ooks sort of like some new
kind of a summertime Santy Klaws; and he sets down on a goods box at the
edge of the pavement, with his feet in the gutter, and starts in eatin'
all them things.

"First, he takes a bite off a yaller banana and then off a red banana,
and then a mouthful of peanuts; and then maybe some mixed candies--not
sayin' a word to nobody, but jest natchelly eatin' his fool head off. A
young chap that's clerkin' in Bagby's grocery, next door, steps up to
him and speaks to him, meanin', I suppose, to ast him is it true he's
wealthy. And Old Peep says to him, 'Please don't come botherin' me now,
sonny--I'm busy ketchin' up,' he says; and keeps right on a-munchin'
and a-chewin' like all possessed.

"That ain't all of it, neither, Judge--not by a long shot it ain't!
Purty soon Old Peep looks round him at the little crowd that's gathered.
He didn't seem to pay no heed to the grown-up people standin' there; but
he sees a couple of boys about ten years old in the crowd, and he
beckons to them to come to him, and he makes room fur them alongside him
on the box and divides up his knick-knacks with them.

"When I left there to come on back here he had no less'n six kids
squatted round him, includin' one little nigger boy; and between 'em all
they'd jest finished up the last of the bananas and peanuts and the
candy and the gingersnaps, and was fixin' to take turns drinkin' the
milk out of the coconut. I s'pose they've got it all cracked out of the
shell and et up by now--the coconut, I mean. Judge, you oughter stepped
down into Franklin Street and taken a look at the picture whilst there
was still time. You never seen sech a funny sight in all your days, I'll
bet!"

"I reckin 'twould be too late to be startin' now," said Judge Priest.
"I'm right sorry I missed it. . . . Busy ketchin' up, huh? Yes; I reckin he
is. . . . Tell me, son, whut did you make out of the way Peep O'Day acted?"

"Why, suh," stated Mr. Quarles, "to my mind, Judge, there ain't no
manner of doubt but whut prosperity has went to his head and turned it.
He acted to me like a plum' distracted idiot. A grown man with forty
thousand pounds of solid money settin' on the side of a gutter eatin'
jimcracks with a passel of dirty little boys! Kin you figure it out any
other way, Judge--except that his mind is gone?"

"I don't set myself up to be a specialist in mental disorders, son,"
said Judge Priest softly; "but, sence you ask me the question, I s