CHAPTER XI. A QUIET LITTLE GAME.

When Jack finally left his hiding place in the court room, it was with a pretty distinct conviction that no one would ever discover his secret, and that the evil of this life seemed as ruthless in its pursuit of Nuderkopf Trinkelspiel as in his own case. Then there slowly developed within him the thought that Nuderkopf, who had been the principal sufferer by the trick of the speaking-tube, was not even a member of the despised Puttytop faction; so Jack, like many another mischief-maker who injures some one of whom he had never thought while planning his departures from rectitude, sought refuge from his conscience by plunging into gloomy reverie upon the fateful lack of sequence in earthly affairs.

Not the least of his troubles was the fact that, whereas in other days he might have called all the boys in town together and told them the story of his effort to purify the State government, and delighted his soul over their enjoyment of it, he could now tell it only to Matt, who, while a very true friend, had not as keen a sense of the ludicrous as Jack could have desired. Still, one hearer would be better than none, and Jack wondered whether it might not yet be early enough for him to hurry to Matt's house and impart the delicious story, when suddenly, to his great delight, he met Matt himself.

"Where have you been?" asked Matt, "I've been over by your house whistling for you for the past hour. And the loveliest thing—oh, my! Will Pinkshaw has learned a new game of cards—poker, they call it, and it's splendid. Gamblers play it for money, but it's just as much fun to bet buttons, or beans, or corn-grains, or anything. Will and I have been playing it in the moonlight, by your side fence, ever since dark, and we must have played a hundred games."

"It isn't too late for me to learn, is it?" said Jack. "The moon will shine all night."

"Oh, somebody might come along," protested Matt. "The constables prowl around after ten o'clock, you know."

"Then let's go into the stable and get on the hay under the big window," said Jack. "The moon shines in there—nice soft seat, out of sight—everything."

"But we haven't any cards," said Matt.

"Then borrow Will Pinkshaw's," said Jack. "You bring 'em up to the stable—you know the way—and I'll have a handful of corn ready, and we'll have a jolly quiet game for a little while."

Matt was nothing loth to act upon this suggestion, for new games with cards—or anything else—have a way of utterly enthralling the juvenile mind. Within ten minutes he was back with the cards, but their owner had refused to loan the precious pasteboards unless they were accompanied by himself, and Jack experienced a great though secret joy that without his own direct agency he was brought into company with a boy other than Matt, and at a place somewhat different from the Sunday-school where alone he had fraternized with boys during the month. The modus operandi of the game was speedily made known to Jack, the corn was scrupulously divided into three equal portions, and the play began. Jack had not read Hoyle, so perhaps it was the devil, who is said to be particularly encouraging to green players, that decided nearly every game in Jack's favor. Matt was soon "busted," and meekly borrowed twenty grains of corn from the winner, but the Pinkshaw twin, who had bet no more carefully than Matt, remained financially equal to his engagements.

Jack began to wonder whether the Pinkshaw twin might not have sold his soul to the devil, like some gambler he had read of whose money was magically reproduced as fast as he lost it. The thought caused him to fix his eye upon the Pinkshaw twin as if he had been fascinated by him, and soon he discovered that the arch-adversary of souls operated from the heart of the owner of the unfailing pile, for the Pinkshaw twin, who had been pre-informed of the currency to be used, was seen to slyly take some corn from his pocket and lay it upon his pile.

In an instant a sharp quarrel ensued, the Pinkshaw twin lying most industriously and displaying an empty pocket in evidence, but a careful examination of Jack's winnings showed that many grains of sweet corn were among them, whereas there was no such grain in the bin from which Jack had supplied the general exchequer. So the Pinkshaw twin sullenly confessed, and pleaded that playing for corn-grains was no fun, anyhow, for a fellow couldn't do anything with them after he had won them; he therefore proposed that the party should play for buttons.

"Where will we get them?" asked Matt.

"Cut off the suspender buttons on our trowsers," suggested the Pinkshaw twin. "Neither of you fellows wear galluses, do you?"

