eth outside the bars.

In San Francisco the days were warm, and Lily the mascot goat had
returned to her master's side.

The Wildcat was playing even in the matter of daily rations. Trailing
along in the wake of a pair of the golf-playing Nobles of the
Mysterious Mecca at the Lincoln Park Golf course provided a cash
surplus which enabled the Wildcat to discard his winter-weight Prince
Albert and to adorn his person with a retiring suit of clothes three
shades lighter than a sunburned pumpkin and embellished with six-inch
checks. Life wasn't so bad. Ol' railroad sleepin' car was probably
doin' all right. Reasonably sure that tomorrow would lug in new brands
of trouble to pester a boy with, the Wildcat steered his somnolent
mentality clear of the shoals of surmise and let tomorrow take care of
itself.

A boy never could tell about Lady Luck. Every time the Wildcat did
something that clearly entitled him to free board in some permanent
jail, like as not next day he would wake up all festooned with gold
watches. Take a preacher's advice and head down the straight and narrow
path, and the chances were that some deppity sherriff with a shotgun,
or else a bear, would be waiting in the path right where the heaviest
canebrakes discouraged detours.

2.

"One man's pizen is anotheh man's meat,--
Mah troubles neveh botheh you.
Hog needs wings like a snake needs feet:
De question ain't why, but who."

Honey Tone Boone's downfall had been accomplished in Memphis
immediately subsequent to a Konk'rin' Heroes' parade. There had been
some talk about the ownership of the mule which Honey Tone rode. The
line of march headed straight for Honey Tone's wife and his potential
soul mate and culminated in a ruckus from which Honey Tone emerged,
safe in the talons of a policeman. The two women, comparing notes, had
gummed up the leader's grand entry to a degree which left Honey Tone
thankful for the mule-stealing charge that had landed him safe in the
jail and out of the clutches of his wife and Cuspidora Lee. He enjoyed
sanctuary in jail for two months and then, threatened with an
embarrassing and abrupt release, he concentrated on a hurried mental
incubation. Hard pressed, he sought to hatch from the bad egg of
circumstance some new enterprise which would take him away, sudden and
safe, from where his memorizing wife awaited him.

His mind roamed wild through the fields of questionable enterprises
opened to him by a