en he went
out and found Artie Bartell, who is a kind of a harmless halfwit that
just walks the streets and will do anything whatever if told, being
anxious to please. Keats gives Artie a dime to take the curls up to his
dear mother and tell her that her little boy has been run over by a
freight engine down to the station and these here curls was all that
could be saved of him.

Then he hurries home the back way and watches, and pretty soon he sees
some neighbours come rushing to the house when they hear his mother
scream, so then he knows everything is all right. He waits a minute or
two, then marches in with his hat off. His mother actually don't know him
at first, on account of his naked skull, but she soon sees it must be he,
little Keats, and then has hysterics because she thinks the freight
engine has clipped him this way. And of course there was more hysterics
when she learned the terrible truth of his brother's infamy. I guess
Shelley had been wise all right to keep off the place at that time,
soldier or no soldier. But that's neither here nor there.

The point is that little Keats may now be saved to a life of usefulness
and not be hanged for murder, thanks to his brother's brave action. Of
course Bugs himself is set in his ways, and will adorn only positions of
a certain kind. He's fine here, for instance, just at this time when I
got to hire all kinds that need a firm hand--and Bugs has two.

Sure, it was him took the job of foreman here yesterday. We had quite a
little talk about things when he come. He told me how he released his
little brother from shame. He said he wouldn't of done such a radical
thing except that peace is now coming on and the world will no longer
need such fighting devils as curls will make of a boy if let to stay
long enough.

"Keats might have turned out even worse than I did," he says, "but
if there wasn't going to be any way where he could do it legally, what
was the use? He'd probably sometime have killed a boy that called him
Goldilocks, and then the law might have made it unpleasant for him. I
thought it was only fair to give him a chance to live peaceful. Of course
in my own case mamma acted for the best without knowing it. We needed
fighters, and I wouldn't have been anything at all like a fighter if she
hadn't made me wear those curls till my whiskers began to show above the
surface. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was a born coward, but those golden
strands took all that out o