"I'm only enjoying it," the boy answered, writhing as the vinegar worked into the gash. "Don't you mind my laughing to myself."
"Ye're a good one, Joe!" said the other, continuing his ministrations. "I wisht, after all, ye felt like makin' me known to what's the trouble. There's some of us would be glad to take it up fer ye, and—"
"No, no; it's all right. I was somewhere I had no business to be, and I got caught."
"Who caught ye?"
"First, some nice white people"—Joe smiled his distorted smile—"and then a low-down black man helped me to get away as soon as he saw who it was. He's a friend of mine, and he fell down and tripped up the pursuit."
"I always knew ye'd git into large trouble some day." The red-bearded man tore a strip from an old towel and began to bandage the boy's head with an accustomed hand. "Yer taste fer excitement has been growin' on ye every minute of the four years I've known ye."
"Excitement!" echoed Joe, painfully blinking at his friend. "Do you think I'm hunting excitement?"
"Be hanged to ye!" said the red-bearded man. "Can't I say a teasing word without gittin' called to order fer it? I know ye, my boy, as well as ye know yerself. Ye're a queer one. Ye're one of the few that must know all sides of the world—and can't content themselves with bein' respectable! Ye haven't sunk to 'low life' because ye're low yourself, but ye'll never git a damned one o' the respectable to believe it. There's a few others like ye in the wide world, and I've seen one or two of 'em. I've been all over, steeple-chasin', sailorman, soldier, pedler, and in the PO-lice; I've pulled the Grand National in Paris, and I've been handcuffed in Hong-Kong; I've seen all the few kinds of women there is on earth and the many kinds of men. Yer own kind is the one I've seen the fewest of, but I knew ye belonged to it the first time I laid eyes on ye!" He paused, then continued with conviction: "Ye'll come to no good, either, fer yerself, yet no one can say ye haven't the talents. Ye've helped many of the boys out of a bad hole with a word of advice around the courts and the jail. Who knows but ye'd be a great lawyer if ye kept on?"
Young people usually like to discuss themselves under any conditions—hence the rewards of palmistry,—but Joe's comment on this harangue was not so responsive as might have been expected. "I've got seven dollars," he said, "and I'll leave the clothes I've got on. Can you fix me up with something different?"
"Aha!" cried the red-bearded man. "Then ye ARE in trouble! I thought it 'd come to ye some day! Have ye been dinnymitin' Martin Pike?"