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“Oh, we manage to get along.”

“Where do you draw the line between what’s safe and what isn’t?”

Again Sam hesitated. “Why—why, I guess there isn’t any general rule. You have to settle each case as it comes.”

“But what’s the rule for settling it?”

The Shark came to Sam’s assistance. “Law of chances,” he said curtly.

“Meaning——?”

“Can you get away with it? Can’t dodge all risks, can you? But when you have to take one, isn’t there a safer way than the first way you think of? Just stop and figure. It pays!”

Varley shook his head. “That’s all right for mathematical sharps,” he said laughingly; “but I’m not in that class. The tree would fall on me, or I’d drown, or the bull would toss me over the fence, long before I could cipher out what the chances were.”

“Pays, all the same, to try,” the Shark insisted.

Varley glanced a little inquiringly at Sam. As has been explained, he was older than the club’s members, and more versed in the ways of the world; and now he had an intuition that the boys, while satisfied with their club’s title, were not eager to discuss it with a comparative stranger. He looked at Sam, but Sam said nothing.