s in his hand and sifted out for home on a
gallop, and Ma took Pa by the elbow and said, "You are a nice old party,
ain't you? I am dead, am I? Died of liver complaint fourteen years ago,
did I? You will find an animated corpse on your hands. Around kissing
spry wimmen out in the night, sir." When they started home Pa seemed to
be as weak as a cat, and couldn't say a word, and I asked if I could
go to the exposition, and they said I could, I don't know what happened
after they got home, but Pa was setting up for me when I got back and he
wanted to know what I brought Ma down there for, and how I knew he was
there.

"I thought it would help Pa out of the scrape and so I told him it was
not a girl he was hugging at all, but it was my chum, and he laffed at
first, and told Ma it was not a girl, but Ma said she knew a darn sight
better. She guessed she could tell a girl.

"Then Pa was mad and he said I was at the bottom of the whole bizness,
and he locked me up, and said I was enough to paralyze a saint. I told
him through the key-hole that a saint that had any sense ought to tell a
boy from a girl, and then he throwed a chair at me through the transom.
The worst of the whole thing is my chum is mad at me cause Ma scratched
him, and he says that lets him out. He don't go into any more schemes
with me. Well, I must be going. Pa is going to have my measure taken
for a raw hide, he says, and I have got to stay at home from the sparing
match and learn my Sunday school lesson."

CHAPTER XV.

HIS PA AT THE REUNION. THE OLD MAN IN MILITARY SPLENDOR--
TELLS HOW HE MOWED DOWN THE REBELS--"I AND GRANT"--WHAT IS A
SUTLER?--TEN DOLLARS FOR PICKELS!--"LET US HANG HIM!"--THE
OLD MAN ON THE RUN--HE STANDS UP TO SUPPER--THE BAD BOY IS
TO DIE AT SUNSET.

"I saw your Pa wearing a red, white, and blue badge, and a round red
badge, and several other badges, last week, during the reunion," said
the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth asked for a piece of
codfish skin to settle coffee with. "He looked like a hero, with his old
black hat, with a gold cord around it."

"Yes, he wore all the badges he could get, the first day, but after he
blundered into a place where there were a lot of fellows from his own
regiment, he took off the badges, and he wasn't very numerous around
the boys the rest of the week. But he was lightning on the sham battle,"
says the boy.

"What was the matter? Didn't the old soldi