hands in his pockets.

"You've plenty of time," raged Pat, "You've only a little five miles
run left. It's a good half hour before light. You're a pair of cowards,
that's whut ye are, and so I'll tell Sam. If I get fired fer not being
there fer the early milk train, there'll be no more fat jobs fer youse.
Now be sure ye do as you're told. Leave the car in the first field
beyond the woods after ye cross the state line, lift yer flash light
and wink three times, count three slow, and wink three times more.
_Then beat it!_ And doncha ferget to go feed that guy! We don't
want he should die on us."

The engine began to mutter. Pat with a farewell string of oaths rolled
off down the road, too sleepy to look behind, and Billy held his breath
and ducked low till the rolling Pat was one with the deep gray of the
morning.

The first streak of light was beginning to show in the East, and the
all-night revellers at the Blue Duck were in the last stages of going
home after a more than usually exciting season, when Billy like the
hardened promise-breaker he felt himself to be, boldly slid in at the
door and disappeared inside the telephone booth behind the last row of
tables in the corner. For leave it to a boy, even though he be not a
frequenter of a place, to know where everything needful is to be found!

He had to wait several minutes to get the Chief of Police in Economy,
and while he waited two gaunt habitues of the Tavern slid into seats at
the table to the left of the booth, ordered drinks and began to discuss
something in a low tone. Billy paid no heed till he happened to hear
his friend's name: