CHAPTER IV.
JOHN HENRY'S COUNTRY COP.
Ahead of me, plodding along the pike under the moonlight, were
Bunch and his cadaverous captor, the former bowed in sorrow or
anger, probably both, and the latter with head erect, haughty as a
Roman conqueror.
Bunch's make-up was a troubled dream. Over a pair of hand-me-down trousers, eight sizes too large for him, he wore a three-dollar ulster. On his head was an automobile cap, and his face was covered with a bunch of eelgrass three feet deep. He was surely all the money.
As I drew near I could hear Mr. Diggs expatiating on crime in general and housebreaking in particular, and I fancied I could also hear Bunch boiling and seething within.
[Illustration: Aunt Martha—a Short, Stout Bundle of Good Nature.]
"Mr. Buggular," Diggs was saying, "I don't know just what your home trainin' was as a child, but they's a screw loose somewhere or you'd a'never been brought to this here harrowful perdickyment, nohow. I s'pose you jest started in nat'rally to be a heenyus maleyfactor early in life, huh? You needn't to answer if you're afeared it'll incrimigate you, but I s'pose you took to it when a boy, pickin' pockets or suthin' like that, huh?"
"Oh, cut it out, you old goat, and don't bother me!" snapped Bunch, just as I joined them.
"A dangerous maleyfactor," said Diggs to me, as he tightened his grip on Bunch's arm; "but they ain't no call for you to assist the course of justice, because if the dern critter starts to run I'll pump him chuck full of lead. He's been a'tellin' me he started on the downward path to predition as a child-stealer."
"I told you nothing, you old tadpole," shrieked Bunch, unable to contain himself longer.