led with nobody, and drunk only an incredible quantity of soda
pop, he commenced to think he had been wrong.

At eleven, when they were still in a pool-hall playing "solo" for a cent
a chip, he decided to go home. There he confided to his wife that no
more striking example of the benefits of prohibition had come under his
observation than the conduct of this notorious pair who, when sober,
were well mannered and docile as lambs.

It was twelve or thereabouts when two figures crept stealthily up the
alley behind Mr. Tucker's Second-Hand Store and raised the window
looking out on the areaway. As noiselessly as trained burglars they
pried up the plank and investigated by the light of a match.

"Well, what do you think of that!"

"I feel like somebody had died and left me a million dollars!" said
Pinkey in an awed tone, reaching for a tin cup. "I didn't think they was
anybody in the world as mean as Tucker."

"You mustn't get too much," Wallie admonished, noting the size of the
drink Pinkey was pouring for himself.

"I've never had too much. I may have had enough, but never too much,"
Pinkey grinned. "I don't take no int'rest in startin' less'n a quart."

"I hope he'll have the decency to be ashamed of himself when he finds
out we know what he did to us. I shouldn't think he'd want to look us in
the face," Wallie declared, virtuously.

"He won't git a chanst to look in my face for some time to come if we
kin lift this cache."

Together they filled the grain sack they had brought and carefully
replaced the plank, then, staggering under the weight of the load, made
their way to a gulch, buried the sack, and marked the hiding-place with
a stone. With a righteous sense of having acted as instruments of
Providence in punishing selfishness, they returned to town to follow
such whims as seized them under the stimulus of a bottle of Mr. Tucker's
excellent Bourbon.

The constable had been asleep for hours when a yell--a series of
yells--made him sit up. He listened a moment, then with a sigh of
resignation got up, dressed, and took the key of the calaboose from its
nail by the kitchen sink.

"I'll lock 'em up and be right back," he said to his sleepy wife, who
seemed to know whom he meant too well to ask.

Under the arc light in front of the Prouty House he found them doing the
Indian "stomp" dance to the delight of the guests who were leaning from
their windows to applaud.

"Ain't you two ashamed of yerselves?" the