"I got him for a mascot—to bring me good luck!" answered Matt Stanton. "And if anybody takes him away from me I'll——"
"Not so loud! Don't make so much noise, mine friends!" whispered Sam Levy. "I don't want the farmers around to know I do a junk business here. They think this old place has of nobody to live in it. I don't want them to come and bother me."
"You see, sometimes, by mistakes, my friend he of gets things here that belongs to the farmers," explained Ike Stein, the driver of the junk wagon. "So as he doesn't want to be boddered with farmers of coming here to look for maybe their chickens or ducks."
"Oh, so that's what you do!" exclaimed Jed Porter, who had a broad, smiling face, quite different from the rather sneaking looks of Matt Stanton. "Well, it isn't any of my affairs, of course. I'm not going to stay, anyhow. I just happened to be passing and I saw a gleam of light through the trees, so I walked over to see what it was. I'm hungry!"
"The meal, he will be ready soon," said Sam. "Your friend, he should of pay for you; will he?" and he looked at the second sailor as he asked this question.
"He might pay it with some of the money he took from me," growled Jed, "but I don't s'pose he will! I'll pay for myself!"
"I'll pay you back as soon as I have better luck, and I will have it now I've got the dog," whined Matt. He acted as though afraid of the other sailor, and well he might be for he had not been honest with Jed, and had taken some of Jed's money.
"Now don't laugh with such a loudness, and make so much of noiseness," whispered the old man who lived in the ruin of a house. "We don't want anybody coming here!"
"All right," agreed Jed, as he sat down and began to eat, while the others did the same.
The two junk men talked together in low tones after supper. Matt, the ragged sailor, stretched out on a bundle of rags as if to go to sleep. Jed took a piece of newspaper from his pocket and began to read by the light of a smoking lamp, and poor Ruddy whined and whimpered outside.