“And then along comes a fast freight which slows up a little at the town; and off of it drops a black bundle that rolls for twenty yards in a cloud of dust and then gets up and begins to spit soft coal and interjections.  I see it is a young man broad across the face, dressed more for Pullmans than freights, and with a cheerful kind of smile in spite of it all that made Phoebe Snow’s job look like a chimney-sweep’s.

“‘Fall off?’ says I.

“‘Nunk,’ says he.  ’Got off.  Arrived at my destination.  What town is this?’

“‘Haven’t looked it up on the map yet,’ says I.  ’I got in about five minutes before you did.  How does it strike you?’

“‘Hard,’ says he, twisting one of his arms around.  ’I believe that shoulder—­no, it’s all right.’

“He stoops over to brush the dust off his clothes, when out of his pocket drops a fine, nine-inch burglar’s steel jimmy.  He picks it up and looks at me sharp, and then grins and holds out his hand.

“‘Brother,’ says he, ’greetings.  Didn’t I see you in Southern Missouri last summer selling colored sand at half-a-dollar a teaspoonful to put into lamps to keep the oil from exploding?’

“‘Oil,’ says I, ’never explodes.  It’s the gas that forms that explodes.’  But I shakes hands with him, anyway.

“‘My name’s Bill Bassett,’ says he to me, ’and if you’ll call it professional pride instead of conceit, I’ll inform you that you have the pleasure of meeting the best burglar that ever set a gum-shoe on ground drained by the Mississippi River.’

“Well, me and this Bill Bassett sits on the ties and exchanges brags as artists in kindred lines will do.  It seems he didn’t have a cent, either, and we went into close caucus.  He explained why an able burglar sometimes had to travel on freights by telling me that a servant girl had played him false in Little Rock, and he was making a quick get-away.

“‘It’s part of my business,’ says Bill Bassett, ’to play up to the ruffles when I want to make a riffle as Raffles.  ’Tis loves that makes the bit go ’round.  Show me a house with a swag in it and a pretty parlor-maid, and you might as well call the silver melted down and sold, and me spilling truffles and that Chateau stuff on the napkin under my chin, while the police are calling it an inside job just because the old lady’s nephew teaches a Bible class.  I first make an impression on the girl,’ says Bill, ’and when she lets me inside I make an impression on the locks.  But this one in Little Rock done me,’ says he.  ’She saw me taking a trolley ride with another girl, and when I came ’round on the night she was to leave the door open for me it was fast.  And I had keys made for the doors upstairs.  But, no sir.  She had sure cut off my locks.  She was a Delilah,’ says Bill Bassett.

“It seems that Bill tried to break in anyhow with his jimmy, but the girl emitted a succession of bravura noises like the top-riders of a tally-ho, and Bill had to take all the hurdles between there and the depot.  As he had no baggage they tried hard to check his departure, but he made a train that was just pulling out.