of his, he held on to my sleeve. He looked down at me; and his
eyes grew wide, his face melted into a whimsical tenderness.

"When you get to heaven, parson, you'll keep them all busy a hundred
years and a day trying to cut and make a suit of sky clothes big
enough to fit your real measure," said he, irrelevantly. "You real
thing in holy sports, come on, since you've got to!" With that he blew
out the light, and we stepped into the cold and windy night. It was
ten minutes after three.

Armed with bottle-belt, knapsack, and net, many a happy night had I
gone forth with the Butterfly Man a-hunting for such as we might find
of our chosen prey. Armed now with nothing more nor less formidable
than the black rosary upon which my hand shut tightly, I, Armand De
Rance, priest and gentleman, walked forth with Slippy McGee in those
hours when deep sleep falls upon the spirit of man, for to aid and
encourage and abet and assist and connive at, nothing more nor less
than burglary.

CHAPTER XIX

THE I O U OF SLIPPY MCGEE

The wind that precedes the dawn was blowing, a freakish and impish
wind though not a vicious one. One might imagine it animated by those
sportive and capricious nature-spirits an old Father of the church
used to call the monkeys of God. Every now and then a great deluge of
piled-up clouds broke into tossing billows and went rolling and
tumbling across the face of the sky, and in and out of these swirling
masses the high moon played hide-and-seek and the stars showed like
pin-points. Such street lights as we have being extinguished at
midnight, the tree-shaded sidewalks were in impenetrable shadow, the
gardens that edged them were debatable ground, full of grotesque
silhouettes, backgrounded by black bulks of silent houses all
profoundly asleep. As for us, we also were shadows, whose feet were
soundless on the sandy sidewalks. We moved in the dark like travelers
in the City of Dreadful Night.

And so we came at last to the red-brick bank, approaching it by the
long stretch of the McCall garden which adjoins it. For years there
have been battered "For Sale" signs tacked onto its trees and fences,
but no one ever came nearer purchasing the McCall property than asking
the price. Folks say the McCalls believe that Appleboro is going to
rival New York some of these days, and are holding their garden for
sky-scraper sites.

I was very grateful to the McCall estimate of Appleboro's future, for
the long st