ll right!" he cried. "Gimme the bottle!"

And Penrod placed it in his hand.

"You promise to let me drink until I quit swallering?" Maurice insisted.

"Yes!" said both boys together.

With that, Maurice placed the bottle to his lips and began to drink.
Penrod and Sam leaned forward in breathless excitement. They had feared
Maurice might smell the contents of the bottle; but that danger was
past--this was the crucial moment. Their fondest hope was that he would
make his first swallow a voracious one--it was impossible to imagine a
second. They expected one big, gulping swallow and then an explosion,
with fountain effects.

Little they knew the mettle of their man! Maurice swallowed once; he
swallowed twice--and thrice--and he continued to swallow! No Adam's
apple was sculptured on that juvenile throat, but the internal progress
of the liquid was not a whit the less visible. His eyes gleamed with
cunning and malicious triumph, sidewise, at the stunned conspirators;
he was fulfilling the conditions of the draught, not once breaking the
thread of that marvelous swallering.

His audience stood petrified. Already Maurice had swallowed more than
they had given Duke and still the liquor receded in the uplifted bottle!
And now the clear glass gleamed above the dark contents full half the
vessel's length--and Maurice went on drinking! Slowly the clear glass
increased in its dimensions--slowly the dark diminished.

Sam Williams made a horrified movement to check him--but Maurice
protested passionately with his disengaged arm, and made vehement vocal
noises remindful of the contract; whereupon Sam desisted and watched the
continuing performance in a state of grisly fascination.

Maurice drank it all! He drained the last drop and threw the bottle in
the air, uttering loud ejaculations of triumph and satisfaction.

"Hah!" he cried, blowing out his cheeks, inflating his chest, squaring
his shoulders, patting his stomach, and wiping his mouth contentedly.
"Hah! Aha! Waha! Wafwah! But that was good!"

The two boys stood looking at him in stupor.

"Well, I gotta say this," said Maurice graciously: "You stuck to your
bargain all right and treated me fair."

Stricken with a sudden horrible suspicion, Penrod entered the storeroom
in one stride and lifted the bottle of licorice water to his nose--then
to his lips. It was weak, but good; he had made no mistake. And Maurice
had really drained--to the dregs--the bottle of old hair