“Dat man,” said Whistling Dick to himself softly, “is a dead ringer for Boston Harry.  I’ll try him wit de high sign.”

He whistled one or two bars of a rag-time melody, and the air was immediately taken up, and then quickly ended with a peculiar run.  The first whistler walked confidently up to the fire.  The fat man looked up, and spake in a loud, asthmatic wheeze: 

“Gents, the unexpected but welcome addition to our circle is Mr. Whistling Dick, an old friend of mine for whom I fully vouches.  The waiter will lay another cover at once.  Mr. W. D. will join us at supper, during which function he will enlighten us in regard to the circumstances that gave us the pleasure of his company.”

“Chewin’ de stuffin’ out ’n de dictionary, as usual, Boston,” said Whistling Dick; “but t’anks all de same for de invitashun.  I guess I finds meself here about de same way as yous guys.  A cop gimme de tip dis mornin’.  Yous workin’ on dis farm?”

“A guest,” said Boston, sternly, “shouldn’t never insult his entertainers until he’s filled up wid grub.  ’Tain’t good business sense.  Workin’!—­but I will restrain myself.  We five—­me, Deaf Pete, Blinky, Goggles, and Indiana Tom—­got put on to this scheme of Noo Orleans to work visiting gentlemen upon her dirty streets, and we hit the road last evening just as the tender hues of twilight had flopped down upon the daisies and things.  Blinky, pass the empty oyster-can at your left to the empty gentleman at your right.”

For the next ten minutes the gang of roadsters paid their undivided attention to the supper.  In an old five-gallon kerosene can they had cooked a stew of potatoes, meat, and onions, which they partook of from smaller cans they had found scattered about the vacant lot.

Whistling Dick had known Boston Harry of old, and knew him to be one of the shrewdest and most successful of his brotherhood.  He looked like a prosperous stock-drover or solid merchant from some country village.  He was stout and hale, with a ruddy, always smoothly shaven face.  His clothes were strong and neat, and he gave special attention to his decent-appearing shoes.  During the past ten years he had acquired a reputation for working a larger number of successfully managed confidence games than any of his acquaintances, and he had not a day’s work to be counted against him.  It was rumoured among his associates that he had saved a considerable amount of money.  The four other men were fair specimens of the slinking, ill-clad, noisome genus who carried their labels of “suspicious” in plain view.

After the bottom of the large can had been scraped, and pipes lit at the coals, two of the men called Boston aside and spake with him lowly and mysteriously.  He nodded decisively, and then said aloud to Whistling Dick: