eople. They call 'em
gallows marks in the school back there. The chaplain he's strong against
'em. I 'member when he caught a kid having some ink pricked in by one of
us."

"Got after you, did he?" asked Chick-chick.

"Well, he says, 'You kids know why I always wear a bandage round my
right arm when I play tennis?' I'd often wondered. 'I suppose it's to
strengthen the arm,' I guessed."

"Was it?" asked Goosey, eagerly. If there was anything that would
strengthen an arm he wanted to know it.

"Strengthen the arm nothing!" replied Glen, with contempt. "He rolled up
his sleeve and snowed us where he had a woman's head tattooed in. I
s'pose you'd say it was a peach of a head, Goosey."

"Wasn't it done right?" asked Goosey.

"Done fine. Done as well as they're ever done. But he was ashamed of it.
He put on that bandage just so it wouldn't show when his sleeve was
rolled up."

"I don't understand that," said Goosey, in evident disappointment.

Chick-chick, too, inclined to the opinion that the chaplain was over
nice.

"You'd understand if he spoke to you about it," said Glen. "He says to
us: 'Every once in a while you'll find a good man and a smart man that
is all marked up with tattoo marks, but where they're carried by one
clean, smart man, there's a hundred bums and tramps that have 'em. If a
good man has 'em it's a safe bet that he didn't put 'em on when he was
doing well. It means that some time in his life he was down in bad
company. It's the poorest kind of advertising."

"That's why he hid 'em up, then."

"Chiefly. He says 'One reason I cover this up is so it won't set foolish
ideas into boys' heads. There's many a business man would pay ten
thousand dollars to get rid of the ugly marks. There are all kinds of
ways but none of 'em work well and most of 'em cost the fellow that owns
the skin an awful lot o' pain as well as the money. The way to get rid
of tattoo marks,' he says, 'is not to put 'em on.'"

"But since you can't help having 'em, you aren't going to let 'em keep
you down, are you, Brick, old top?"

It was Jolly Bill who asked the question. They had thought him asleep in
his cart.

"No, nor anything else," declared Glen. "I'm not so far behind. Somebody
asked me once, 'How does it come you talk so well?' They don't
understand that we learn as much in the state schools as in the regular
public school, and we have to do our best or make a show at it, whether
we want to or not."

"But, Bric