“Lemmy—oo-hoo—Lemmy—”

Lemmy stopped short in his game of jack-stones, and looked fearfully over his shoulder.  All about him were the rest of the children, unconcerned, playing none the quieter for the reposeful afternoon shadow of the gray cloister-like walls.  At the edge of the yard where the grass was worn off most he saw the “biggest boys,” now suspending their game of ball to call to him.  In the general cry he recognized the leading, raucous voice of Gus Chapman.  Lemmy did not answer.  He turned his back and tried to fling his jackstones indifferently.  Out of the corner of his eye he could see Gus approaching.

“The ’Dopters, Lemmy—the ’Dopters are coming!” Gus warned him.

In an instant Lemmy was on his feet.  Panic-stricken, he fled, leaving his jackstones upon the ground.  He put his hands over his ears to shut out the hooting, derisive cries of the boys who did not understand his fear of the ’Dopters—that horde of individuals who lurked about the Home, a constant menace to his happiness.  They looked harmless enough, to be sure, in their varied disguises.  Some came as jolly, oldish ladies with much candy and sometimes fat bunches of raisins in their pockets.  Others looked for all the world like hearty farmers who might raise apples, both red and p. 202yellow—a very deceptive sort, these farmers, who laughed a great deal and poked the boys’ muscles and pinched the girls’ cheeks.  Most to be feared were the ’Dopters in black who hung round more than any of the rest.  They brought toys hardly worn at all, but they never seemed to want to let them go at the last minute.  They made a show of crying over Gracie Peeler and Nannie Bagget, who had curls and knew how to do a curtsey.  The ’Dopters in black always made off with some one.

Despite the endless variety, it was not hard to tell a ’Dopter if you saw him in time.  There was something about them.  Most of the children recognized them instinctively.  Gus was particularly expert at picking out the ’Dopters from the casual visitors at the Home.  Watching for them never interfered with his play in the least.  He always saw first.  Lemmy had learned to trust Gus’s signals of danger, and although he was overwhelmed by the accompanying teasing, he felt very grateful.  Gus was his savior—his methods were not to be criticized.  Times innumerable Gus had saved him from being adopted.

Who knew what it meant—being adopted?  Lemmy could not understand why most of the children thought that it was something nice.  None of them seemed to realize that there was any reason to be afraid.  They were always talking about Tommie Graham, who had been borne off by the ’Dopters.  His friends at the Home had not seen him since his disappearance, but stories had started somehow about Tommie’s having a dog with a schooner back and a train of cars which whizzed around when he pressed a button.  It was also said that there was another button which Tommie could p. 203press and some one would come to take him for a ride in a sailboat.  But all this was mere hearsay.  There was no telling what had really befallen Tommie, all because he was foolish enough to sing in the hearing of the ’Dopters his song about three frogs that sat on a lily pad.

Lemmy was certain that when a ’Dopter threw off his disguise he was a dragon of the very worst kind.  It was Simple Simon to believe when they talked about this and that you could have if you would only come along.  Lemmy knew, for once from behind the office door he had heard them talking to Miss Border, who wore the white of authority.  Their remarks about “parental history” and “hereditary instincts” and “psychological effects of environment” had betrayed them.  Lemmy remembered how ominous these things had sounded mixed with whoop and halloo from the playground.  And the queer feeling which had shivered through him!  The sensation from eating a mouthful of green gooseberries was nothing in comparison.

How could the other children believe that likely as not those words meant something nice?  Lemmy knew better.  After he had overheard that secret conference with Miss Border, he thought that he understood the ’Dopters pretty well.  Theirs was a sticky-fly-paper method; there was no end to the ways they had of fooling you.  They had named him “among the least promising”—this, Lemmy gathered, on account of his skinny legs, the result of something “subnormal”; and because of his habit of going off alone into corners, termed “sulkiness and uncompanionability”; his big ears had something to do with it too.  One tall lady had said that they were “not exactly Grecian.”  Altogether he p. 204was “undesirable.”  This classification even Gus took to be aboveboard.

“They don’t wantcha, Lemmy,” Gus repeatedly assured him.  “Yuh needn’t be so scarey.”  But Gus didn’t fathom the duplicity of the ’Dopters—they hatched up all sorts of schemes to make you feel easy and then got you unawares.  Likely as not they knew all the time that he was the littlest boy in the Home who could hang by his heels, and that he could hold his breath longer than Gus—and, though it was a secret, that he had a pet toad named Nippy in the broken wall where it was green and wet.  They seemed to know everything—the ’Dopters.

