ed. How bright the days!
how blissful the nights!

CHAPTER V.

THE NIGHT-HAWKS.

Mr. Shell was proprietor of the New Hope Oyster Saloon. He got up nice
game suppers, and treated his customers to ale, whiskey, and brandy.
Philip loved good living, and often ate an oyster-stew and a broiled
quail, and washed it down with a glass of ale, late at night in Mr.
Shell's rooms, in company with three or four other boys. After supper
they had cigars and a game of cards, till midnight, when Mr. Shell put
out his lights and closed his doors, often interrupting them in the
middle of a game. That was not agreeable, and so the young gentlemen
hired a room over the saloon, fitted it up with tables and chairs, and
organized a club, calling themselves "Night-Hawks." Philip was the chief
hawk. They met nearly every evening. No one could get into their room
without giving a signal to those within, and they had a secret sign by
which they knew each other in the dark.

At first they enjoyed themselves, playing cards, smoking cigars,
drinking ale, sipping hot whiskey punch, and telling stories; but in a
short time the stories were not worth laughing at, the games of cards
were the same thing over and over, and they wanted something more
exciting.

It was the fall of the year. There was rich fruit in the orchards and
gardens of New Hope, russet and crimson-cheeked apples, golden-hued
pears, luscious grapes purpling in the October sun, and juicy melons.
The bee-hives were heavy with honey, and the bees were still at work,
gathering new sweets from the late blooming flowers. Many baskets of
ripe apples and choicest pears, many a bunch of grapes, with melons,
found their way up the narrow stairs to the room of the Night-Hawks.
There was a pleasing excitement in gathering the apples and pears under
the windows of the unsuspecting people fast asleep, or in plucking the
grapes from garden trellises at midnight. But people began to keep
watch.

"We must throw them off our track. I'll make them think that Paul does
it," said Philip to himself one day. He had not forgotten the night of
Daphne's party,--how Paul had won a victory and he had suffered defeat.
Paul was respected; he was the leader of the choir, and was getting on
in the world. "I'll fix him!" said he.

The next morning, when Mr. Leatherby kindled the fire in his shoe-shop,
he found that the stove would not draw. The smoke, instead of going up
the funnel, poured into the r