nd fout her hisself."

"Wasn't the captain's clothes big for him?" asked B. Franklin Jenkins,
anxiously.

The janitor eyed young Jenkins with pained dignity.

"Didn't I say the Rooshin captain was a small, a very small man?
Rooshins is small, likewise Greeks."

A noble enthusiasm beamed in the faces of the youthful heroes.

"Was Barlow as large as me?" asked C. F. Hall Golightly, lifting his
curls from his Jove-like brow.

"Yes; but then he hed hed, so to speak, experiences. It was allowed
that he had pizened his schoolmaster afore he went to sea. But it's dry
talking, boys."

Golightly drew a flask from his jacket and handed it to the janitor.
It was his father's best brandy. The heart of the honest old seaman
was touched.

"Bless ye, my own pirate boy!" he said, in a voice suffocating with
emotion.

"I've got some tobacco," said the youthful Jenkins, "but it's fine-cut;
I use only that now."

"I kin buy some plug at the corner grocery," said Pirate Jim, "only I
left my port-money at home."

"Take this watch," said young Golightly; "it is my father's. Since he
became a tyrant and usurper, and forced me to join a corsair's band,
I've began by dividing the property."

"This is idle trifling," said young Chitterlings, mildly. "Every
moment is precious. Is this an hour to give to wine and wassail? Ha,
we want action--action! We must strike the blow for freedom
to-night--aye, this very night. The scow is already anchored in the
mill-dam, freighted with provisions for a three months' voyage. I have
a black flag in my pocket. Why, then, this cowardly delay?"

The two elder youths turned with a slight feeling of awe and shame to
gaze on the glowing cheeks, and high, haughty crest of their youngest
comrade--the bright, the beautiful Bromley Chitterlings. Alas! that
very moment of forgetfulness and mutual admiration was fraught with
danger. A thin, dyspeptic, half-starved tutor approached.

"It is time to resume your studies, young gentlemen," he said, with
fiendish politeness.

They were his last words on earth.

"Down, tyrant!" screamed Chitterlings.

"Sic him--I mean, Sic semper tyrannis!" said the classical Golightly.

A heavy blow on the head from a base-ball bat, and the rapid projection
of a base ball against his empty stomach, brought the tutor a limp and
lifeless mass to the ground. Golightly shuddered. Let not my young
readers blame him too rashly. It was his first homicide.

"Searc