was goin' along down by the ol' foundry, not thinkin' of anything special-this morning, you know, jus' after breakfast. Of course I was just takin' a little walk along down. there by the ol' foundry. So I was walkin' along not thinkin' of anything special, and all of a suddenmy gosh!"

He was pounced upon by three WestEnd characters whose names he did not know, being himself rather a newcomer in town, and dragged back through the yard of the now unused foundry to a mass of scrap-iron and old boards. There he was forcibly introduced to a gang of outlaws who had

"I know," said "Fatty"; "somebody jumped out-"

"Keep still, can't you?" demanded the historian. "How can I tell this if you interruct? So I was walkin' along there, not thinkin'-"

"Yes, we heard that," said Tom. "You wasn't thinkin' of anything special. Go on.'

The story had to be extracted from Link bit by bit. The author refused to be hurried. Every time he was "interructed" he lost his place and went back a paragraph or two.

The outrage, briefly, was as follows:

built themselves into the refuse a house containing an improvised stove and a genuine stove-pipe. This gang was the property of "Butch" Willet, a person disliked and respected by all. "Butch" admitted that they were living there without the knowledge of the town marshal. They had no fire in their stove because the smoke would betray them to the authorities. (At this point in the narrative "Fatty" said that it was too hot for a fire, anyway, and was punished by vain repetitions.)

The place contained reading matter of

a desperate nature, smoking materials, playing-cards, and hiding-places for stolen goods. Link was treated with a great deal of brutality and rough language; his captors threatened him with horrible tortures if he disclosed their lair to the police. Apparently he had been captured for the purpose of being forced to keep silent.

"But if you hadn't have been taken in there," said Ranny, "you would not know they were in there at all."

"I'd have found out somehow," said Link, darkly. "Well, so they took me in there

Thus the story meandered on from weak beginning to disappointing end. They had let him go without bloodshed and without ransom. He had no bruises or scratches to show. Ordinarily the yarn might have done well enough for an uncritical audience not pressed for time, but after the glowing reports that had been circulating since early morning it was one long anticlimax. If Link had not been a greenhorn from the country he would have known better than to tell of his adventure to "Sausage" Buckly, who was doing some semiprofessional delivering for Alleston's grocery-store this summer and who had garnished the little tale and started it on its pleasure-giving way.

"I told 'em when I went away," Link concluded, "that my gang would come around and wipe 'em offa the face of the earth. I told 'em we'd learn 'emtakin' a fella and treatin' him that way. I wasn't doin' nothin' to 'em. I was just walkin' along down there by the foundry-"

"What'd 'Butch' answer back?" asked Ranny, uneasily.

Link restrained himself with a visible effort. "What'd 'Butch' answer back? Nothin'; oh no, not at all. He only said he'd knock us all in the middle of next week. He only said we was afraid to come in a block of his place." Link made it clear that the present company had been pretty thoroughly denounced and that names had been mentioned. He constituted himself a missionary from the heathen, bearer of insults, maker of discords, singer of the hymn of hate. "So now," he concluded, "we gotta get some whinnicks and darnicks

and things. I'll be the captain, and—”

He stopped in sheer disgust. Ranny, upon whom his burning glances rested, was gazing up into a tree as one free from responsibilities. Tom Rucker, when apprehended, asked Ted Blake whether he thought it was ever going to rain. "Fatty" Hartman was detected in the grave crime of looking pleasant. "What're you grinnin' about?" Link demanded.

"I ain't so very mad," said "Fatty," pacifically. “I—I feel all right.'

"Did they have a cave?" asked Tug Wiltshire. "Gener❜ly they always have a kind of a cave.'

"No, they didn't have a cave, but—” "I bet we could make a better shanty than that," said Bud Hicks.

"If we couldn't make a better shanty than that," exclaimed Ted, "with one hand tied behind our back, w'y—” "Le's see. Where'll we build 'er?" asked Ranny.

