THE MEN WERE RISING FROM THEIR SEATS, AND THE AIR WAS FULL OF WELCOME.
There rose a tumult of loud voices:
"I'm eternally lost, if it ain't Dick the Kid!" "Dickie, me boy, you God-forsaken whelp, are ye drunk?" "You ain't spent it all in two days, have you, Dick?" "Shut that lost door, and sit down by this condemned fire, you ill-begotten cur, and eternal torment be your lot!" "Tell us what hellish thing brings you here, you blessed boy, and why—ripe for endless misery as you are—why ain't you in Williamsport?"
The smile did not fade from Dick's face, as with easy deliberation he took a seat on a beer-keg and looked at the crew with answering affection in his eyes.
"I'm forever lost if I've been to Williamsport," he began. "And I ain't drunk a drop, you perjured hell-hounds of shameless begetting. I've got all my reprobate stuff with me except the two God-condemned dollars that it's cost me to live at the Temperance House in English Centre, where you can get for a quarter the best meal that any of you unveracious ones, you food for unquenchable fire, ever ate."
God help us! it was like that, only a great deal worse, until the blessed stillness of the night fell upon the camp.
For an hour or more Dick the Kid sat talking to the other men. A stranger in English Centre had fired his ambition for the lumber-camps in the mountains somewhere in West Virginia, and Dick was freely imparting his plans—how he meant to beat his way to Harrisburg and then to Pittsburg, and so on to his destination, hoarding, the while, his savings of about sixty-five dollars, as capital to launch him in a new enterprise, where he was sure that more money could be made than here.