to get away as soon as he saw who
it was. He's a friend of mine, and he fell down and tripped up the
pursuit."

"I always knew ye'd git into large trouble some day." The red-bearded
man tore a strip from an old towel and began to bandage the boy's head
with an accustomed hand. "Yer taste fer excitement has been growin' on
ye every minute of the four years I've known ye."

"Excitement!" echoed Joe, painfully blinking at his friend. "Do you
think I'm hunting excitement?"

"Be hanged to ye!" said the red-bearded man. "Can't I say a teasing
word without gittin' called to order fer it? I know ye, my boy, as
well as ye know yerself. Ye're a queer one. Ye're one of the few that
must know all sides of the world--and can't content themselves with
bein' respectable! Ye haven't sunk to 'low life' because ye're low
yourself, but ye'll never git a damned one o' the respectable to
believe it. There's a few others like ye in the wide world, and I've
seen one or two of 'em. I've been all over, steeple-chasin',
sailorman, soldier, pedler, and in the PO-lice; I've pulled the Grand
National in Paris, and I've been handcuffed in Hong-Kong; I've seen all
the few kinds of women there is on earth and the many kinds of men.
Yer own kind is the one I've seen the fewest of, but I knew ye belonged
to it the first time I laid eyes on ye!" He paused, then continued
with conviction: "Ye'll come to no good, either, fer yerself, yet no
one can say ye haven't the talents. Ye've helped many of the boys out
of a bad hole with a word of advice around the courts and the jail.
Who knows but ye'd be a great lawyer if ye kept on?"

Young people usually like to discuss themselves under any
conditions--hence the rewards of palmistry,--but Joe's comment on this
harangue was not so responsive as might have been expected. "I've got
seven dollars," he said, "and I'll leave the clothes I've got on. Can
you fix me up with something different?"

"Aha!" cried the red-bearded man. "Then ye ARE in trouble! I thought
it 'd come to ye some day! Have ye been dinnymitin' Martin Pike?"

"See what you can do," said Joe. "I want to wait here until daybreak."

"Lie down, then," interrupted the other. "And fergit the hullabaloo in
the throne-room beyond."

"I can easily do that"--Joe stretched himself upon the bed,--"I've got
so many other things to remember."

"I'll have the things fer ye, and I'll let ye know I have no use fer
seven dollars," return