“Who are the painters here?” says he. “Sands Jones is one and Darkie Patt is the other. Patt’s a darky,” says I, “and they don’t even speak. Mad at each other. Always was and always will be, I guess.” As we were going along we met Banty Gage and Skoodles Gordon. Skoodles hollered to me to come on, that they were going up to the dam fishing. He said there was a hole washed out behind the spiles where a fellow could catch rookies as fast as he dropped in his line. “How about it?” says I to Catty, and he looked like he was pretty interested. “Wait a minute,” I yelled to Banty, “till I see if Catty wants to come.” “Needn’t wait on our account,” says Banty. “If he comes I can’t. Ma says so, and I don’t want to, neither. I hain’t goin’ to have folks say I’m always runnin’ around with tramps and sich.” Catty didn’t say a word, but there was a line all the way around his mouth that was white as white, and he looked kind of stiff like he was frozen. “Me, too,” says Skoodles. “Come on, Wee—wee. You hain’t goin’ to give us the go-by for no tramp, be you?” It made me mad. “Come on,” says I to Catty. “Let’s knock some manners into ’em. A good lickin’s goin’ to open up their eyes to who’s a tramp and who hain’t.” “No,” says he, after a minute. “I’d like to. Gosh! how I’d like to, but it wouldn’t do. I’m tryin’ to be respectable. If you was to fight, nobody’d think anything about it; but if I was to fight, everybody ’d say I was a rowdy and maybe I’d git arrested or somethin’. Wee-wee, I jest _got_ to be respectable.” “You hain’t afraid, be you?” says I, kind of looking at him edgeways. “If you think I be,” says he, “come on off alone somewheres where nobody ’ll see us. I figger to show you mighty sudden.” So that was all right. If he was the kind of a fellow that was afraid of a bang in the nose I didn’t want to take any trouble for him, but he wasn’t. So Banty and Skoodles got off without a licking that day. I just yelled to them to mosey along because I was able to pick my company and ’most generally stuck to what I picked. So they hollered back something disagreeable and went along. I made up my mind right there that the first time I ketched either of them alone I’d knock him into a peaked hat. Nobody could blame Catty for what I did. “We will go to see that painter—Mr. Jones,” said Catty. So we went up to Sands Jones’s house, and there he was, standing just outside the kitchen door with an ax in his hand, like he was going to chop wood. He looked at the ax and then he looked at the wood and then he breathed hard and rested the ax-head on the ground and looked over the garden fence. Mrs. Jones poked her head out of the door. “Sands Jones,” she said, “don’t you think I can’t see where you’re lookin’—over the back fence toward the river. I’m watchin’ you, too. You git to splittin’ if you expect to eat. Now chop, Sands, chop. I hain’t goin’ to move off’n this spot till that ax-head hits a block of wood.”