"Cut off the suspender buttons on our trowsers," suggested the Pinkshaw twin. "Neither of you fellows wear galluses, do you?"
The suggestion was acted upon, and the volume of currency being somewhat limited, the betting proceeded quite cautiously. But luck was still against the Pinkshaw twin, so, desperately remarking that his jacket was an old one, he removed the buttons from that garment also. And still he lost, so he attacked his shirt front, although Matt suggested that shirt buttons were hardly big enough to bet with. These same went the way of the others, and then the Pinkshaw twin, realizing that no one would see him on his way home, denuded his trowsers of all the remaining buttons, and tied a string around his waist to hold the garments up. Losing these, he pledged his pocket knife to Jack for ten buttons, with the privilege of redemption within twenty-four hours. Then, when he wanted to "raise" handsomely on "two pair," he had nothing to do it with, Jack declining to lend anything whatever on the miserable security of a dirty handkerchief, so he offered to bet his pack of cards as fifty buttons, and Jack agreed, and calmly displayed "three of a kind" and the Pinkshaw twin was a ruined gamester.
The Pinkshaw twin had been accumulating a large stock of bad temper, however, as the game progressed, and of this he partially divested himself, as the party arose, by striking Jack a heavy blow between the eyes. Over went Jack, backward, upon some hay which inclined downward; away he rolled, until stopped by bringing up suddenly against the shelving roof; there he found himself upon one of those unreasonable hens who persist in stealing a nest late in the season, and "setting" thereupon with maternal instincts, the end of which is never calculated in advance. The hen naturally protested, in the loud manner which is said to be an attribute of her sex in general, and as Jack was slow in changing his position, she continued to protest, and then Jack heard the house door open and his father hurry down the back steps, probably in search of chicken thieves, the which abounded in Doveton.
"The other window!" whispered Jack hurriedly. All three of the boys scrambled to it, and jumped out, the Pinkshaw twin becoming somewhat involved with his trowsers, the string securing them having broken. He soon scampered off, however, holding his clothing together as he ran; Matt's retreating footsteps were already inaudible, while Jack, hurrying around to the front gate and tiptoeing up the back stair and through the open door, was in his room and in bed before he realized that his jacket, upon which he had been sitting, had been left behind. Just then the clock struck two, but Jack determined promptly that the old timepiece must be out of order, as it frequently was.
He had the cards, though, and they were irrevocably his, and to be one of the only two or three boys in town who possessed property the sale of which was prohibited by law, was glory enough to have acquired in one night, even at the expense of a blow in the face. With their possession, however, he had also acquired responsibility: his mother might be suddenly moved to "look over" his clothing before breakfast, as she frequently did when intent upon repairs; or the doctor might search his pockets, as he occasionally had done, in search of something that would explain the extreme quiet which, once in a while, characterized Jack. So the boy got out of bed, and put the cards and the Pinkshaw twin's knife into one of his stockings, and hid them under his pillow.
Jack listened for his father's return until he was drowsy and he finally went to sleep and fell instantly into a dream of hearing a great army, with confused trampling, pass by him on some road in which he could not view them, and then that the army engaged in battle with some other army, shouting and screaming fitfully, and firing great guns spasmodically, and then there was a terrific crash, and a general roar, and the armies and the dream sank into nothingness, and Jack knew nothing more until aroused by the breakfast bell. He was very drowsy as he arose, but he remembered that it was the morning for the regular semi-weekly change of stockings, so he clothed himself and descended to breakfast to find his father very silent and his mother overflowing with the sad fact that during the night the stable had burned to the ground and the doctor had barely saved his horse, carriage and harness.
Jack was greatly affected by the information, and recurred to his wonder whether the devil in person might not have been helping the Pinkshaw twin after all. Certainly, they, the players, had struck no light. After a slight breakfast Jack hurried out to view the remains, but the doctor was on the ground before him, and was holding up a partly burned jacket, which he was inspecting with great care.
"Jack!" exclaimed the doctor.
"Sir?" answered Jack, most courteously.
"I threw this out of the window last night, having found it on the hay, just where the fire began. There are charred matches in the pockets. How did that jacket get there?"