Slippery, who was tall, and sallow, and lean, and unkempt, and who looked consumptive and otherwise unwholesome, grinned sheepishly, as he replied:
"I reckon my name ought to answer that question. I slips in and I slips out where I can and when I can, and picks up anything that's lying around."
Madge laughed scornfully.
"You don't look as if you had sense enough to hate anybody or anything," she said.
"Oh, I hate Nick Carter, right enough," was the unhesitating reply.
"Why do you hate him?"
"Because he sent my father and my mother and my two brothers to prison, and they're all there now, and they weren't doing a thing that interfered with him in any way."
"What were they doing?" asked Madge.
"Well, if you want to know it straight, Black Madge, they was running a little counterfeit plant of their own—making dimes and quarters and a few half dollars for some of us to blow in when we couldn't find the real rhino."
"Running a counterfeit plant, eh?"