ut,"
and then they went on with the frugal meal, while Hennery seemed to feel
as though something was coming.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BAD BOY'S FOURTH OF JULY--PA IS A POINTER NOT A SETTER--
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY--A GRAND SUPPLY
OF FIRE WORKS--THE EXPLOSION--THE AIR FULL OF PA AND DOG AND
ROCKETS--THE NEW HELL--A SCENE THAT BEGGARS DESCRIPTION.

"How long do you think it will be before your father will be able to
come down to the office?" asked the druggist of the bad boy as he was
buying some arnica and court plaster.

"O, the doc. says he could come down now if he would on some street
where there were no horses to scare," said the boy as he bought some
gum, "but he says he aint in no hurry to come down till his hair grows
out, and he gets some new clothes made. Say, do you wet this court
plaster and stick it on?"

The druggist told him how the court plaster worked, and then asked him
if his Pa couldn't ride down town.

"Ride down? well, I guess nix. He would have to set down if he rode down
town, and Pa is no setter this trip, he is a pointer. That's where the
pinwheel struck him."

"Well how did it all happen?" asked the druggist, as he wrapped a yellow
paper over the bottle of arnica, and twisted the ends, and then helped
the boy stick the strip of court plaster on his nose.

"Nobody knows how it happened but Pa, and when I come near to ask him
about it he feels around his night shirt where his pistol pocket would
be if it was pants he had on, and tells me to leave his sight forever,
and I leave too, quick. You see he is afraid I will get hurt every 4th
of July, and he told me if I wouldn't fire a fire-cracker all day he
would let me get four dollars' worth of nice fire-works and he would
fire them off for me in the evening in the back yard. I promised, and he
gave me the money and I bought a dandy lot of fire-works, and don't you
forget it. I had a lot of rockets and Roman candles, and six pin-wheels,
and a lot of nigger chasers, and some of these cannon fire-crackers,
and torpedoes, and a box of parlor matches. I took them home and put the
package in our big stuffed chair and put a newspaper over them.

"Pa always takes a nap in that stuffed chair after dinner, and he went
into the sitting room and I heard him driving our poodle dog out of the
chair, and heard him ask the dog what he was a-chewing, and just then
the explosion took place, and we all rushed in the