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“Jock,” he said, stopping short in front of his friend, “I know what I’ll do. Jock, do you hear? I know what I’m going to do!”

Jocko sat up straight, erected his tail into a huge interrogation point, cocked his wise little head on one side, and regarded his ally expectantly. The storm was over, and the afternoon sun sent a ray slanting across the floor.

“I’m going anyhow! I’ll run away, Jock! That’s what I’ll do! I’ll get a whack at them dagoes yet!”

Jim danced a gleeful breakdown on the patch of sunlight, winding up by making a grab for Jocko, who evaded him by jumping over his head to the banister, where he became an animated pinwheel in approval of the new mischief. They stopped at last, out of breath.

“Jock,” said the boy, considering his playmate approvingly, “you will make a soldier yourself yet. Come on, let’s have a drill! This way, Jock, up straight! Now, attention! Right hand–salute!” Jocko exactly imitated his master, and so learned the rudiments of the soldier’s art as Jim knew it.

“You’ll do, Jock,” he said, when the dusk stole into the attic, “but you can’t go this trip. Good-by to you. Here goes for the soger camp!”

There was surprise in the tenement when Jim did not come home for supper; as the evening wore on the surprise became consternation. His father gave over certain preparations for his reception which, if Jim had known of them, might well have decided him to stick to “sogering,” and went to the police station to learn if the boy had been heard of there. He had not, and an alarm which the Sergeant sent out discovered no trace of him the next day.

Jim was lost, but how? His mother wept, and his father spent weary days and nights inquiring of every one within a distance of many blocks for a red-headed boy in “knee-pants” and a base-ball cap. The grocer’s clerk on the corner alone furnished a clew. He remembered giving Jim two crackers on the afternoon of the storm and seeing him turn west. The clew began and ended there. Slowly the conviction settled on the tenement that Jim had really run away to enlist.

“I’ll enlist him!” said his father; and the tenement acquiesced in the justice of his intentions and awaited developments. And all the time Jocko kept Jim’s secret safe.

Jocko had troubles enough of his own. Jim’s friendship and quick wit had more than once saved the monkey; for despite of harum-scarum ways, the boy with the sunny smile was a general favorite. Now that he was gone, the tenement rose in wrath against its tormentor; and Jocko accepted the challenge.

All his lawless instincts were given full play. Even of the banana man at the street stand who had given him peanuts when trade was good, or sold them to him in exchange for pilfered pennies, he made an enemy by grabbing bananas when his back was turned. Mrs. Rafferty, on the second floor rear, one of his few champions, he estranged by exchanging the “war extra” which the carrier left at the door for her, for the German paper served to Mrs. Schultz, her pet aversion on the floor below. Mrs. Rafferty upset the wash-tub in her rage at this prank.

“Ye imp,” she shrieked, laying about her with a wet towel, “wid yer hathen Dootch! It’s that yer up to, is it?” and poor Jocko paid dearly for his mistake.

As he limped painfully to his attic retreat, his bitterest reflection might have been that even the children, his former partners in every plot against the public peace, had now joined in the general assault upon him. Truly, every man’s hand was raised against Jocko, and in the spirit of Ishmael he entered on his crowning exploit.

On the top floor of the rear house was Mrs. Hoffman, a quiet German tenant, who had heretofore escaped Jocko’s unwelcome attentions. Now, in his banishment to the upper regions, he bestowed them upon her with an industry to which she objected loudly, but in vain. Shut off from his accustomed base of supplies, he spent his hours watching her kitchen from the fire-escape, and if she left it but for a minute, he was over the roof and, by way of the shutter, in her flat, foraging for food.