The All-Story, March 1914 — page 162: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘, Minnie Barbour Adams FOUND the window without a bit of trouble. I have a faculty for getting round in the dark that Burkett says will be worth a lot to me in this busi- ness; but I think even he would have een surprised, maybe a little jealous— for he’s a mean-dispositioned cuss—at the slick way I followed his directions. Of course, it wasn’t all smooth sail- ing. I climbed the fence twenty paces pth left of the gate, as he had told me to, and landed sprawling on the up- turned legs of an iron seat. One nipped me on the shin, and I thought a dog had me for sure. . “Get out!” I growled, kicked at it, and skinned the other shin. _ Forty paces due east and I came to the house; caine to it hard. sort of pre- maturely, as you nught sav, and head down like a cantankerous old ram, for ‘the rain was driving something fierce. A moist, plump bush caught me on the recoil, and no great harm was done, except to my feelings. | Then I felt along the wall for a spell, squinting up in the dark tor the little window, and at last found it just where Burkett had said I would. The next thing was to get through it. Ud rather have tackled a more sizable window, for my proportions are those of the rain-barrel rather than the clothes-pole; but Burkett had told ime the whole house was battened down like the steerage in a storm; and it was this one or none. At length I got a rather slippery footing on the watershed, and. reaching up, busted in the heavy glass. Of course. mere trifles like falling off twice while I was trimming down the edges. and dropping my bag into the bushes beneath where I wallowed and swore, and all but swam, before | found it, I accepted as part of the busi- ness; but they got me hot wnder the collar, just the same. Yes, the whole system was rotten, just as Burkett had said it was, I thought savagely. The man that owned this big. stub- born pile of brick and stone had left his shirt-collar open, a shoe untied, or something of the kind; and, catching cold, had ‘hurried off to an evil- smelling puddle in Europe. Flere was I, just as good as he, just as smart, and not quite as susceptible to colds, perched on his wfernally narrow watershed, with 635 comicbooks