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2 his acqaintance," returned Simon. "It pays to keep in with such fellows. But here he is. Let me do the talking. You needn't play if you don't want to."

The two boys, who in spite of their fine clothes, did not have an air of good breeding, watched the approach of Dick Hamilton as he sauntered down the main street of the town that pleasant afternoon late in June.

Dick was a boy a little above the average height, well built, with curling brown hair and eyes of the same hue. The eyes were bright and clear, and, when he looked at you they seemed to glint like moss agates, as some of his friends used to say.

"And you ought to see them when he's excited," one of Dick's acquaintances once remarked. "His eyes sparkle and seem to look right through you."

It needed but a glance to see that Dick was well dressed, with that careless air of studied negligence which so marks the person accustomed to fine raiment. Dick wore his garments as if he was "used to them and not dressed up," as Fred Murdock remarked. There was that about him which at once proclaimed him for what he was—the son of a very wealthy man, for his father, Mortimer Hamilton, counted his fortune in the millions.

As Dick came opposite the place whence issued that peculiar sound, produced by ivory balls