name such as Jones, Brown or Smith, and to give some faraway city as his
place of residence. He taught the boy many other vicious tricks, and to
prevent suspicions arising in the lad's mind that everything was not on
the square, Kansas Shorty would let him wait for him in the public
highway, after he had told him that he would call at a nearby farm house
and try to find jobs for both. He would then knock on the farm house
door, and if someone answered his knocks would ask for a match, a pin or
some other trifle and then return to the waiting lad and bitterly
complain about his inability to find employment.

Towards the evening of the first day, Jim becoming somewhat anxious to
meet his brother, and observing that Kansas Shorty made not the
slightest move to reach the "big oak", which he had told Slippery should
be their meeting place, he casually remarked: "Say, friend, is it not
close to the time that we should find our way to the "big oak" where we
are to meet Slippery and my brother Joe?" "It's plenty time until then,"
was Kansas Shorty's reply, and then to show Jim that he was from now on
his master, he angrily added: "You do not need to remind me again, as I
shall take care of you."

Just as dusk blended into the night, after they had supped upon a
handout that he had begged at a farm house, Kansas Shorty pointed his
hand in the direction of some oaks which were growing some distance from
the highway and told Jim that beneath the tallest of them was the place
where they were to meet Slippery and Joe.

They climbed over fences and crossed fields, and the closer they
approached the tree the more Jim's heart palpitated, so anxious was he
to rejoin his twin brother, whose inseparable companion he had been
since their birth until this day, and strange forebodings seemed to have