"Glad to see you, old man!" he cried, "but how did you get here?" Fraser drew himself up with injured dignity, then spoke in dramatic accents. "I worked my way!" He showed the whites of his eyes, tragically. "You look like you'd walked in from Kansas," George declared. "Yes, sir, I _worked! Me!"_ "How? Where?" "On that bloody wind-jammer." He stretched a long arm toward the harbor in a theatrical gesture. "But the police?" queried Boyd. "Oh, I squared them easy. It's you they want. Yes, sir, I _worked_." Again he scanned their faces anxiously. "I'm a scullery-maid." "What?" "That's what I said. I've rustled garbage-cans till the smell of food gives me a cold sweat. I'm as hungry as a starving Cuban, and yet the sight of a knife and fork turns my stomach." He wheeled suddenly upon Alton Clyde, whose burst of shrill laughter offended him. "Don't cry. Your sympathy unmans me." "Tell us about it," urged Cherry. "What's the use?" he demanded, with a glare at Clyde. "That bone-head wouldn't understand." "Go ahead," Boyd seconded, with twitching lips. "You look as if you had worked, and worked hard." "Hard? I'm the only man in the world who knows what hard work is!" "Start at the beginning--when you were arrested." "Well, I didn't care nothing about the sneeze," he took up the tale, "for I figure it out that they can't slough me without clearing you, so I never take no sleeping-powders, and, sure enough, about third drink-time the bulls spring me, and I screw down the main stem to the drink and get Jerry to your fade--" "Tell it straight," interrupted Cherry. "They don't understand you."