bout
as fast as we git it; but we can patch up an' lend you enough to start
with, an' you can pay it back when you git the chance."

Surely Paul thought he was fortunate in having made the acquaintance
of two boys who were so well off in this world's goods as Ben and
Johnny, and his position did not seem nearly as bad as it had half an
hour ago, even though it was nearly dark, and he had no idea where he
should sleep that night.

He did not know, any more than his newly-made friends did, that by
telling his story to the police he would be taken care of until his
relatives in Chicago could be written to, and he believed that he must
depend upon his own exertions to get home. Therefore he eagerly
accepted the generous offer.

"But where can I live?" he asked, as the thought came to him that even
though a chance for making himself rich had suddenly presented itself,
he was still without a home.

"Didn't Ben tell yer that we'd been 'vestin' our money in real
estate?" asked Johnny, almost impatiently, and speaking rather
indistinctly because of his mouth being so filled with candy. "We've
got a place we bought of Dickey Spry, an' you can stay with us if you
pay your share."

Paul was willing to go into any extravagances for the sake of having a
home, provided his two tops, and the three cents still remaining of
his wealth, was sufficient to make the first payment. This he told his
friends.

"Shiner didn't mean that you was to pay it right down," said Ben,
quickly. "After you git to makin' money for yourself, all you've got
to do is to buy your share of the things."

As that was only just, Paul agreed to it, and Johnny, who had by this
time succeeded in eating the dark-colored mixture that was by courtesy
called candy, started off to dispose of the papers he still held under
his arm, while Ben led Paul away with him.

"Johnny has got to 'tend right up to biz," said Ben, in a
half-explanatory way, "or else he'd git stuck, you know."

"Would he?" asked Paul, in evident alarm. "Who would stick him?"

Ben looked at this young gentleman from Chicago in surprise, and then
in pity. He could not understand how any one, and more especially a
boy, could be so ignorant of the meaning of one of the most common
words of slang. At first he looked as if he was about to reprove such
ignorance; but he evidently thought better of it, for he said,
instead,

"I mean that he'd be stuck by havin' a lot of this afternoon's papers
le