"Yes, but it cleaned me out, so I didn't have but two dollars left. But I travelled off into the country towns, and got it back in a week or two. I'm glad they didn't get hold of Bill."
"The feller that sold for me. I couldn't have paid his fine too. That's about all I have to tell."[B]
"Captain Jinks!" called out one of the boys; "your turn next."
Attention was directed to a tall, overgrown boy of sixteen, or possibly seventeen, to whom for some unknown reason the name of the famous Captain Jinks had been given.
The captain was rather taciturn, but was finally induced to tell his story.
[B] The main incidents of Jim Bagley's story are true, having been communicated to the writer by Jim himself, a wide-awake boy of fifteen, who appeared to possess decided business ability and energy. The name only is fictitious.
"My father and mother are dead," he said. "I used to live with my sister and her husband. He would get drunk off the money I brought home, and if I didn't bring home as much as he expected, he'd fling a chair at my head."
"He was a bully brother-in-law," said Jerry. "Did it hurt the chair much?"
"If you want to know bad, I'll try it on you," growled the narrator.
"Good for Captain Jinks!" exclaimed two or three of the boys.
"When did you join the Hoss Marines?" asked Jerry, with apparent interest.
"Shut up your mouth!" said the captain, who did not fancy the joke.
"I would not stand that; so I went off, and lived at the Lodge till I got in here. That's all."
Captain Jinks relapsed into silence, and Tim McQuade was called upon. He had a pair of sparkling black eyes, that looked as if he were not averse to fun.
"Maybe you don't know," he said, "that I'm fust cousin to a Markis."
"The Markis of Cork," suggested one of the boys.
"And sometimes I expect to come in for a lot of money, if I don't miss of it."
"When you do, just treat a feller, will you?" said Jerry.
"Course I will. I was born in a big castle made of stone, and used to go round dressed in welvet, and had no end of nice things, till one day a feller that had a spite ag'in the Markis carried me off, and brought me to America, where I had to go to work and earn my own livin'."
"Why don't you write the Markis, and get him to send for you?" asked Jerry.