ly. He had
paid no heed to Ma Werner's attempts at pacification. "Now, Pa!" she had
said, over and over, her hand on his arm, though he shook it off again
and again. "Now, Pa!--" But he stopped now, fist raised in a last
profane period. Buzz stood regarding him with his unblinking stare.

Finally: "You through?" said Buzz.

"Ya-as," snarled Pa, "I'm through. Get to hell out of here. You'll be
hung yet, you loafer. A good-for-nothing bum, that's what. Get out o'
here!"

"I'm gettin'," said Buzz. He took his hat off the hook and wiped it
carefully with the lower side of his sleeve, round and round. He placed
it on his head, jauntily. He stepped to the kitchen, took a tooth-pick
from the little red-and-white glass holder on the table, and--with this
emblem of insouciance, at an angle of ninety, between his
teeth--strolled indolently, nonchalantly down the front steps, along the
cement walk to the street and so toward town. The two old people, left
alone in the sudden silence of the house, stared after the swaggering
figure until the dim twilight blotted it out. And a sinister something
seemed to close its icy grip about the heart of one of them. A vague
premonition that she could only feel, not express, made her next words
seem futile.

"Pa, you oughtn't to talked to him like that. He's just a little wild.
He looked so kind of funny when he went out. I don'no, he looked so kind
of--"

"He looked like the bum he is, that's what. No respect for nothing. For
his pa, or ma, or nothing. Down on the corner with the rest of 'em,
that's where he's goin'. Hatton ain't goin' to let this go by. You see."

But she, on her way to the kitchen, repeated, "I don'no, he looked so
kind of funny. He looked so kind of--"

Considering all things--the happenings of the past few hours, at
least--Buzz, as he strolled on down toward Grand Avenue with his
sauntering, care-free gait, did undoubtedly look kind of funny. The
red-hot rage of the afternoon and the white-hot rage of the evening had
choked the furnace of brain and soul with clinkers so that he was
thinking unevenly and disconnectedly. On the surface he was cool and
unruffled. He stopped for a moment at the railroad tracks to talk with
Stumpy Gans, the one-legged gateman. The little bell above Stumpy's
shanty was ringing its warning, so he strolled leisurely over to the
depot platform to see the 7:15 come in from Chicago. When the train
pulled out Buzz went on down the street. His