and, as Custer knew, he always went armed. Sometimes, when in an
unusually gracious mood, his father permitted him to verify this fact
by feeling his bulging hip pocket. The feel of it was vastly pleasing to
Custer, particularly when Mr. Shrimplin had to tell of strangers engaged
in mysterious conversation on dark street corners, who slunk away as he
approached. More than this, it was a matter of public knowledge that he
had had numerous controversies in low portions of the town touching the
right of the private citizen to throw stones at the street lamps; to
Custer he made dire threats. He'd "toss a scare into them red necks yet!
They'd bust his lamps once too often--he was laying for them! He knowed
pretty well who done it, and when he found out for sure--" He winked at
Custer, leaving it to his son's imagination to determine just what form
his vengeance would take, and Custer, being nothing if not sanguinary,
prayed for bloodshed.

But the thing that pleased the boy best was his father's account of
those meetings with mysterious strangers. How as he approached they
moved off with many a furtive backward glance; how he made as if to
drive away in the opposite direction, and then at the first corner
turned swiftly about and raced down some parallel street in hot pursuit,
to come on them again, to their great and manifest discomfiture.
Circumstantially he described each turn he made, down what streets he
drove Bill at a gallop, up which he walked that trustworthy animal; all
was elaborately worked out. The chase, however, always ended one
way--the strangers disappeared unaccountably, and, search as he might,
he could not find them again, but he and Custer felt certain that his
activity had probably averted some criminal act.

In short, to Mr. Shrimplin and his son the small events of life
magnified themselves, becoming distorted and portentous. A man, emerging