it if I didn't almost hide it from myself," wailed honest Jim.

"All I had, except what I paid the sailor, is in my other clothes;
that bill I gave the sailor was one I always carried with me because
my mother gave----"

Melvin didn't finish his sentence. He couldn't. He was shivering too
much and that sudden memory of his idolized mother almost unmanned
him. Suppose he were to contract pneumonia? Her constant dread was
that he should be ill and die.

But it was Gerald who now suffered most. Because the morning had been
so warm he had put on a white duck suit. He fancied himself in it and
it was becoming; but it was also thin, and under present circumstances
a costume of torment. If Melvin were shivering, Gerald was worse. He
was shaking so that the ricketty wagon rattled and he felt as if he
were dying.

"Oh! man alive! Don't act the tyrant this way! Tell us where you live
and I give you my word of honor I'll go to your place the first thing
to-morrow and settle. I'll even pay double," begged Jim; and when the
farmer remained obstinately silent, leaped from the wagon and dragged
Gerald after him. "Run, run! You'll get warm that way! Run, I tell
you, for your life!"

But the poor lad couldn't. He sank down upon the wet earth and was
fast lapsing into unconsciousness when the lash of the teamster's whip
fell smartly about him.

"I'll warm you, ye young scamp! Cheat an honest man of his earnin's,
will you?"

But the whip went no further. With a yell as of some enraged animal,
Jim flew at the man and gathered all the strength of his labor-trained
muscles for one fierce onslaught.

CHAPTER XI.

A MORNING CALL OF MONKEYS.

Then a mighty din arose. With an answering yell the half-drunken
teamster flew at his assailant, using his whip continually, but not
wisely, for both wrath and liquor blinded him. Else would the result
have been worse for Jim.

The startled Cap'n Jack tossed his crutches out of the wagon and
recklessly tumbled after them; then picked them up to lay about him in
an aimless effort to subdue the fighters. But he managed to hit nobody
for, as he afterward stated, "they didn't stan' still long enough."

Shrieking for peace Melvin jumped to the ground, upsetting the cage of
monkeys, whose frantic yells and jabberings added a strange note to
the racket, until their own wild antics forced their cage out of the
wagon. Then, terrified by their fall, they became quiet enough till
the Captain