Bart Stirlings Road to Success | Page 3

make tracks, enjoy yourself, and don't worry about a trifle of a dollar or two. If you happen to drop around this way about nine o'clock, I'll be glad of your company home."
He slipped the money into Bart's pocket and playfully pushed him through the doorway. Bart's heart was pretty full. He was alive with tenderness and love for this loyal, patient parent who had not been over kindly handled by the world in a money way.
Then a dozen loud explosions over on the hill, followed by boyish shouts of enthusiasm, made Bart remember that he was a boy, with all a boy's lively interest in the Fourth of July foremost in his thoughts, and he bounded down the tracks like a whirlwind.

CHAPTER II
"WAKING THE NATIVES!"
Turning the corner of the in-freight house Bart came to a quick halt.
He had nearly run down a man who sat between the rails tying his shoe.
The minute Bart set his eyes on the fellow he remembered having seen him twice before--both times in this vicinity, both times looking wretched, dejected and frightened.
The man started up, frightened now. He was about forty years old, very shabby and threadbare in his attire, his thin pale face nearly covered with a thick shock of hair and full black beard.
"Hello!" challenged Bart promptly.
"Oh, it's you, young Stirling," muttered the man, the haunted expression in his eyes giving way to one of relief.
"Found a job yet?" asked Bart.
"I--haven't exactly been looking for work," responded the man, in an embarrassed way.
"I should think you would," suggested Bart.
"See here," spoke the man, livening up suddenly. "I'll talk with you, because you're the only friend I've found hereabouts. I'm in trouble, and you can call it hiding if you like. I'm grateful to you for the help you gave me the other night, for I was pretty nigh starved. But I don't think you'd better notice me much, for I'm no good to anybody, and I hope you won't call attention to my hanging around here."
"Why should I?" inquired Bart, getting interested. "I want to help you, not harm you. I feel sorry for you, and I'd like to know a little more."
A tear coursed down the man's forlorn face and he shook his head dejectedly.
"You can't sleep forever in empty freight cars, picking up scraps to live on, you know," said Bart.
"I'll live there till I find what I came to Pleasantville to find!" cried the man in a sudden passion. Then his emotion died down suddenly and he fell to trembling all over, and cast hasty looks around as if frightened at his own words.
"Don't mind me," he choked up, starting suddenly away. "I'm crazy, I guess! I know I'm about as miserable an object as there is in the world."
Bart ran after him, drawing a quarter from his pocket. He detained the man by seizing his arm.
"See here," he said, "you take that, and any time you're hungry just go up to the house and tell my mother, will you?"
"Bless her--and you, too!" murmured the man, with a hoarse catch in his throat. "I'll take the money, for I need it desperately bad, but don't you fret--it will come back. Yes! it will come back, double, the day I catch the man who squeezed all the comfort out of my life!"
He dashed away with a strange cry. Bart, half decided that he was demented, watched him disappear in the direction of a cheap eating house just beyond the tracks, and started homewards more or less sobered and thoughtful over the peculiar incident.
It was nearly eight o'clock when Bart got through with his supper, did his house chores, mended a broken toy pistol for one junior brother, made up a list of purchases of torpedoes, baby-crackers and punk for the other, and helped his sisters in various ways.
Bart was soon in the midst of the fray. Every live boy in Pleasantville was in evidence about the village pleasure grounds, the common and the hill. Group after group greeted Bart with excited exclamations. He was a general favorite with the small boys, always ready to assist or advise them, and an acknowledged leader with those of his own age.
He soon found himself quite active in devising and assisting various minor displays of squibs, rockets and colored lights. Then he got mixed up in a general rush for the sheer top of the hill amid the excited announcement that something unusual was going on there.
The crowd was met by a current of juvenile humanity.
"Run!" shouted an excited voice, "she's going off."
"No, she ain't," pronounced another scoffingly--"ain't lighted yet--no one's got the nerve to do it."
Bart recognized the last speaker as Dale Wacker, a nephew of Lem. He had noticed a little earlier his big brother, Ira, a loutish, overgrown fellow who had