href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@21846@[email protected]#img-087" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">"There won't be any Eagle this week"

Just out

"I'm the Editor, sir"

"There," said Mr. Murdoch, "jump right in"

"Your map's all wrong," said Jack

The hotel clerk looked at Jack

His traveler friend was sound asleep

On Broadway, at last!

"How would he get in?"

Coffee and clams

Jack is homesick

"I've lost my pocket-book"

"Ten cents left"

Jack dines with Mr. Keifelheimer

Buying a new hat

Jack speaks to the General

The return home

CROWDED OUT O' CROFIELD.

CHAPTER I.

THE BLACKSMITH'S BOY.

"I'm going to the city!"

He stood in the wide door of the blacksmith-shop, with his hands in his pockets, looking down the street, toward the rickety old bridge over the Cocahutchie. He was a sandy-haired, freckled-faced boy, and if he was really only about fifteen, he was tall for his age. Across the top of the door, over his head, stretched a cracked and faded sign, with a horseshoe painted on one end and a hammer on the other, and the name "John Ogden," almost faded out, between them.

The blacksmith-shop was a great, rusty, grimy clutter of work-benches, vises, tools, iron in bars and rods, and all sorts of old iron scraps and things that looked as if they needed making over.

The forge was in the middle, on one side, and near it was hitched a horse, pawing the ground with a hoof that bore a new shoe. On the anvil was a brilliant, yellow-red loop of iron, that was not quite yet a new shoe, and it was sending out bright sparks as a hammer fell upon it—"thud, thud, thud," and a clatter. Over the anvil leaned a tall, muscular, dark-haired, grimy man. His face wore a disturbed and anxious look, and it was covered with charcoal dust. There was altogether too much charcoal along the high bridge of his Roman nose and over his jutting eyebrows.

The boy in the door also had some charcoal on his cheeks and forehead, but none upon his nose. His nose was not precisely like the blacksmith's. It was high and Roman half-way down, but just there was a little dent, and the rest of the nose was straight. His complexion, excepting the freckles and charcoal, was chiefly sunburn, down to the neckband of his blue checked shirt. He was a tough, wiry-looking boy, and there was a kind of smiling, self-confident expression in his blue-gray eyes and around his firm mouth.

"I'm going to the city!" he said, again, in a low but positive voice. "I'll get there, somehow."

Just then a short, thick-set man came hurrying past him into the shop. He was probably the whitest man going into that or any other shop, and he spoke out at once, very fast, but with a voice that sounded as if it came through a bag of meal.

"Ogden," said he, "got him shod? If you have, I'll take him. What do you say about that trade?"

"I don't want any more room than there is here," said the blacksmith, "and I don't care to move my shop."

"There's nigh onto two acres, mebbe more, all along the creek from below the mill to Deacon Hawkins's line, below the bridge," wheezed the mealy, floury, dusty man, rapidly. "I'll get two hundred for it some day, ground or no ground. Best place for a shop."

"This lot suits me," said the smith, hammering away. "'Twouldn't pay me to move—not in these times."

The miller had more to say, while he unhitched his horse, but he led him out without getting any more favorable reply about the trade.

"Come and blow, Jack," said the smith, and the boy in the door turned promptly to take the handle of the bellows.

The little heap of charcoal and coke in the forge brightened and sent up fiery tongues, as the great leathern lungs wheezed and sighed, and Jack himself began to puff.

"I've got to have a bigger man than you are, for a blower and striker," said the smith. "He's coming Monday morning. It's time you were doing something, Jack."

"Why, father," said Jack, as he ceased pulling on the bellows, and the shoe came out of the fire, "I've been doing something ever since I was twelve. Been working here since May, and lots o' times before that. Learned the trade, too."

"You can make a nail, but you can't make a shoe," said his father, as he sizzed the bit of bent iron in the water-tub and then threw it on the ground. "Seven. That's all the shoes I'll make this morning, and there are seven of you at home. Your mother can't spare Molly, but you'll have to do something. It is Saturday, and you can go fishing, after dinner, if you'd like to. There's nothin' to ketch 'round here, either. Worst times there ever were in Crofield."

There was gloom as well as charcoal on the face of the blacksmith, but Jack's expression was only respectfully serious as he walked away, without speaking, and again stood in the door for a moment.

"I could catch something in the city. I know I could," he said, to himself. "How on earth shall I get there?"

The bridge, at the lower end of the sloping side-street on which the shop stood, was long and high. It was made to fit the road and was a