came home, and I spose the Chicago detectives
are trying to fit Pa's hat onto a burglar. Pa seemed offully relieved
when we got across the state line into Wisconsin. But you'd a dide to
see him come out of that old lady's room with his coat and vest on his
arm, and his suspenders hanging down, looking scart. He dassent lick me
any more or I'll tell Ma where Pa left his hat."

CHAPTER XXII.

HIS PA IS DISCOURAGED. "I AIN'T NO JONER!"--THE STORY OP THE
ANCIENT PROPHET--THE SUNDAY SCHOOL FOLKS GO BACK ON THE BAD
BOY--CAGED CATS--A COMMITTEE MEETING--A REMARKABLE CAT-
ASTROPHE!--"THAT BOY BEATS HELL!"--BASTING THE BAD BOY--THE
HOT-WATER-IN-THE SPONGE TRICK.

"Say, you leave here mighty quick," said the grocery man to the bad boy,
as he came in, with his arm in a sling, and backed up againt the stove
to get warm. "Everything has gone wrong since you got to coming here,
and I think you are a regular Jonah. I find sand in my sugar, kerosene
in the butter, the codfish is all picked off, and there is something
wrong every time you come here. Now you leave."

"I aint no Joner," said the boy as he wiped his nose on his coat sleeve,
and reached into a barrel for a snow apple. "I never swallered no whale.
Say, do you believe that story about Joner being in the whale's belly,
all night? I don't. The minister was telling about it at Sunday school
last Sunday, and asked me what I thought Joner was doing while he was in
there, and I told him I interpreted the story this way, that the whale
was fixed up inside with upper and lower berths, like a sleeping car,
and Joner had a lower berth, and the porter made up the berth as soon as
Joner came in with his satchel, and Joner pulled off his boots and gave
them to the porter to black, and put his watch under the pillow and
turned in. The boys in Sunday school all laffed, and the minister said
I was a bigger fool than Pa was, and that was useless. If you go back on
me, now, I won't have a friend, except my chum and a dog, and I swear,
by my halidom, that I never put no sand in your sugar, or kerosene in
your butter. I admit the picking off of the codfish, but you can charge
it to Pa, the same as you did the eggs that I pushed my chum over into
last summer, though I thought you did wrong in charging Christmas prices
for dog days' eggs. When my chum's Ma scraped his pants she said there
was not an egg represented on there that was less than two years old.
The