"Contribute money, Nickey. Don't be slangy," his mother interjected.

"Well I says, 'I'm runnin' the Juv'nals, and you've got to do just what I say. I've got a dandy scheme for raisin' money and we'll have some fun doin' it, or I miss my guess.' Then I asked Sam Cooley how much money he'd got, and Sam, he had forty-four cents, Billy Burns had fifty-two cents, and Dimple had only two. Dimp never did have much loose cash, anyway. But I said to Dimp, 'Never mind, Dimp; you aint to blame. Your dad's an old skinflint. I'll lend you six to start off with.' Then I made Billy Burns sweep the floor, while Sam went down to the chicken yard and caught my bantam rooster, Tooley. Then I sent Dimp after some chalk, and an empty peach basket, and a piece of cord.

Then we was ready for business.

"I marked a big circle on the barn floor with the chalk, and divided it into four quarters with straight lines runnin' through the middle.

Then I turned the peach basket upside down, and tied one end of the string on the bottom, and threw the other end up over a beam overhead, so I could pull the basket off from the floor up to the beam by the string. You see," Nickey ill.u.s.trated with graphic gestures, "the basket hung just over the middle of the circle like a bell. Then I took the rooster and stuck him under the basket. Tooley hollered and scratched like Sam Hill and----"

"For mercy sake, Nickey! What will you say next?"

"Say, ma, you just wait and see. Well, Tooley kicked like everything, but he had to go under just the same. Then I said to the kids to sit around the circle on the floor, and each choose one of the four quarters for hisself,--one for each of us. 'Now,' I said, 'you must each cough up----'"

"Nicholas!"

"Oh ma, do let me tell it without callin' me down every time. 'You kids must hand out a cent apiece and put it on the floor in your own quarter. Then, when I say ready, I'll pull the string and raise the basket and let Tooley out. Tooley'll get scared and run. If he runs off the circle through my quarter, then the four cents are mine; but if he runs through Dimp's quarter, then the four cents are Dimp's.'

"It was real excitin' when I pulled the string, and the basket went up. You'd ought to 've been there, Mrs. Maxwell. You'd have laughed fit to split----"

"Nicholas Burke, you must stop talkin' like that, or I'll send you home," reproved Mrs. Burke, looking severely at her son, and with deprecating side-glances at his audience.

"Excuse me, ma. It will be all over in a minute. But really, you'd have laughed like sin--I mean you'd have just laughed yourself sick.

Tooley was awful nervous when the basket went up. For a minute he crouched and stood still, scared stiff at the three kids, all yellin'

like mad; then he ducked his head and bolted off the circle through my quarter and flew up on a beam. I thought the kids would bust."

Mrs. Burke sighed heavily.

"Well, burst, then. But while they were laughin' I raked in the cash.

You see I just had to. I won it for fair. I'd kept quiet, and that's why Tooley come across my quarter."

Mrs. Maxwell was sorting over her music, while Maxwell's face was hidden behind a paper. Mrs. Burke was silent through despair. Nickey glanced furtively at his hearers for a moment and then continued:

"Yes, the kids was tickled; but they got awful quiet when I told them to fork over another cent apiece for the jack-pot."

"What in the name of conscience is a jack-pot?" Hepsey asked.

Donald laughed and Nickey continued:

"A jack-pot's a jack-pot; there isn't no other name that I ever heard of. We caught Tooley and stuck him under the basket, and made him do it all over again. You see, every time when Tooley got loose, the kids all leant forward and yelled like mad; but I just kept my mouth shut, and leaned way back out of the way so that Tooley'd run out through my quarter. So I won most all the time."

There was a pause, while Nickey looked a bit apprehensively at his audience. But he went on gamely to the end of the chapter.

"Once Tooley made a bolt in a straight line through Dimp's quarter, and hit Dimp in the mouth, and bowled him over like a nine-pin. Dimp was scared to death, and howled like murder till he found he'd scooped the pot; then he got quiet. After we made Tooley run ten times, he struck work and wouldn't run any more; so we just had to let him go; but I didn't care nothn' about that, 'cause you see I had the kids'

cash in my pants pocket, and that was what I was after. Well, sir, when it was all over, 'cause I'd busted the bank----"

"Nicholas Burke, I am ashamed of you."

"Never mind, ma; I'm most through now. When they found I'd busted the bank, they looked kind of blue, and Dimp Perkins said it was a skin game, and I was a bunco steerer."

"What did you say to that?" Donald inquired.

