lars a week for two of you! Board on the desert is
cheap at a dollar a day. You can write your mother to that effect; and
in the meantime, perhaps you better put up at the hotel----"

"Oh, she said if anyone made a fuss, she'd pay more," Billiard hastily
explained, for somehow the hotel idea did not appeal to him.

"Well, you tell her a dollar a day for each of you is the regular rate.
And now you will have just about time to get that wood before supper is
ready."

Billiard glanced questioningly up into the clear, olive face above him,
as if he could not believe his ears.

"The pile is close to the door," she continued, paying no attention to
the amazement in his face: "and the woodbox is on the screened porch."

Billiard hesitated, opened his lips as if to speak, closed them again,
and inwardly raging, but outwardly meek, marched out of the door to the
woodpile.

CHAPTER IV

MISCHIEF MAKERS

Tabitha retired late that night, weary but triumphant, congratulating
herself that Billiard was conquered; but she had reckoned without her
host. Two little heathen such as Williard and Theodore McKittrick are
not to be converted in one day, nor are they apt to be forced into
reforming. Brought up with utter disregard for other people's rights,
by a mother who bore them no particular love, but who surrounded them
with every luxury money could buy simply because she found it less
trouble to indulge than to deny them, it is scarcely to be wondered at
that they had no idea of honor or obedience.

Their father, Dennis McKittrick, had been more successful than his
brothers in his struggle for wealth. After amassing a comfortable
fortune, he had not lived to enjoy it, and before his oldest son had
seen his sixth birthday, the father was laid to rest in the shadow of a
resplendent monument in an Eastern cemetery; and the rearing of the two
boys was left wholly to their fashion-plate mother, whose only gods
were dress and personal pleasure. Tabitha had heard many stories of
the selfish, heartless woman, who found her motherhood a burden rather
than a blessing, but she did not understand the difficulties one must
contend with in attempting to reform such lawless youths, and being
little more than a child herself, it was only natural that she should
make mistakes.

But she did not at once realize this fact, for Billiard, completely
surprised by the unusual treatment accorded him, was a model of
obedience and politene