just a minute!" Penrod urged vehemently. "I'm not
goin' to keep it, am I? You can have it when I get through, can't you?
Here's how _I_ do: I'm comin' along after dark, just walkin' along this
way--like this--look, Sam!"

Penrod, suiting the action to the word, walked to the other end of the
room, swinging the revolver at his side with affected carelessness.

"I'm just walkin' along like this, and first I don't see you," continued
the actor. "Then I kind of get a notion sumpthing wrong's liable to
happen, so I--No!" He interrupted himself abruptly. "No; that isn't
it. You wouldn't notice that I had my good ole revolaver with me. You
wouldn't think I had one, because it'd be under my coat like this, and
you wouldn't see it." Penrod stuck the muzzle of the pistol into the
waistband of his knickerbockers at the left side and, buttoning his
jacket, sustained the weapon in concealment by pressure of his elbow.
"So you think I haven't got any; you think I'm just a man comin' along,
and so you--"

Sam advanced. "Well, you've had your turn," he said. "Now, it's mine.
I'm goin' to show you how I--"

"WATCH me, can't you?" Penrod wailed. "I haven't showed you how _I_ do,
have I? My goodness! Can't you watch me a minute?"

"I HAVE been! You said yourself it'd be my turn soon as you--"

"My goodness! Let me have a CHANCE, can't you?" Penrod retreated to the
wall, turning his right side toward Sam and keeping the revolver still
protected under his coat. "I got to have my turn first, haven't I?"

"Well, yours is over long ago."

"It isn't either! I--"

"Anyway," said Sam decidedly, clutching him by the right shoulder and
endeavouring to reach his left side--"anyway, I'm goin' to have it now."

"You said I could have my turn out!" Penrod, carried away by
indignation, raised his voice.

"I did not!" Sam, likewise lost to caution, asserted his denial loudly.

"You did, too."

"You said--"

"I never said anything!"

"You said--Quit that!"

"Boys!" Mrs. Williams, Sam's mother, opened the door of the room
and stood upon the threshold. The scuffling of Sam and Penrod ceased
instantly, and they stood hushed and stricken, while fear fell upon
them. "Boys, you weren't quarrelling, were you?"

"Ma'am?" said Sam.

"Were you quarrelling with Penrod?"

"No, ma'am," answered Sam in a small voice.

"It sounded like it. What was the matter?"

Both boys returned her curious glance with meekness. They were summoning
their fa