"Oh, I just said it was all for religion, it was church money, and it was all right. I was just gleanin' what few cents they had, to pay the church debt to the missionary; and they ought to be ashamed to have a church debt hangin' over 'em, and they'd oughter be more cheerful 'bout givin' a little somethin' toward raisin' of it."

When Nickey had finished, there was an ominous silence for a moment or two, and then his mother said sternly:

"What do you suppose Mrs. Perkins will say when she finds that you've tricked her son into a regular gambling scheme, to get his money away from him?"

"Mrs. Perkins," retorted Nickey, thoroughly aroused by the soft impeachment. "I should worry! At the church fair, before Mr. Maxwell came, she ran a fancy table, and tried to sell a baby blanket to an old bachelor; but he wouldn't take it. Then when he wasn't lookin', blessed if she didn't turn around and tie the four corners together with a bit of ribbon, and sell it to him for a handkerchief case. She got two dollars for it, and it wasn't worth seventy-five cents. She was as proud as a dog with two tails, and went around tellin'

everybody."

Silence reigned, ominous and general, and Nickey braced himself for the storm. Even Mrs. Maxwell didn't look at him, and that was pretty bad. He began to get hot all over, and the matter was fast a.s.suming a new aspect in his own mind which made him ashamed of himself. His spirits sank lower and lower. Finally his mother remarked quietly:

"Nickey, I thought you were goin' to be a gentleman."

"That's straight, all right, what I've told you," he murmured abashed.

There was another silent pause--presently broken by Nickey.

"I guess I hadn't thought about it, just that way. I guess I'll give the kids their money back," he volunteered despondently--"only I'll have to make it up, some way, in the treasury." He felt in his pockets, and jingled the coins.

Another pause--with only the ticking of his mother's knitting needles to relieve the oppressive silence. Suddenly the worried pucker disappeared from his brow, and his face brightened like a sun-burst.

"I've got it, Mrs. Maxwell," he cried. "I've got seventy-five cents comin' to me down at the Variety Store, for birch-bark frames, and I'll give that for the blamed old missionaries. That's square, 'aint it now?"

Mrs. Betty's commendation and her smile were salve to the wounds of her young guest, and Donald's hearty laughter soon dispelled the sense of social failure which was beginning to cloud Nickey's happy spirit.

"Say Nickey," said Maxwell, throwing down his paper, "Mrs. Betty and I want to start a Boy Scout Corps in the parish, and with your resourceful genius you could get the boys together, and explain it to them, and soon we should have the whole thing in ship-shape order.

Will you do it?"

"Will I?" exclaimed the delighted recruit. "I guess so--but some of 'em 'aint 'Piscopals, Mr. Maxwell; there's Sam Cooley, he's a Methodist, and----"

"That doesn't cut any ice, Nickey,--excuse my slang, ladies," he apologized to his wife and Hepsey, at which the boy grinned with delight. "We're out to welcome all comers. I've got the books that we shall need upstairs. Let's go up to my den and talk it all over. We shall have to spend evenings getting thoroughly up in it ourselves,--rules and knots and first-aid and the rest. Mrs. Burke will allay parental anxiety as to the bodily welfare of the recruits and the pacific object of the organization, and Mrs. Maxwell will make the colors. Come on!"

With sparkling eyes, Nickey followed Donald out of the room; as they disappeared Hepsey slowly shook her head in grateful deprecation at Betty.

"Bless him!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hepsey. "Mixin' up religion, with a little wholesome fun, is the only way you can serve it to boys, like Nickey, and get results. Boys that are ever goin' to amount to anything are too full of life to stand 'em up in a row, with a prayer book in one hand and a hymnal in the other, and expect 'em to sprout wings. It can't be done. Keep a boy outside enough and he'll turn out alright.

Fresh air and open fields have a mighty helpful influence on 'em. The way I've got it figgered out, all of us can absorb a lot of the right kind of religion, if we'll only go out and watch old Mother Nature, now and then."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XVI

PRACTICAL TEMPERANCE REFORM

The small town of Durford was not immune from the curse of drink: there was no doubt about that. Other forms of viciousness there were in plenty; but the nine saloons did more harm than all the rest of the evil influences put together, and Maxwell, though far from being a fanatic, was doing much in a quiet way to neutralize their bad influence. He turned the Sunday School room into a reading room during the week days, organized a gymnasium, kept watch of the younger men individually, and offered as best he could some chance for the expression of the gregarious instinct which drew them together after the work of the day was over. In the face of his work in these directions, it happened that a venturesome and enterprising saloon-keeper bought a vacant property adjacent to the church, and opened up an aggressive business--much to Maxwell's dismay.