miserable the doctor said she must get
away from Chicago at once, and so we had to come. Then Cary's a perfect
hoodlum at home,--one scrape after another as fast as he can get in and
father can get him out. They sent him with us," she continued, in the
flow of her boundless confidences.

"Herr Max is a very highly educated young man, but I don't think he's
doing Cary any good."

That night at Mainz there was an episode. Mr. Allison senior, fatigued,
had gone to bed as soon as they reached their hotel. Mrs.
Lawrence,--"auntie," that is,--Miss Allison, and their maid were
billeted in very comfortable rooms under Herr Schnorr's hospitable roof.
Elmendorf stepped in to write letters, and Cary sneaked out for a smoke.
It was after ten. The shops were closed. Cigarettes had been strictly
forbidden, and the boy's small stock of contraband had been discovered
and seized that morning at Bonn. Herr Max wrote _currente calamo_, and
as he turned off page after page he lost all thought of his charge.
Among Cary's treasured possessions was a calibre 32 Smith & Wesson, and
with this pellet-propeller in his hip-pocket the boy fancied himself as
dangerous as an anarchist. Twice had it been captured by paterfamilias
and twice recovered, the last time at Cologne. Carrying concealed
weapons was as much against the law in Cologne as it is in Chicago, and
much more of an offence, but nothing had there occurred to impel him to
draw it. The boat-landing was not five hundred yards away. There under
the arching lights of its beautiful bridge, sparkling with the
reflection of myriad stars, silently flowed the Rhine, and there lay the
Deutscher Kaiser, with her well-stocked larder and wine-room. Thither
went the boy in quest of forbidden fruit. A waiter to whom he had
confided his desire had promised to have the cigarettes on hand, and
kept his promise. For one small package he demanded a four-mark
piece,--a silver coin of about the size and rather more than the value
of the American dollar. Cary responded with "What you giving us?" which
the Teutonic kellner couldn't understand. The boy proffered a mark, the
German equivalent for the American quarter, and sought vainly through
the misty memories of his lessons for the German equivalent of "Size me
up for a chump?" The waiter had friends and fellow-conspirators, the boy
had none, and when a grab was made for his portemonnaie he backed
against the stone wall and whipped out his pygmy six-shooter.