"You always have to go exploring first," said Tug Wiltshire, the slave of the printed word. "You look a long time till you find the best place all secret and everything. If you get lost you look on the north side of trees for If you want to know which way the wind's blowin' [he wet his finger and held it up—see, cold on one side."

moss.

Everybody wet a finger and held it up, though no two investigators agreed as to which side was cold. Poor Link and his grievances were utterly forgotten. When presently they started out to find a place to build a den that would surpass anything in the history of disorderly conduct, it is a sorry fact that they turned their faces in exactly the opposite direction from that of the old foundry. This crowd had no desire to abolish "Butch" and his tough companions, but only to surpass them.

Tug Wiltshire strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage, but the final choice of a meeting-place for earnest scalawags had little to do with his bookish lore. There was an illegal dumpheap at the eastern edge of the marsh, a place of tangled brush and weeds and a wealth of second-hand articles. There was an ancient sign, "Five dollars' fine for dumping rubbish here," a warning which nobody had ever taken seriously.

In fact, some wag had inserted with a brush the word "not" before "dumping," thus perpetrating a tiny but enduring joke. It was here that the desperate characters took their stand.

It was an ideal building-site-though perhaps an adult would never have thought of it in that connection. It had secrecy because of the brushwood and a sinister character because of the sign. Building material was at hand -tin and stone, partial boards, fractional bricks, bits of tar paper, and one surpassing window-shuttereverything the not too grasping heart could desire.

"The police 'll never find us here," said Ted Blake. "He could hunt-"

"What does he want us for?" asked "Fatty." "What 've we done?"

"We're a tough gang, ain't we? Tougher than 'Butch' Willet's gang."

"A thousand times as tough," said Bud Hicks.

"Oh yes; I forgot," said "Fatty."

"When do we have to commence to be tough?" asked "Fatty." "Right away?"

"We can't waste no time now," said Ranny. "We got to build our shanty."

So the fall from grace was postponed until they had a suitable place in which

"We mustn't come right straight in here," Tug explained. "They'd see us and know where we keep our-our-you know-s -swag. So we got to walk past and not look or anything. And walk right along-and-we got to do like this. Lookee here; this is us." Tug climbed out upon the clear ground and strolled past with a fine, casual behavior like some Link Weyman taking the morning air upon an empty mind. Presently Tug changed his nature, made a big detour, and came to the abode of criminals from a surprising direction. "That's the way to do. That'll fool 'em fine." Thereafter, whenever they did not forget, the rogues came to their lair in that elaborate way.

to fall. Barring the dinner-hour, the day was entirely given up to construction and its incidental disagreements. At times these quarrels grew loud enough to have given away their whole case if the police force had happened to be in that part of town. But, fortunately for the cause of lawlessness and disorder, the city marshal spent most of his time in the business district where he could the better exercise his talent for sociability. His idea seemed to be that people who insisted upon living in the residential parts of town did so at their own risk.

During the construction of the den of iniquity Link Weyman was suggester

in-chief. He gave out historical reminiscences, and at times showed an alarming willingness to retell the whole story, beginning with what he had for breakfast. Once Ted Blake, exasperated beyond reason, frankly wished that the foundry gang had kept Link Weyman when they had him.

On the second morning it was discovered that there were certain matters of supplies and munitions that required actual money of the kind recognized by tradesmen.

"You get some money, Link," said Bud Hicks. "Your father is the county

"How much must he get?" asked Ranny.

"Oh, 'bout a capful. We need quite a lot of things."

Link had only himself to blame for this misconception. He had often boasted about the vast amount of money in his father's vaults, and implied that it was all at his disposal. Now he had to make some damaging admissions.

"It ain't my father's own money," he said; "and, anyway, it wouldn't be my money. [Link's relationship to the county treasury was evidently twice removed.] I can't walk in there and scoop up no money like it was oats." Upon being allowed to talk so long without "interruction" Link grew slightly unbalanced. "My father is just as stingy as anybody's father.'

This statement caused deep sensation and some disagreement, Bud Hicks boasting that he had the stingiest father for miles around. The result was the decision to get criminal goods and chattels in the normal way, each contributing according to his means, as if it were a church sociable.

