wn and yellow
stripes and sell 'em to the darkies for a dollar apiece. Sid DuPree says
they buy those things and he ought to know. He spent summer before last
down South with his ma!"

"Where'd we get the money to buy 'em in the first place?" asked the
practical Silvey.

His chum's face clouded. "Shucks, Sil, you're always spoiling things.
But," more hopefully, "we needn't really worry about money anyway. All
the books I've read about the South tell how kind folks are down there,
and how they won't allow a stranger to go hungry, not even if they have
to give him their last hunk of cornbread. So if ferrying didn't pay, all
we'd have to do would be to land, walk up to the nearest house, and
knock at the door. When the big mammy cook--they always have 'em in the
books--came to the door, we'd just look at her and say, 'We're hungry.'"

Silvey nodded, content to revel in the glories of the daydream which
John's more vivid imagination was spinning.

"We'd go all the way down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Maybe we'd
catch some alligators to make things exciting, and maybe some big yellow
river catfish. I read about one once that was six feet long. And when we
arrived, they'd put our pictures in the newspapers, with a big lot of
print after them, just the way they do when someone comes to town here
who's done something. We'd win a lot of race cups, and folks would say
to their friends, 'See those two kids there? They took a launch all the
way down the river from Lake Michigan by themselves.' We'd be _it_ all
the time we were there."

Silvey, under the spell of the alluring picture, let his gaze roam
dreamily around until it lighted upon an excited group down the pier. He
sprang to his feet energetically.

"Fletch! Look! A man drowned, maybe. Come on quick!" Such alluring
possibilities may come true in a city.

They sprinted up to the rapidly increasing crowd, and wriggled, boylike,
past obstructing arms and between tense bodies until they found
themselves in the inner line of the circle. A carp of a size sufficient
to excite the envy of the neighboring fishermen lay with laboring gills
upon the water-spattered planking. The lads gazed in open-mouthed
admiration at the large, glistening scales, the staring eyes, and the
twitching, murky red fins.

"Weighs five pounds if he's an ounce," orated the proud captor. "Says I
to myself when he bit, 'I've got a bird there,' and I was right."

John turned to his chum with the