“You can steer ’most anywhere when they shine like that. Don’t want none of these ’ere winking, blinking lights to show you the way,” he said.
“But the trouble is they don’t always shine,” answered Dan.
“No,” said Neb, slowly, “they don’t; that’s a fact. But they ain’t ever really out, like menfolk’s lights. The stars is always thar.”
“Always there,”—yes, Dan realized, as, with his head on the dank, fishy pillow, he looked up in the glory above him, the stars were always there. Blurred sometimes by earthly mists and vapors, lost in the dazzling gleam of jewelled lights, darkened by the shadows of crooked trees, they shone with pure, steadfast, guiding rays,—the stars that were always there. A witching little Will-o’-the-wisp had bewildered Dan into strange ways this evening; but he was back again in his own straight honest line beneath the stars.
On “The Polly,” making her way over the starlit water to Killykinick, things were not so pleasant.
“It was a mean, dirty trick to give Dan away. I don’t care who did it!” said big-hearted Jim, roused into spirit and speech.
“It wasn’t I,—oh, indeed it wasn’t I!” declared Freddy. “I told Tad Dan was the biggest, strongest, finest fellow in the whole bunch. I never said a word about his being a newsboy or a bootblack, though I don’t think it hurts him a bit.”
“And it doesn’t,” said Jim, whose blood had been a “true blue” stream before the Stars and Stripes began to wave. “But there are some folks that think so.”
“Calling me fool, are you?” said Dud, fiercely.
“No, I didn’t,” retorted Jim. “But if the name fits you, take it. I don’t object.” And he turned away, with a flash in his eyes most unusual for Sunny Jim,—a flash that Dud did not venture to kindle into angry fire.