Janice felt, after all, as though she had urged Frank Bowman into the
lion's den! The dancers were a rough set. She left the front porch
after a while and stole around to the barroom door.

The door was wide open, but there was a half-screen swinging in the
opening which hid all but the legs and feet of the men standing at the
bar. Here the voices were much plainer. There were a few boys hanging
about the doorway, late as the hour was. Janice was smitten with the
thought that Marty's boys' club, the foundation society of the Public
Library and Reading Room, would better be after these youngsters.

"Why, Simeon Howell!" she exclaimed suddenly. "You ought not to be
here. I don't believe your mother knows where you are."

The other boys, who were ragamuffins, giggled at this, and one said to
young Howell:

"Aw, Sim! Yer mother don't know yer out, does she? Better run home,
Simmy, or she'll spank ye."

Simeon muttered something not very complimentary to Janice, and moved
away. The Howells lived on Hillside Avenue and he was afraid Janice
would tell his mother of this escapade.

Suddenly a burst of voices proclaimed trouble in the barroom. She
heard Frank Bowman's voice, high-pitched and angry:

"Then give him his violin! You've no right to it. I'll take him away
all right; but the violin goes, too!"

"No, we want the fiddle. He was to play for us," said a harsh voice.
"There is another feller here can play instead. But we want both
violins."

"None of that!" snapped the engineer. "Give me that!"

There was a momentary struggle near the flapping screen. Suddenly
Hopewell Drugg, very much disheveled, half reeled through the door; but
somebody pulled him back.

"Aw, don't go so early, Hopewell. You're your own man, ain't ye?
Don't let this white-haired kid boss you."

"Let him alone, Joe Bodley!" commanded Bowman again, and Janice,
shaking on the porch, knew that it must be the barkeeper who had
interfered with Hopewell Drugg's escape.

The girl was terror-stricken; but she was indignant, too. She shrank
from facing the half-intoxicated crowd in the room just as she would
have trembled at the thought of entering a cage of lions.

Nevertheless, she put her hand against the swinging screen, pushed it
open, and stepped inside the tavern door.

CHAPTER XIV

A DECLARATION OF WAR

The room was a large apartment with smoke-cured and age-blackened beams
in the ceiling. This was the a