r the platform, up and
down the track, and in the waiting rooms, did he give the command, "Come
down!"

II

The passenger agent saw the performance with astonishment. "So you had
the boy tucked away all the time?" said he. "Just what kind of a game is
this?"

"Dunno," returned Jim. "Let the boy speak for himself. Now, young man,
what's the matter?"

The urchin stood before them, taking them in thoroughly with his sharp
little eyes. More big men strolled up. As a particularly fine foil to the
boy's diminutive form, Benny, the baggage smasher, whose overhanging
shoulders testified whence came the power that had reduced many a proud
Saratoga to elemental conditions, and "Happy Jack," the mammoth,
soot-black, loose-jointed negro porter, placed themselves on either side
of him. They made the boy look more like an insect than ever.

"Wot's de matter?" he cried in a voice at once hoarse and shrill, with a
cursing note in it, and accompanying the words with an extravagant,
dramatic gesture of his skinny claw. "I'll tell yer wot's der matter--dey
beat me--dey beat me bad. I don't ast youse to take me word fur it--look
at me back--dat's all I ast yer--jes' look at dat!"

He ripped the shirt from his shoulders. An angry growl went up from all
those big-bearded men when they saw the horrible stripes and welts--raw,
blue and swollen--on the poor little back.

Happy Jack threw up both his gorilla arms. "Lord Jesus! Who done you like
dat, boy?" he cried. "'F I got m' hookers on him, cuss me 'f I wudden'
put bumps on him bigger'n yer hull body."

"Now yer talkin'," shrieked the boy. He raised himself to the tips of his
toes, bared his teeth to the gum, and with clutching talons, gripping at
the air, yelled: "Aggh! If I had me growth! I'd bite his heart out! I'd
tear his neck for 'im!"

The men looked astounded on this mighty fury, pent in so small and
miserable a cage. The voice had a peculiar alarming call to it, like the
note of a fire-gong.

Suddenly the boy's head dropped on the crook of his arm. "Treated me
wuss'n a dog," he sobbed out. "Done me so it makes even dat nigger holler
when he sees it."

Happy Jack was taken aback. The other men smoothed down their faces
forcibly.

"Say, lil' boy, you think dat's a p'lite way to talk to people?" inquired
Jack.

The boy wiped his eyes on his sleeve and went over to him. "Say, don't
yer holt nothin' ag'in me fur der word," said he. "Dey've got me
looney--dat's w