nment of the Maguire shack;
Noodles was unhappy all the time, and hungry most of the time. He
heard a good deal about Regan and the depths a man could sink to, and
enough about the immutable inviolability of church tenets and
ordinances to satisfy the most fanatic disciple of orthodoxy--to say
nothing of the deep-seated conviction of the wrath of God that must
inevitably fall upon one who had the sacrilegious temerity to profane
those tenets.

Mostly, Noodles imbibed this at twilight over the sparsely set table,
and when the twilight faded and it grew dark--they weren't using
kerosene any more at the Maguires--he could still sense the look on his
mother's face that mingled anxiety and gentle reproof; and he edged
back his chair out of reach of his father's cuffs, which he could dodge
in the daylight and couldn't in the dark--for on one point Regan and
the old hostler were in perfect accord.

"An' yez are the cause av ut!" old Bill would shout, swinging the flat
of his hand in the direction of Noodles' ear every time his violent
oratory reached a climacteric height where a period became a physical
necessity.

Take it all round, what with the atmosphere of gloom, dodging his
father's attentions, his mother's tears when he had caught her crying
once or twice, and an unsatisfied stomach, black vengeance oozed from
every pore of Noodles' body. His warty little fists clenched, and his
unlovely face contorted into a scowl such as Noodles, and only Noodles,
thanks to the background that nature had already furnished him to work
upon, could scowl.

Noodles set his brains to work. What he must do to Regan must be
something awful and bloodcurdling; and, realizing, perhaps, that, being
but twelve, he would be handicapped in coping with the master mechanic
single-handed, he sought the means of assistance that most logically
presented itself to him. Noodles lay awake nights trying to dovetail
himself and Regan into the situations of his nickel thrillers. There
wasn't any money with which to buy new nickel thrillers, but by then
Noodles had accumulated quite a stock, and he knew them all off pretty
well by heart, the essentials of them, anyhow.

Noodles racked his brain for a week of nights--and was in despair. Not
that the nickel thrillers did not offer situations harrowing enough to
glut even his blood-thirsty little soul--they did--they were
peaches--he could see Regan's blood all over the bank vault that the
master mec