she
turned off into the homeward stretch on Outagamie Street there always
slunk after her some stoop-shouldered, furtive, loping youth. But he
never was seen with her on Grand Avenue. She had often been up before
old Judge Colt for some nasty business or other. At such times the
shabby office of the Justice of the Peace would be full of shawled
mothers and heavy-booted, work-worn fathers, and an aunt or two, and
some cousins, and always a slinking youth fumbling with the hat in his
hands, his glance darting hither and thither, from group to group, but
never resting for a moment within any one else's gaze. Of all these
present, the Kearney girl herself was always the calmest. Old Judge Colt
meted out justice according to his lights. Unfortunately, the wearing of
a yellow badge on the breast was a custom that had gone out some years
before.

This nymph it was who had taken a fancy to Buzz Werner. It looked very
black for his future.

The strange part of it was that the girl possessed little attraction for
Buzz. It was she who made all the advances. Buzz had sprung from very
decent stock, as you shall see. And something about the sultry
unwholesomeness of this girl repelled him, though he was hardly aware
that this was so. Buzz and his gang would meet down town of a Saturday
night, very moist as to hair and clean as to soft shirt. They would
lounge on the corner of Grand and Outagamie, in front of Schroeder's
brightly lighted drug store, watching the girls go by. They were, for
the most part, a pimply-faced lot. They would shuffle their feet in a
slow jig, hands in pockets. When a late comer joined them it was
considered _au fait_ to welcome him by assuming a fistic attitude, after
the style of the pugilists pictured in the barber-shop magazines, and
spar a good-natured and make-believe round with him, with much agile
dancing about in a circle, head held stiffly, body crouching, while
working a rapid and facetious right.

This corner, or Donovan's pool-shack, was their club, their forum. Here
they recounted their exploits, bragged of their triumphs, boasted of
their girls, flexed their muscles to show their strength. And all
through their talk there occurred again and again a certain term whose
use is common to their kind. Their remarks were prefaced and interlarded
and concluded with it, so that it was no longer an oath or a blasphemy.

"Je's, I was sore at 'm. I told him where to get off at. Nobody can talk
to me li