continued the other, "but talked with her."

"Tell us about it, Bristles," urged Colon.

"Why, it was this way," began the other, complying briskly. "She was
just coming out of the cheap grocery, and had several bundles in her
arms, as if she might have been buying bread, and some such things. I
knew her just as soon as I set eyes on her, for she wore that same old
frowsy red dress, and had a little tad of a shawl pinned over her
shoulders. The poor thing looked like a wind'd blow her away, with her
thin, pinched face, and big startled eyes."

"Oh! let all that drop, Bristles," expostulated Colon. "What we want to
know is, how did you come to speak to her, and did she remember you?"

Bristles was bound to tell his story in his own way. Without paying any
attention to this nagging on the part of the tall chum, he kept facing
Fred, and went on deliberately.

"There was a horse and buggy standing at the curb, and say, you never in
all your life saw such a dilapidated outfit. Talk to me about the famous
'one hoss shay,' it couldn't have been a circumstance beside that rig.
Everywhere the shafts were tied up to hold, the harness patched till it
looked all strings, and the animal, well, he was a walking skeleton. Any
other time I'd have laughed myself sick, but I couldn't do that then,
with that poor little thing being the one that drove such an outfit."

"What did you say to her?" asked Fred.

"Oh! I said 'howdy-do, Sadie, don't you remember me?' and she looked
scared at first, and then she actually smiled. She said she hadn't
forgotten the two boys on the river, who had been so kind to Sam and her.
I asked her where she'd been all this time, and she looked kind of
confused and said, 'Oh! around everywhere!' as if they might be a pack
of regular Gypsies, and never knew what it was to have a home of their
own."

"But you say she had some sort of a rig with her," expostulated Colon at
this point of the narrative, "and wouldn't that look as if they'd
squatted down somewhere or other, for a spell?"

"Maybe it would," replied Bristles, "but the chances are they only
borrowed the outfit for the occasion from some poor farmer, paying for
its use by fetching him home some supplies from town. But just then I
remembered about that pin we found in the cave, and I took it out of my
pocket, unwrapping the paper, and all of a sudden holding it before her."

"Did she recognize the breast pin?" Colon asked.

"You'd