Owen Clancy's Happy Trail Part 17

A knock fell on the door. Hill answered the summons and admitted Hank Burton.

"Well, by golly!" exclaimed Hill.

"What's the matter?" queried Burton sourly.

"I told Clancy I didn't think you'd come. Seein' you sort o' surprised me."

"What made you think I wouldn't come?" demanded Burton.

"Oh, the way you acted, the way you talked, and your low-down character, gen'rally."

Burton flushed and scowled. Turning away from Hill he addressed himself to Clancy.

"Here I am," said he. "Why did you want me to call here this morning?"

"I want to give you a grubstake," answered the motor wizard. "Hiram, if there are five dry twenty-dollar bills in that heap, give them to Burton."

Burton started, stared at Clancy, and then watched Hill while he knelt down and selected five twenties from the drying bills.

"What are you doing this for?" asked Burton falteringly.

"Just trying to give you a little boost in the right direction."

"I'm not ent.i.tled to any of that money!"

"I think you are. You earned something last night. Take the hundred, Burton, and see if you can't be square."

The young fellow's face paled, then the color dyed his cheeks. He stood looking down at the floor, then presently lifted his head and moved slightly toward Clancy and half raised his hand. Then he paused, once more, whirled suddenly, and got out of the room as fast as he could.

Hill had been watching these strange maneuvers in frank amazement. "I reckon he's locoed," he said, as soon as the door had closed behind Burton.

"No," returned Clancy, "his grat.i.tude was trying to express itself, but couldn't quite make it. He has had his lesson, Hiram, and will profit by it."

"He has profited a hundred dollars' worth, anyhow," commented Hill dryly. "This Happy Trail of yours, Clancy, is a mighty queer one, seems to me. For a ways, it follows the one I took in huntin' for dad; then it branches off and points straight toward Gerald Wynn and his gang. Now here we are at the end of it--and you're seventy-five hundred to the good."

Clancy laughed.

"Get me a pencil and a piece of paper, Hiram," he requested.

Hiram found the writing materials and Clancy wrote out the following message:

"LAFE WYNN, Phoenix, Arizona: Luck. Seventy-five hundred of the missing fifteen thousand recovered. Cheer up. Happy Trail panning out better than expected. Still gunning for Hill's father.

CLANCY."

"Right across the street," said Clancy, "is a wireless station. Take this message over there, Hiram, and let the Hertzian waves get busy with it at once."

"On the jump!" answered Hill.

"Better take a five-dollar bill with you," Clancy suggested.

Hill picked up the bank note.

"I'd like to see that money get dry before we spend it all," he complained, and then went out with the wireless message for Lafe.

"Wonder if Lafe will feel any different when he gets that?" Clancy murmured, smiling happily. "I know I'm feeling a whole lot different myself!"

THE END.

"Owen Clancy's Double Trouble; or, The Motor Wizard's Mystery,"

concludes the red-headed chap's series of adventures, in the midst of which we have left him at the conclusion of this story. You will find the double-trouble story in the next issue of the weekly, No. 88, out April 4th.

[Chapters 4 - 6 of _The Snapshot Mystery_ not included as the story is continued from a previous issue and continues in later issues.]

THE COSSACKS.

The Cossacks are a race of freemen. The entire territory belongs to the Cossack commune and every individual has an equal right to the use of the land together with the pastures, hunting grounds, and fisheries. The Cossacks pay no taxes to the government, but in lieu of this--and here you see the connection between them and the Russian government--they are bound to perform military service. They are divided into three cla.s.ses--first, the minors up to their sixteenth year; secondly, those on actual service for a period of twenty-five years; therefore, until their forty-second year; thirdly, those released from service, who remain for five years, or until their forty-seventh year in the reserve, after which period they are regarded as wholly released from service and invalided. Every Cossack is obliged to equip, clothe, and arm himself at his own expense, and to keep his horse. While on service beyond the frontiers of his own country, he receives rations of food and provender, and a small amount of pay. The artillery and train are at the charge of the government. Instead of imposing taxes on the Don Cossacks, the Russian government pays them an annual tribute, varying in peace and war, together, with grants to be distributed among the widows and orphans of those who have fallen in battle.

A SATIRICAL REWARD.

There was perhaps more satire than grat.i.tude in the reward bestowed by a French lady on a surgeon for bleeding her--an operation in which the lancet was so clumsily used that an artery was severed and the poor woman bled to death. When she recognized that she was dying she made a will in which she left the operator a life annuity of eight hundred francs on condition "that he never again bleeds anybody as long as he lives."

DODGED THE TRAP.

Doctor James B. Angell tells in his reminiscences the following enjoyable story of his college days at Brown University under the presidency of Doctor Wayland:

The doctor's son, Heman Lincoln Wayland, one of my cla.s.smates, inherited from his father a very keen wit. The pa.s.sages between father and son were often entertaining to the cla.s.s. One day, when we were considering a chapter in the fathers textbook on moral philosophy, Lincoln rose with an expression of great solemnity and respect and said:

"Sir, I would like to propound a question."

"Well, sir, what is it?" was the reply.

"Well, sir," said the son, "in the learned author's work which we are now perusing I observe the following remark," and then he quoted.

The cla.s.s saw that fun was at hand and began to laugh.

"Well, what of it?" asked, the father, with a merry twinkle in his eye.

"Why," continued the son, "in another work of the same learned author, ent.i.tled 'On the Limitation of Human Responsibility,' I find the following pa.s.sage."

He quoted again. Clearly the two pa.s.sages were irreconcilable. The boys were delighted to see that the doctor was in a trap and broke into loud laughter.