The Worst Boy in Town

by John Habberton

"Father!" screamed Jack in utter agony, while gallows trees sprung up before his eyes in every direction, "let me tell you how it was." And Jack hastily detailed his experiences of the morning, concluding with:

"It was all because I was trying so hard to mind you, and not have anything to do with boys."

The doctor threw his arms around the youth, and exclaimed:

"You're a darling, noble, splendid boy, but there is no knowing how a jury may look at the case, when your previous reputation is considered. Get ready to hide."

Jack hurried up to his room for what seemed to him necessities, but he had time to reflect upon his varied experiences to do right, with their lamentable results, and to wonder if it were not really true, as was implied by some novels he had been unfortunate enough to read, that fate occasionally forbade some people to do right successfully. Of one thing he was very sure; come what would, he never could ask nice little Mattie Baker to become the wife of a murderer. Then he tiptoed feebly, after one or two ineffectual efforts, to his father's room, which overlooked the scene of the battle; it might be that the doctor had reached the wounded boy in time to staunch the flow of blood before it was eternally too late. From the window, Jack, with great astonishment and not entirely without disgust, beheld the rowdy sauntering away with his hands in his pockets, while beside him walked the doctor, violently shaking his fist and head at the beaten man, and filling the air with threats which a breeze wafted back to Jack.

The surprise was too much for Jack's nerves; he dropped upon his father's bed and doubted whether he ever would regain his breath again; then he bemoaned the loss of the vagabond life which had been just within his grasp, and which is the ideal of every boy at a certain period of his life. From this he was recovered by the thought that, after all, nice little Mattie Barker was not to be entirely a memory of the past. His eye and nose finally obtruded themselves upon his attention, and very unsightly objects they were in a mirror; he hoped nice little Mattie Barker would not see him until his face regained its natural appearance; and he would certainly take care never to have himself so disfigured again.

Then his father returned, hastily searched the house for Jack, caught him in his arms, and actually cried over him, upon which the boy felt himself a hero indeed. But when his father assured him that his latest exploit would have a wonderful effect in keeping boys away from him, Jack did not seem so elated as the doctor would have had him; he looked so solemn that the doctor asked what the matter was, and Jack burst out crying, and answered:

"I'm so dreadfully lonely all the time."

The doctor started to ask if either he or his wife were not always at home, but recalling the drift of a previous conversation on the same topic, he grew suddenly very cool and undemonstrative and removed himself, whereupon Jack, who read the human face as correctly as boys usually do, waxed angry, and lost sight of all his principles, as every one does in anger, and determined that if he could not have fun with the boys he would have it without them, and have all he wanted, too.

He did not lose much time in discovering a way of amusing himself. August had worked through into September, and though the public was to have no opportunity of disarranging national affairs at the ballot-box that autumn, a gubernatorial campaign had opened most vigorously in the State of which Doveton considered itself the mainstay. The rival candidates were Baggs and Puttytop, and though both were men of fair intellect and reputation, as politicians go, and the adult mind could find but little reason to distinguish between them, the boys of Doveton, who never for a moment doubted that they were in perfect sympathy with the inner sense of statesmanship, and knew the constitutional rights and special needs of Doveton beside, were, to a man, for Baggs. Jack had gained this precious bit of information from Matt, so he promptly ranged himself, mentally, with his natural allies, and sought for means to discourage the Puttytop adherents, who stupidly saw not though they had eyes, and heard not though they had ears.