d across the alley,
was at this time a boy of fourteen or fifteen. Carol had already seen
quite enough of Cy Bogart. On her first evening in Gopher Prairie Cy
had appeared at the head of a "charivari," banging immensely upon a
discarded automobile fender. His companions were yelping in imitation
of coyotes. Kennicott had felt rather complimented; had gone out and
distributed a dollar. But Cy was a capitalist in charivaris. He returned
with an entirely new group, and this time there were three automobile
fenders and a carnival rattle. When Kennicott again interrupted his
shaving, Cy piped, "Naw, you got to give us two dollars," and he got it.
A week later Cy rigged a tic-tac to a window of the living-room, and the
tattoo out of the darkness frightened Carol into screaming. Since
then, in four months, she had beheld Cy hanging a cat, stealing melons,
throwing tomatoes at the Kennicott house, and making ski-tracks across
the lawn, and had heard him explaining the mysteries of generation,
with great audibility and dismaying knowledge. He was, in fact, a museum
specimen of what a small town, a well-disciplined public school, a
tradition of hearty humor, and a pious mother could produce from the
material of a courageous and ingenious mind.

Carol was afraid of him. Far from protesting when he set his mongrel on
a kitten, she worked hard at not seeing him.

The Kennicott garage was a shed littered with paint-cans, tools, a
lawn-mower, and ancient wisps of hay. Above it was a loft which Cy
Bogart and Earl Haydock, young brother of Harry, used as a den, for
smoking, hiding from whippings, and planning secret societies. They
climbed to it by a ladder on the alley side of the shed.

This morning of late January, two or three weeks after Vida's
revelations, Carol had gone into the stable-garage to find a hammer.
Snow softened her step. She heard voices in the loft above her:

"Ah gee, lez--oh, lez go down the lake and swipe some mushrats out of
somebody's traps," Cy was yawning.

"And get our ears beat off!" grumbled Earl Haydock.

"Gosh, these cigarettes are dandy. 'Member when we were just kids, and
used to smoke corn-silk and hayseed?"

"Yup. Gosh!"

Spit. "Silence."

"Say Earl, ma says if you chew tobacco you get consumption."

"Aw rats, your old lady is a crank."

"Yuh, that's so." Pause. "But she says she knows a fella that did."

"Aw, gee whiz, didn't Doc Kennicott used to chew tobacco all the time
before he m