your rent? If I should tell them that you put lozengers in the
collection plate at church, and charge the minister forty cents a pound
for oleomargarine, you would have to close up. Old man, I am onto you,
and now you apologize for pulling my ear."

The grocery man turned pale during the recital, and finally said the bad
boy was one of the best little fellows in this town, and the boy went
out and hung up a sign in front:--

GIRL WANTED

TO COOK

CHAPTER III.

HIS PA STABBED--THE GROCERY MAN SETS A TRAP IN VAIN--A BOOM
IN LINIMENT--HIS PA GOES TO THE LANGTRY SHOW--THE BAD BOY
TURNS BURGLAR--THE OLD MAN STABBED--HIS ACCOUNT OF THE FRAY--
A GOOD SINGLE HANDED LIAR.

"I hear you had burglars over to your house last night," said the
grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in and sat on the counter right
over a little gimlet hole, where the grocery man had fixed a darning
needle so that by pulling a string the needle would fly up through the
hole and run into the boy about an inch. The grocery man had been laying
for the boy about two days, and now that he had got him right over the
hole the first time, it made him laugh to think how he would make him
jump and yell, and as he edged off and got hold of the string the boy
looked unconscious of impending danger. The grocery man pulled, and the
boy sat still. He pulled again, and again, and finally the boy said:

"Yes, it is reported that we had burglars over there. O, you needn't
pull that string any more. I heard you was setting a trap for me, and
I put a piece of board inside my pants, and thought I would let you
exercise yourself. Go ahead if it amuses you. It don't hurt me."

The grocery man looked sad, and then smiled a sickly sort of a smile,
at the failure of his plan to puncture the boy, and then he said,
"Well, how was it? The policeman didn't seem to know much about the
particulars. He said there was so much deviltry going on at your house
that nobody could tell when anything was serious, and he was inclined to
think it was a put up job."

"Now let's have an understanding," says the boy. "Whatever I say, you
are not to give me away. It's a go, is it? I have always been afraid of
you, because you have a sort of decayed egg look about you. You are like
a peck of potatoes with the big ones on top, a sort of a strawberry
box, with the bottom raised up, so I have thought you would g