"Sh! Don't let the old lady hear you," snapped Tom. "Course I tried it. I won two dollars, and then I won three. The white-hatted feller was skinnin' that feller with the cups and the pea every time. You could see he felt pretty meachin' about it Got all red and flustered-like. Why, I could spot where he hid that pea just as _e-easy_!" "And then?" Cap'n Jonah, grinning widely in the dark, heard the girl gasp. "Why, we all got excited. There was a dozen or more of us bettin'. That pea-and-cup feller had a slather of money. "'You got to give me a chance, boys,' he says. 'Give me a show for my white alley. This time I'm a-goin' to fool you.' "And he kep' on like that, urgin' us to bet our pile against his pile. Why, I could see where he put that pea just as plain! So I went with the rest. I bet twenty-five dollars--all I'd won and all I had." "Oh, Tommy Petty!" "Now, don't you begin," cried Tom hoarsely. "I warn't the only fool. The feller bet us two to one, and it looked like a sure thing. Some bet on one cup and some on another; but I knowed just where the pea went, and I bet on the right one." "Then you didn't lose, Tom?" murmured Pearl with a relieved sigh. "I didn't lose honest," growled the young fellow. "That feller with the pea and the tin cups had been foolin' us all along. He got a heap of money piled up in front of him--a stack big enough to choke a cow! And then he just whipped all three of the cups off the table and the pea warn't under airy one of 'em! "The white-hatted feller just then saw Dave Milliken, the constable, comin' and he yelled: 'Cheese it! We'll all get arrested!' and he beat it down the alley with the pea-and-cup man, who grabbed all the money and the cups and the foldin' table and stuffed the whole b'ilin' into a suit case he had ready. "Why, Pearly! them fellers was through the alley gate and locked it after 'em before we any of us 'woke up to it that they was in cahoots and was a couple of sharks. An' we couldn't do a thing!" "Tom!" gasped the girl. "You lost all your money?" "Hoh! That wouldn't figger too much," said the young fellow hoarsely. "But I did more than that. _I lost all the money I had._" "My goodness, Tom! The Ladies Aid money for the chapel lamp?" Pearl emitted in horrified staccato. CHAPTER IV TOM PETTY REVEALS HIMSELF Cap'n Jonah's quiet amusement, secured through his unintentional eavesdropping at the bedroom window, was mixed with a certain satisfaction in learning the sort of fellow his grand-nephew was. Tom Petty was evidently "no brighter than the law allows," as the captain expressed it to himself. Pearl, he was pleased to see, was just the sort of girl he had believed her--sympathetic and good, with a strain of old-fashioned piety that the captain was glad to see had not run out here on the Cape. Nor was the girl impractical.