ick get-away.

"'It's part of my business,' says Bill Bassett, 'to play up to the
ruffles when I want to make a riffle as Raffles. 'Tis loves that makes
the bit go 'round. Show me a house with a swag in it and a pretty
parlor-maid, and you might as well call the silver melted down and
sold, and me spilling truffles and that Chateau stuff on the napkin
under my chin, while the police are calling it an inside job just
because the old lady's nephew teaches a Bible class. I first make an
impression on the girl,' says Bill, 'and when she lets me inside I
make an impression on the locks. But this one in Little Rock done me,'
says he. 'She saw me taking a trolley ride with another girl, and when
I came 'round on the night she was to leave the door open for me it
was fast. And I had keys made for the doors upstairs. But, no sir. She
had sure cut off my locks. She was a Delilah,' says Bill Bassett.

"It seems that Bill tried to break in anyhow with his jimmy, but the
girl emitted a succession of bravura noises like the top-riders of a
tally-ho, and Bill had to take all the hurdles between there and the
depot. As he had no baggage they tried hard to check his departure,
but he made a train that was just pulling out.

"'Well,' says Bill Bassett, when we had exchanged memories of our dead
lives, 'I could eat. This town don't look like it was kept under a
Yale lock. Suppose we commit some mild atrocity that will bring in
temporary expense money. I don't suppose you've brought along any hair
tonic or rolled gold watch-chains, or similar law-defying swindles
that you could sell on the plaza to the pikers of the paretic
populace, have you?'

"'No,' says I, 'I left an elegant line of Patagonian diamond earrings
and rainy-day sunbursts in my valise at Peavine. But they're to stay
there until some of those black-gum trees begin to glut the market
with yellow clings and Japanese plums. I reckon we can't count on them
unless we take Luther Burbank in for a partner.'

"'Very well,' says Bassett, 'we'll do the best we can. Maybe after
dark I'll borrow a hairpin from some lady, and open the Farmers and
Drovers Marine Bank with it.'

"While we were talking, up pulls a passenger train to the depot near
by. A person in a high hat gets off on the wrong side of the train and
comes tripping down the track towards us. He was a little, fat man
with a big nose and rat's eyes, but dressed expensive, and carrying a
hand-satchel careful, as if it h