The suggestion was acted upon, and the volume of currency being somewhat limited, the betting proceeded quite cautiously. But luck was still against the Pinkshaw twin, so, desperately remarking that his jacket was an old one, he removed the buttons from that garment also. And still he lost, so he attacked his shirt front, although Matt suggested that shirt buttons were hardly big enough to bet with. These same went the way of the others, and then the Pinkshaw twin, realizing that no one would see him on his way home, denuded his trowsers of all the remaining buttons, and tied a string around his waist to hold the garments up. Losing these, he pledged his pocket knife to Jack for ten buttons, with the privilege of redemption within twenty-four hours. Then, when he wanted to "raise" handsomely on "two pair," he had nothing to do it with, Jack declining to lend anything whatever on the miserable security of a dirty handkerchief, so he offered to bet his pack of cards as fifty buttons, and Jack agreed, and calmly displayed "three of a kind" and the Pinkshaw twin was a ruined gamester.

The Pinkshaw twin had been accumulating a large stock of bad temper, however, as the game progressed, and of this he partially divested himself, as the party arose, by striking Jack a heavy blow between the eyes. Over went Jack, backward, upon some hay which inclined downward; away he rolled, until stopped by bringing up suddenly against the shelving roof; there he found himself upon one of those unreasonable hens who persist in stealing a nest late in the season, and "setting" thereupon with maternal instincts, the end of which is never calculated in advance. The hen naturally protested, in the loud manner which is said to be an attribute of her sex in general, and as Jack was slow in changing his position, she continued to protest, and then Jack heard the house door open and his father hurry down the back steps, probably in search of chicken thieves, the which abounded in Doveton.

"The other window!" whispered Jack hurriedly. All three of the boys scrambled to it, and jumped out, the Pinkshaw twin becoming somewhat involved with his trowsers, the string securing them having broken. He soon scampered off, however, holding his clothing together as he ran; Matt's retreating footsteps were already inaudible, while Jack, hurrying around to the front gate and tiptoeing up the back stair and through the open door, was in his room and in bed before he realized that his jacket, upon which he had been sitting, had been left behind. Just then the clock struck two, but Jack determined promptly that the old timepiece must be out of order, as it frequently was.

He had the cards, though, and they were irrevocably his, and to be one of the only two or three boys in town who possessed property the sale of which was prohibited by law, was glory enough to have acquired in one night, even at the expense of a blow in the face. With their possession, however, he had also acquired responsibility: his mother might be suddenly moved to "look over" his clothing before breakfast, as she frequently did when intent upon repairs; or the doctor might search his pockets, as he occasionally had done, in search of something that would explain the extreme quiet which, once in a while, characterized Jack. So the boy got out of bed, and put the cards and the Pinkshaw twin's knife into one of his stockings, and hid them under his pillow.

Jack listened for his father's return until he was drowsy and he finally went to sleep and fell instantly into a dream of hearing a great army, with confused trampling, pass by him on some road in which he could not view them, and then that the army engaged in battle with some other army, shouting and screaming fitfully, and firing great guns spasmodically, and then there was a terrific crash, and a general roar, and the armies and the dream sank into nothingness, and Jack knew nothing more until aroused by the breakfast bell. He was very drowsy as he arose, but he remembered that it was the morning for the regular semi-weekly change of stockings, so he clothed himself and descended to breakfast to find his father very silent and his mother overflowing with the sad fact that during the night the stable had burned to the ground and the doctor had barely saved his horse, carriage and harness.

Jack was greatly affected by the information, and recurred to his wonder whether the devil in person might not have been helping the Pinkshaw twin after all. Certainly, they, the players, had struck no light. After a slight breakfast Jack hurried out to view the remains, but the doctor was on the ground before him, and was holding up a partly burned jacket, which he was inspecting with great care.

"Jack!" exclaimed the doctor.

"Sir?" answered Jack, most courteously.

"I threw this out of the window last night, having found it on the hay, just where the fire began. There are charred matches in the pockets. How did that jacket get there?"

"I left it there yesterday," said Jack. "I was up there yesterday, lying about, and it was so warm that I took off my jacket."

"And sat on it, I suppose, and wriggled around on it and ignited the matches, and burned down my stable. Couldn't you have set fire to the house, too, while you were about it, so as to have ruined me completely?"

