“I’ve had the spalpeens after myself afore now,” spoke the tramp, in a low, confidential whisper.

“You keep yourself devilish low, then, for I know all the lads, and it’s the first time I’ve clapped these two eyes on you.”

“Do ye think I mane to let the fly cops put their darbies on me, that I should be nosin’ around in the broad day?”

“You’re too fly for them, I see,” said the bar-keeper, with a sagacious shake of his head.  “You an’ Barney are a pair.”

“Barney?  Ye mane the Irish lad that was just here a bit ago?”

“The same.  He’s square.  He’s one of you.”

The tramp leaned forward, his eyes fastened on the bloodshot eyes of the drink-compounder, and in an earnest tone, asked: 

“Is he a bye that could crack a plant with the loikes o’ me?”

Impressed with the tone and manner of the tramp, the bar-keeper gazed quickly around the room, and in a still lower tone, replied: 

“He’s on a lay himself.  Would you like to go his pal?” The tramp slowly nodded his head, and after receiving the whispered invitation to come around later, strolled out of the saloon; and so on up the road.

Turning a corner he nearly ran against Barney himself, who was sitting on a horse-block, enjoying a pipe and the sun.

Not a soul was in sight.  Satisfying himself of that fact, Barney gazed at the tramp and said: 

“By Jove, Chip, I thought you were a goner when that confounded star fell out.”

Chip gave a deep sigh of relief, and taking off his hat, pointed to the perspiration which moistened the band: 

“Don’t that look as though I thought so, too, Sam?”

“How in the name of all that’s lovely, did you happen to be so careless?”

“That’s what it was, sheer carelessness.  I suffered, though, for it.  It would have been all up with me if the gang had not been so deucedly stupid.  That Jerry is a villain, and no mistake.  I told him that I was a profesh, and he told me that you were another, and had a plan to do some fine work without asking permission of the owners.  So I am to meet him again to-night, and see if you will not take me as your pal.  You have your cue, and will know how to act.”

“Chip, did you notice that man Cook?”

“You mean, did I notice the fifty-dollar bill he threw down?”

“Well, both.”

“Seems to me he didn’t look like a man that ought to be carrying fifty-dollar bills around so recklessly.”

“He’s a cooper, runs that little shop over there, and hasn’t done a stroke of work for a month.”

The cooper-shop pointed out by Sam was a small frame building, having the sign, “Oscar Cook—­Barrels and Kegs,” painted over the door.  It was a tumbled-down, rickety affair, evidently having seen its best days.

Chip surveyed it intently, then turned to Sam, inquired: 

“That express tag had on it something about a man named Cook, didn’t it?”