nyhow!"

But what he had intended should be the note of authority was no more
than a whine of injury.

"Then why don't you come if you ain't afraid?" insisted the boy angrily.

"I don't know as I rightly know _why_ I don't!" faltered Mr. Shrimplin.
"I feel rotten bad all at once."

"You're a coward!" cried the boy in fierce scorn.

Sobs choked his further utterance while the hot tears blinded him on the
instant. His idol had turned to clay in his very presence, and in the
desolation of that moment he wished that he might be stricken with
death, since life held nothing for him longer.

"Custer--" began Shrimplin.

"Why don't you be a man and go down there?" sobbed the boy.

"It's dangerous!" said Mr. Shrimplin.

"Then I'll go!" declared Custer resolutely.

"What--and leave me here alone?" cried the little lamplighter.

For answer Custer ran to the fence; his tears still blinded him and sobs
wrenched his little body. Twice he slipped back as he essayed to climb,
but a third attempt took him to the topmost rail of the rickety
structure.

"Custer!" called his father.

But Custer persisted in the crime of disobedience. He slid down from the
top rail and stood among the young pokeberry bushes and ragweed that
luxuriated in the foulness of the slaughter-house yard. It was not an
especially inviting spot even in broad day, as he knew. Now the
moonlight showed him bleached animal bones and grinning animal skulls,
while the damp weeds that clung about his bare legs suggested snakes.

"_Custer!_" cried Mr. Shrimplin again.

But it gained him no response from the boy, who disappeared from before
his eyes without a single backward glance; whereat the little
lamplighter cursed querulously in the fear-haunted solitude of the road.

Custer descended the steep bank that sloped down to the water's edge.
His eyes were fixed on a dense growth of willows and sycamores that
lined the shore; it was from a spot within their black shadows that the
cries for help seemed to come. Presently he paused.

"Hullo!" he called, peering into the darkness ahead of him.

He listened intently, but this time his cry was unanswered; all he heard
was the grunting of some pigs that fed among the offal. The boy shivered
and his heart seemed to stop beating.

"Hullo!" he called once more.

"Help!" came the answer.

And Custer stumbled forward. As he neared the black shadows of the
willows he could feel his heart sink like lead through al