Jack rightly considered this a very cruel speech, but he hung his head.

Among the many bystanders, attracted by a rarity such a fire generally is in a village, was the gunsmith, and as he gazed upon the many bits of portable property which had been thrown from the burning stable, his eye fell upon something familiar, and he picked up the saw which Jack had used on the court-house gas pipe; examining it hastily, he exclaimed:

"Why, here is my own saw, which I had such a long hunt for yesterday afternoon."

"I just borrowed it while you were out," explained Jack. "I was going to bring it back this morning and tell you about it."

"What did you want of such a tool?" demanded the doctor.

"I wanted to saw a piece of iron," said Jack, with downcast eyes.

"Who's been cutting the hose of my carriage sprinkler?" asked the doctor, suddenly espying the yard of rubber pipe, which Jack had fondly supposed would never be missed from the long coil from which he had cut it.

While Jack was casting about in his mind for some plausible excuse, he heard, to his unspeakable relief, his mother shouting from the back door:

"Doctor, doctor, come here right away! Don't wait a single minute."

The doctor obeyed the summons, and Jack was consoling himself with the thought that the monkey wrench, which belonged to the stable, could not tell tales about him, and the hen, if still alive, could not talk English, when the doctor's well-known voice struck terror to his soul by exclaiming loudly:

"Jack, come here!"

Jack went into the house, and was confronted by the father of the Pinkshaw twins, who had brought a buttonless coat and a pair of trousers as evidence of the truth of his boy's statement that Jack had fought with him, knocked him down, and cut the buttons from his clothes out of simple malice. (It may be remarked, in passing, that the Pinkshaw twin had shrewdly determined that Jack would rather be unjustly punished on such a charge than confess the truth.)

"You needn't deny it," said Mr. Pinkshaw; "my boys always tell the truth." (N. B. Everybody's boys do.) "I'll warrant you have the buttons in your pocket now, saving them up until next marble time, when you'll play them away."

"Jack," said the doctor, "empty your pockets."

Jack had not the strength to resist or devise any way of reducing, without exposure, the protrusion of that one of his pockets which held the buttons. How he wished that the lately despised shirt buttons, so small, so insignificant, had constituted the whole body of the previous evening's currency, instead of its being inflated by the huge papier-mache sailor buttons from the Pinkshaw twin's jacket.

The doctor came rudely to his assistance, however, and soon the floor was covered with buttons, to the identity of most of which Mr. Pinkshaw could swear.

"My boy says Jack stole his knife, too," said Mr. Pinkshaw.

"I didn't!" vehemently protested Jack, and a close search failed to prove that Jack spoke untruly. Just then the Wittingham servant came to the door, holding aloft in one hand a stocking and in the other a dirty pack of cards and the knife, exclaiming:

"The loike av this was undher masther Jack's pillow, ma'am."

"That's my boy's knife!" exclaimed Mr. Pinkshaw.

"Are the cards his, too?" asked the doctor. "I hope so, for the sake of Jack's back."

"They were his," said Jack, determining that all hope for concealment was past. "I won them from him at poker, and won the knife and the buttons too."

"It's a lie!" shouted Mr. Pinkshaw. "My boys have their faults, but they never gamble."

"Ask Matt Bolton, if you don't believe me," said Jack.

The doctor looked as fixedly at Jack as if he were trying to discern rudimentary horns, hoofs and tail. Then he arose suddenly, seized Jack, thrust him into his room, muttered something about bread and water for a week; then the old man fell upon his knees, and besought the Lord for guidance as earnestly as many another person has done after neglecting to use any of his heaven-given sense and opportunity for the control of lively children.

As for Jack, he sat moodily down upon a chair, and formed at least one resolution, to which he had long been urged: If he ever gained his liberty again, he would never, never, never, on clean stocking day, leave his dirty stockings lying about for some one else to pick up.

And on the evening of that day the doctor pored over the skeleton of his intended book on heredity, but the best he could do was to devise a chapter head, and even this was quoted from another book containing some excellent hints upon heredity:
"When the unclean spirit leaveth a man," etc.