"It's about little Jem Ferguson," spoke up the shorter and stockier of the belligerents. "Kit Bandy here says he oughtn't to be let into the beach-combing, and I hold it's mean as cramp-fish to bar him out just because he's weak and pindlin' and no account in a boat."
"So it is, so it is," chorused the listening youngsters.
But Kit put in quickly, "All right, let him in then; but if you do he'll hoodoo every mother's son of us. Who killed the luck bird last June?"
"Not Jem," cried Herbert Woolley.
"No; but his daddy did, and if he had been drinking too much hard cider at the time, that makes no difference, and the whole family has had a powerful sight of bad fortune ever since. Jest two weeks after their cow choked to death with a green apple; Jem's hip trouble grew worse; and Jake Smithers told me that the smack in which Dan Ferguson sails is sure to come back with a light haul. The men all look on him as a Jonah, for fish don't come to the nets of those who take the life of a hawk."
"Well, but ill-luck can't be inherited, like consumption or the shape of one's nose," protested Herbert, "and even if it could, Jem's having a bit of sand to sift couldn't affect the rest of us."
Still the boys glanced at each other doubtfully, and one muttered. "We'll each have more ground, and so more chance, if he isn't there," while Kit clinched his argument by declaring, "Oh, if Bert has his way we all may as well give up all hope of winning that," pointing, as he spoke, to a flaring yellow poster which adorned one of the bathing-houses.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS!!!
was the heading, in conspicuous capitals two inches long, and below this amount was offered, in smaller type, as a reward for the return of a diamond earring lost by one of the summer visitors in Benton, the pretty New Jersey village where these lads lived, and which was a quasi-fashionable seaside resort for three months of the year. Now, however, the broad white beach was given into the hands of those young natives who in the early fall make a business of going carefully over it, rubbing the iridescent sand between their fingers, and seeking for any articles there lost and hidden during the gay warm season.
In grim silence, then, the boys re-read the advertisement which all knew by heart, and Ned Eaton suggested, "Let's take a vote. Those who want Limpy Jem to have a show drop a white shell in my hat, and those who are for freezing him out a purple one."