"Sure!" answered the other with a provoking grin.
"Well, if anybody should ask you," Tommy continued, "you're the boy that had a mixup with the tramp tonight, and ran away while we were trying to invite you to supper. What do you know about that?"
"Invite me to supper now and see if I'll run away!"
"If you boys will cut out this foolish conversation for a minute," Will suggested, "I'll try to find out what this boy wants. Do you mean to say," he added turning to Tommy, "that you bumped into this kid while returning to the mine from the tracks?"
"Didn't I tell you about that?" asked Tommy. "I thought I did. We found him in a mixup with a tramp, and that's all there is to it!"
"And I told you at the time," the stranger interrupted, "that the tramp tried to rob me! That was all right, too. He did try to rob me, but I didn't have a blessed cent in my possession, so he didn't get anything! The tramp who got a hold of me night before last stripped me clean! And that, you see, is why I haven't got any money to buy provisions with. And also that's the reason why I'm hungry."
The four boys gathered around the stranger and began a systematic course of questions which at first brought forth only unsatisfactory answers.
"And also," the boy went on, taking up the speech be had begun some minutes before, "that's why two other boys are hungry just about this time. I got rolled for my wad plenty."
"That's South Clark street!" laughed Tommy.
"That's Bowery!" corrected the other.