"Clarence Raleigh's got a air-gun," said Ranny.

"He ain't tough enough for this gang," exclaimed Ted. "I don't want him around."

Nobody wanted him around, for that matter, yet it was an absurd fact that the circumspect Clarence, because his slightest wish was his parents' law, was the only person who had a dangerous

"His mother and my mother is good friends. His mother thinks-" here Link's face took on a hard and cynical smile as he snickered into his hand-"his mother thinks I'm a good boy."

So it was agreed that when the clan assembled after dinner, all swag-laden and with changed natures, Link was to bring Clarence's gun, and others such sub rosa articles as matches, potatoes, playing-cards, and dime novels. Everybody was to remember to enter the dive by indirection. Tug gave a final demonstration, looking up into a tree as he passed, and saying for the benefit of the gullible world, "Oo! see that little bird!"

Ranny's contribution to the funds of the society consisted of three partly ripe apples and a box of matches this being all he could get without answering difficult questions. When he arrived at the den of iniquity he found the outlaws in a low state of manners and morals, ordering one another about, and acting, in general, like a family of Simon. Legrees. Shortly after his arrival came Link Weyman bringing the artillery, without which no assembly of the lower orders would have been complete. But Link did not bring this weapon in his own hand; he escorted its owner, who clung tightly to the thing as his admission ticket.

"I had to bring him," Link explained, pointing without false delicacy at the unfortunate Clarence. "His mother was goin' to my mother's house, and she left him to play with me." Link's reputation with Mrs. Raleigh was evidently in the nature of a boomerang.

"He can't stay here," said Ted, making lower-class demonstrations.

Clarence here gave an unexpected exhibition of the turning worm. "All right for you!" he said. "I'll take my gun and join 'Butch' Willet's gang. And I'll tell them where you are. It was clear that Link, having found a new victim, had poured out the story of his yesterday's adventure.

"Come on back here," cried Ted. "That gang would make mincemeat of you."

"I wish I had some mince pie," said "Fatty," smoothing over the difficult situation. Clarence remained, but he kept control of his munitions by the

threat to expose these slum-dwellers to a hostile world.

An inventory of the swag disclosed. some startling lapses. There were matches in plenty, but no smoking materials. The nearest thing to playing-cards was Tom Rucker's pack of "authors." Nobody had had the dime for a dime novel. Tug's book looked disreputable enough at a distance, but it proved to be the story of a boy who, cast upon his own resources, rose by industry and lofty morality to be the payingteller of a bank-a book that, with the proper covers, would not have been out of place in a Sunday-school library.

With such unpromising material, but with a firm purpose, the boys set out to be the dregs of society. A fire was built inside the house and potatoes and apples were put on to burn. Ted Blake, who acknowledged no inferior in morals, collected the dried blossoms of clover plants and introduced cigarette smoking. Experimental puffs were taken all around, and weak pretenses were made of liking the low employment. The fire burned hot, the day itself was torrid, and the little shack was smoky to suffocation; but it was a point of honor to

VOL. CXXXVI.-No. 812.-36

stay indoors and suffer this ordeal by fire. They were rapidly becoming a mess of broiled, live criminals when Ted, who, for all his wickedness, was not used to smoking, got the idea that the open air in front of the house should be guarded from attacks by enemies. Soon everybody, with or without excuses, was outside enjoying the fresh air.

"It'll be fine in there nex' winter," said "Fatty," mopping his face upon his sleeve.

Thereafter the house which had been so laboriously constructed was never again used. Ted lay down in a shady place and gave himself up to looking delicate. Link Weyman lost himself in fiction. "Fatty" and Tug matched their wits in an educational game of authors, while Tom Rucker sat by and ruined the game by making faces alleged to resemble the literary lights as they appeared, specializing in John Greenleaf Whittier.

Ranny sat down by Clarence Raleigh and admired the weapon. "She's a fine ol' gun," he said, softly. "Let me hold 'er a minute."

With a cautious glance at the anemic Ted Blake, Clarence allowed Ranny to