ch's woe by taking off his comical cap and passing it around for a
collection.

He was honest in it, but the crowd took it as irony, and amid their
laughter Jud and Billy slipped away.

Uncle Billy, the stake-holder, in handing the money over to the
Italian, remarked:

"Wal, it don't look so much ag'in nachur now, after all."

"Breens uppa dar"--smiled the Italian as he put ten eagles into
Archie B.'s hand. All of which made Archie B. vain, for the crowd now
cheered him as they had jeered before.

"Come, let's go, Ozzie B.," he said. "They ain't no man livin' can
stand too much heroism."

CHAPTER XXV

A BORN NATURALIST

Archie B. trotted off, striking a path leading through the wood. It
was a near cut to the log school house which stood in an old field,
partly grown up in scrub-oaks and bushes.

Down in the wood, on a clean bar where a mountain stream had made a
bed of white sand, he stopped, pulled off his coat, counted his gold
again with eyes which scarcely believed it yet, and then turned
handsprings over and over in the white sand.

This relieved him of much of the suppressed steam which had been
under pressure for two hours. Then he sat down on a log and counted
once more his gold.

Ozzie B., pious, and now doubly so at sight of his brother's wealth,
stood looking over his shoulder:

"It was the good Lord done it," he whispered reverently, as he stood
and looked longingly at the gold.

"Of course, but I helped at the right time, that's the way the Lord
does everything here."

Then Archie B. went down into his coat pocket and brought out a
hollow rubber ball, with a small hole in one end. Ozzie B. recognized
his brother's battery of Gypsy Juice.

"How--when, oh, Archie B.!"

"-S-h-h--Ozzie B. It don't pay to show yo' hand even after you've
won--the other feller might remember it nex' time. 'Taint good
business sense. But I pumped it into Bonaparte at the right time when
he was goin' round an' round an' undecided whether he'd take holt or
git. This settled him--he got. The Lord was on the monkey's side, of
course, but He needed Gypsy Juice at the right time."

Then he showed Ozzie B. how it was done. "So, with yo' hand in yo'
pocket--so! Then here comes Bonaparte round an' round an' skeered
mighty nigh to the runnin' point. So--then sczit! It wus enough."

Ozzie B. shuddered: "You run a terrible risk doin' that. They'd have
killed you if they'd seen it, Jud an' Billy. An' all yo' mon