The thought of these things made Lemmy’s heels fly faster.  He whisked behind the spirea bushes and drew from underneath the widespreading branches a short ladder which he had constructed laboriously from the odds and ends of dry-goods boxes.  He set up the rickety support and climbed nimbly to the top of the high, broad wall, where the low elm trees hid him from view.  He drew the ladder up carefully after him, and with a breath of relief stretched himself at full length, safe from the ’Dopters for a little while at least.  It was comfort to have such a place where he could hide, unless the ’Dopters came at mealtime, when no one could escape.  He would not soon forget the time when Lucy Simmons was dragged away just as she had started to eat her piece of blackberry pie.  She never came back to finish it.  One could never be really safe from the ’Dopters.  There was no let-up to looking out for them.  And there would always be ’Dopters as long as the Outside remained.  Lemmy was afraid p. 205of the Outside.  He liked to look at it from the top of the wall; it appeared fascinatingly full of mystery, but it always terrified him.  There was no place really safe, even bed.  Lemmy sighed and squinted through the fluttering leaves at a bit of cloud.  After a while it would be getting pink, as it did when supper time came—baked potatoes and milk, and maybe jam from the long, dark shelves in the vegetable cellar.  Lemmy’s thoughts flew to the empty barrel in which he intended to hide when winter came on and the elm leaves fell to the ground.  It would be hard to get by Mrs. O’Gorman, who was always puttering about the basement with a pad and pencil, muttering unintelligible things under her breath.  Perhaps the linen closet would be safer, only they might come when Gerda and Lou were putting away the ironed things.

Lemmy’s speculations were interrupted by a deep “Ho-ho-hum” from the other side of the wall.  The exclamation had a luxurious sound, as if some one was treating himself to a good rest.  Lemmy peered over the edge of the wall, and gave a little gasp.

There on the bench beneath was some one who had undoubtedly stepped out of book covers.  He was a big man, a very big man, with a brown skin lined with fine wrinkles which told all sorts of things without his saying a word.  His hair was gray, but he looked somehow very young and up to anything lively.  His old trousers were turned up, and his coat with its big buttons, flung wide apart, disclosed a faded blouse.  From his belt dangled a heavy chain, and from his pocket the end of a jolly colored handkerchief.  His cap had the look of a cap which had been through things.  Slowly p. 206and comfortably he stretched his long arms, and as his sleeve slipped back Lemmy caught sight of a tattooed bird, green and blue and red, above his left wrist.  And then he flung his head back, and his blue eves twinkled up at Lemmy without a sign of surprise.

“A-hoy, mate,” he called companionably.

“A-hoy, Cap’n,” returned Lemmy, laughing in delight.

“How’s the wind?”

“Southwest,” Lemmy gave back promptly.  “And that’s what stirs the water up all purply pink—”

“Right-o—”  The Cap’n slapped his knee in approval.

“Wind that makes the lake look like that must come from a place where a fellah could find out about magic,” Lemmy speculated.

“Magic?  You want to find out about magic, young man?”  The Cap’n sat up with a great show of interest.  His eyes were very friendly.

“Oh, more’n anything else in the world,” Lemmy burst out impulsively.  “I want to find out how to make a rosebush pop out of a stovepipe hat and how to pull fuzzy little chickens out of people’s sleeves and how to pick gold pieces out of the air the way I saw a man do once to make the lumbermen laugh at Camp Cusson—that’s where I lived when my Daddy used to run the lumber camp until he died, and so did my mother of epidemick—”  Lemmy caught his breath.  “I want to learn how to do magic so I can have fun and make people laugh.”

The Cap’n chuckled and spread his jolly colored handkerchief across his knees.  From an old, p. 207brown wallet he took a coin which he twirled merrily in his nimble fingers.

“Have a look at this,” he said, reaching up to put the coin into Lemmy’s hand.

Lemmy looked curiously at the strange piece of money which lay in his palm.  It was not at all like the dimes and nickels which the ’Dopters often slid into a fellow’s pocket.  It was shiny and yellow, the color of the pin which always fastened Miss Border’s collar.  It was gold!  And there were figures of dragons upon it guarding words which Lemmy could not read at all, though they were very short.

“Heave it into the hanker,” directed the Cap’n.

Plump into the jolly colored handkerchief Lemmy dropped the coin.  Wide-eyed, he watched the Cap’n tie the handkerchief into a knot and twist it smartly to make certain that it was secure.  With a fine flourish he flung it high into the air, caught it again deftly and untied the tight knot.  Smiling broadly, he spread the handkerchief out upon his knees again.  Lemmy stared unbelievingly—the gold coin had vanished and in its place lay a silver dollar.  He blinked at the air in a daze.  Very quickly the Cap’n retied his handkerchief and tossed it up once more.  When he opened it again, wonder of wonders, there was the gold coin!

A cry of discovery burst from Lemmy’s throat.

“You’re a Majishun!”

The Cap’n beamed and drew from his pocket, one, two, three oranges.  He took the gold coin again, and carelessly balancing it upon his nose, at the same time tossed the oranges one after the other into the air, juggling them with fine precision so that they rose and fell rhythmically in time to music which the Cap’n alone could hear.

p. 208“They’re majicked!” Lemmy whispered spellbound as he eyed the oranges flashing in the air while the coin remained apparently affixed to the Cap’n’s nose.

His eyes grew wider yet when suddenly the Cap’n ended his performance by gathering in oranges and coin with one grand sweep, not dropping a thing.

“Now hold your hands,” the Cap’n invited.

Before Lemmy could say Jack Robinson, there right in his own hands was one of the magician’s golden balls.

“Shiver my timbers, did you never see an orange before?” the Cap’n cried as he watched Lemmy’s face.

“Not a Majishun’s orange,” Lemmy answered, fingering his treas............