his torn sleeve and showed an inflamed and half-healed
wound.

"That! Got it nipped in a crane-wheel and it doesn't get much better.
Guess this dirt is poisonous. Anyway, it keeps me here. I've been trying
to make enough to buy a ticket to Jamaica, but can't work steady. As soon
as I've put up two or three dollars, I have to quit."

Dick could understand this. The man looked gaunt and ill and must have
been heavily handicapped by his injured arm. He did not seem anxious to
excite Dick's pity, though the latter did not think he cherished much
resentment.

"I tried to find you when I got better after being stabbed," he said. "I
don't quite see why you came to my help."

Payne grinned sourly. "You certainly hadn't much of a claim; but you were
a white man and that dago meant to kill. Now if I'd held my job with
Fuller and you hadn't dropped on to Oliva's game, I'd have made my little
pile; but I allow you had to fire us when something put you wise."

"I see," said Dick, with a smile at the fellow's candor. "Well, I
couldn't trust you with the cement again, but we're short of a man to
superintend a peon gang and I'll talk to Mr. Stuyvesant about it if
you'll tell me your address."

Payne gave him a fixed, eager look. "You get me the job and take me out
of this and you won't be sorry. I'll make it good to you--and I reckon I
can."

Dick, who thought the other's anxiety to escape from his degrading
occupation had prompted his last statement, turned away, saying he would
see what could be done, and in the evening visited Stuyvesant. Bethune
was already with him, and Dick told them how he had found Payne.

"You felt you had to promise the fellow a job because he butted in when
the dagos got after you?" Stuyvesant suggested.

"No," said Dick with some embarrassment, "it wasn't altogether that. He
certainly did help me, but I can't pass my obligations on to my employer.
If you think he can't be trusted, I'll pay his passage to another port."

"Well, I don't know that if I had the option I'd take the fellow out of
jail, so long as he was shut up decently out of sight; but this is worse,
in a way. What do you think, Bethune?"

Bethune smiled. "You ought to know. I'm a bit of a philosopher, but when
you stir my racial feelings I'm an American first. The mean white's a
troublesome proposition at home, but we can't afford to exhibit him to
the dagos here." He turned to Dick. "That's our attitude, Brandon, and
though you w