ys I: 'Jerry, that's a pretty good
joke, and you can take my hat as soon as I get a new one, but of course
I don't mean to be hard on you, and if you really have bills to pay
to-morrow I'll take a third, and Putty'll take another, and we'll go
away peaceful.'--'No, you won't,' sings out Jerry, and with that he
jumps out of bed right at me, and Putty Henderson he comes at me from
the other side, and, between the two, they gave me the worst lickin' I
ever got in my born days, and then they dragged me down stairs and
kicked me out the front door, and I had hardly time to pick myself up
before I saw a policeman about a block off, and if he hadn't been a fat
one he'd had me sure. It wouldn't have been pleasant, for I was a good
deal wanted about that time.

"So you see, ladies and gents, that it's true what I said,--things don't
always go right in our line of business no more than any other one."

"I think you were served exactly right," said Aunt Martha; "and I wonder
such an experience did not induce you to reform."

"It did, ma'am, it did," said the burglar. "I made a vow that night that
if ever again I had to call in any one to help me in business of that
kind I wouldn't go pards with him. I'd pay him so much for the job, and
I'd take the risks, and I've stuck to it.

"But even that don't always work. Luck sometimes goes ag'in' a man,
even when he's working by himself. I remember a thing of that kind that
was beastly hard on me. A gentleman employed me to steal his daughter."

"What!" exclaimed my wife and Aunt Martha. "Steal his own daughter! What
do you mean by that?"

"That's what it was," said the stout burglar; "no more nor less. I was
recommended to the gent as a reliable party for that sort of thing, and
I met him to talk it over, and then he told me just how the case stood.
He and his wife were separated, and the daughter, about eleven years
old, had been given to her by the court, and she put it into a boardin'
school, and the gent he was goin' to Europe, and he wanted to get the
little gal and take her with him. He tried to get her once, but it
slipped up, and so there wasn't no good in his showin' hisself at the
school any more, which was in the country, and he knowed that if he
expected to get the gal he'd have to hire a professional to attend to
it.

"Now, when I heard what he had to say, I put on the strictly pious, and,
says I, 'that's a pretty bad thing you're askin' me to do, sir, to
carry away a