day. You say that you have made
many patents which were given to the Gresham company because you were
their employee. Now, you can turn out a few more with your own name on
them, and get the profits yourself. That's not so bad. I'll be out of
here myself, before long, and I'll stir myself, to see that you get a
chance. I can perhaps help in some way, even if I'm only a policeman."

The older man looked at him with a comical surprise.

"A policeman? A cop? Well, well, well! I wouldn't have known it!"

Bobbie Burke laughed, and he had a merry laugh that did one's soul good
to hear.

"We're just human beings, you know--even if the ministers and the
muckrakers do accuse us of being blood brothers to the devil and Ali
Baba."

"I never saw a policeman out of uniform before--that's why it seems
funny, I suppose. But I wouldn't judge you to be the type which I
usually see in the police. How long have you been in the service?"

Here was Bobby's cue for autobiography, and he realized that, as a
matter of neighborliness, he must go as far as his friend.

"Well, I'm what they call a rookie. It's my second job as a rookie,
however, for I ran away from home several years ago, and joined the
army. I believed all the pretty pictures they hang up in barber shops
and country post-offices, and thought I was going to be a globe
trotter. Do you remember that masterpiece which shows the gallant
bugler tooting the 'Blue Bells of Scotland,' and wearing a straight
front jacket that would make a Paris dressmaker green with envy? Well,
sir, I believed that poster, and the result was that I went to the
Philippines and helped chase Malays, Filipinos, mosquitoes, and germs;
curried the major's horse, swept his front porch, polished his shoes,
built fences and chicken houses, and all the rest of the things a
soldier does."

"But, why didn't you stay at home?"

Burke dropped his eyes for an instant, and then looked up unhappily.

"I had no real home. My mother and father died the same year, when I
was eighteen. I don't know how it all happened. I had gone to college
out West for one year, when my uncle sent for me to come back to the
town where we lived and get to work. My father was rather well to do,
and I couldn't quite understand it. But, my uncle was executor of the
estate, and when I had been away that season it was all done. There
was no estate when I got back, and there was nothing to do but to work
for my uncl