"
"We can go to Sout' America on dat stuff an' live
like gents," muttered Dopey Charlie. "I'm goin' to cut
out de Hop an' buy a farm an' a ottymobeel and--"
"Come out of it," admonished The General. "If we're
lucky we'll get as far as Cincinnati, get a stew on and
get pinched. Den one of us'll hang an' de other get stir
fer life."
The General was a weasel faced person of almost
any age between thirty-five and sixty. Sometimes he
could have passed for a hundred and ten. He had won
his military title as a boy in the famous march of Coxey's
army on Washington, or, rather, the title had been con-
ferred upon him in later years as a merited reward of
service. The General, profiting by the precepts of his
erstwhile companions in arms, had never soiled his mil-
itary escutcheon by labor, nor had he ever risen to the
higher planes of criminality. Rather as a mediocre pick-
pocket and a timorous confidence man had he eked out
a meager existence, amply punctuated by seasons
of straight bumming and intervals spent as the guest of
various inhospitably hospitable states. Now, for the first
time in his life, The General faced the possibility of a
serious charge; and his terror made him what he never
before had been, a dangerous criminal.
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