“You boys,” he said, “have no business on the street this time o’ night. I want you to go home, every one o’ you.”
“That’s where we’re headed for,” replied Slicker; and with that the incident was closed.
Benjamin Barriscale, toward whose private property the boys were moving, was at the head of the principal industry of the city, operated by a corporation known as the Barriscale Manufacturing Company. He was reputed to be a man of great wealth, of unbending will, generous or domineering as best suited his purpose. To invade his premises at midnight, on a mischief-making errand, was therefore an adventure which called for both courage and caution. His mansion was a full half mile from the center of the city; a square, stately house set well back from the street in the midst of a spacious lawn. Two massive, ornamental gate-posts guarded the entrance to the grounds, but the gates that swung between them were rarely closed. When the boys reached the place it was well past midnight and the lights in the electric lamps at the porch entrance had been extinguished. A single gleam showed faintly at an upper window; for the rest the darkness was complete save that a street lamp, a block away, endeavored, quite ineffectually, to send its rays into the thick mist overhanging the Barriscale grounds. For the perpetration of undiscoverable mischief the night was ideal.
Midway of the journey the heavy board sign had been transferred from its hiding-place under Hal’s rain-coat to the possession of two of the younger boys. Even to them it had grown increasingly substantial, and they were not loath now to relieve themselves of their burden.
After careful inspection of the gate-post it was the consensus of opinion that there was but one place on it where the sign could be conspicuously and safely fastened, and that was at the moulding near the top of the post.
And to hold it in place a piece of stout twine of sufficient length to pass across the face of the board and be tied behind the iron ornament at the summit was absolutely necessary. But the twine was immediately forthcoming. There was scarcely a boy in the company who had not that necessary equipment in one or another of his pockets. And the combined supply of the group, doubled and twisted and knotted, left nothing in the way of fastening material to be desired. So the puppy sign was hoisted into place, and two boys, at the risk of tumbling and breaking their necks, anchored it securely to the stone coping and the iron ornaments of Benjamin Barriscale’s massive gate-post.
But the incident was not yet quite closed. Before the mischief-makers were ready to turn their faces toward the street Slicker bethought himself of a supplementary task.
“Who’s got some black crayon?” he asked of the company.
No one appeared to have black crayon, but Little Dusty was able to produce a stub of a carpenter’s pencil which he had somewhere acquired, and he turned it over to the questioner.