g--what then?"

"Well, if he done it a-purpose, I reckon he wouldn't stand no chance--he
OUGHTN'T to have no chance, anyway, I'm most rotten certain 'bout that."

"What is your name?"

"Nicodemus Dodge."

"I think maybe you'll do, Nicodemus. We'll give you a trial, anyway."

"All right."

"When would you like to begin?"

"Now."

So, within ten minutes after we had first glimpsed this nondescript he
was one of us, and with his coat off and hard at it.

Beyond that end of our establishment which was furthest from the street,
was a deserted garden, pathless, and thickly grown with the bloomy and
villainous "jimpson" weed and its common friend the stately sunflower.
In the midst of this mournful spot was a decayed and aged little "frame"
house with but one room, one window, and no ceiling--it had been a
smoke-house a generation before. Nicodemus was given this lonely and
ghostly den as a bedchamber.

The village smarties recognized a treasure in Nicodemus, right away--a
butt to play jokes on. It was easy to see that he was inconceivably
green and confiding. George Jones had the glory of perpetrating the
first joke on him; he gave him a cigar with a firecracker in it and
winked to the crowd to come; the thing exploded presently and swept away
the bulk of Nicodemus's eyebrows and eyelashes. He simply said:

"I consider them kind of seeg'yars dangersome,"--and seemed to suspect
nothing. The next evening Nicodemus waylaid George and poured a bucket
of ice-water over him.

One day, while Nicodemus was in swimming, Tom McElroy "tied" his
clothes. Nicodemus made a bonfire of Tom's by way of retaliation.

A third joke was played upon Nicodemus a day or two later--he walked
up the middle aisle of the village church, Sunday night, with a staring
handbill pinned between his shoulders. The joker spent the remainder
of the night, after church, in the cellar of a deserted house, and
Nicodemus sat on the cellar door till toward breakfast-time to make
sure that the prisoner remembered that if any noise was made, some rough
treatment would be the consequence. The cellar had two feet of stagnant
water in it, and was bottomed with six inches of soft mud.

But I wander from the point. It was the subject of skeletons that
brought this boy back to my recollection. Before a very long time
had elapsed, the village smarties began to feel an uncomfortable
consciousness of not having made a very shining success out of their
atte