just a hoodlum down in Barrel
Alley and believed with all his heart that the best use a barrel stave
could be put to was to throw it into the Chinese laundry. He had heard
of the Boy Scouts and he called them "regiment guys" and had a
sophisticated contempt for them.

Then all of a sudden, along had come Roy Blakeley, who had shown him
that he was just wasting good barrel staves; that you could make a
first-class Indian bow out of a barrel stave. Roy had also told him that
you can't smoke cigarettes if you expect to aim straight. That was an
end of the barrel as a missile and that was an end of _Turkish Blend
Mixture_--or whatever you call it. There wasn't any talk or
preaching--just a couple of good knockout blows.

Tom had held that of all the joys in the mischievous hoodlum program
none was so complete as that of throwing chunks of coal through
streetcar windows at the passengers inside. Then along had come Westy
Martin and shown him how you could mark patrol signs on rocks with
chunks of coal--signs which should guide the watchful scout through the
trackless wilderness. Exit coal as a missile.

In short, Tom Slade awoke to the realization not only that he was a
hoodlum, but that he was out of date with his vulgar slang and bungling,
unskilful tricks.

Tom and his father had lived in two rooms in one of John Temple's
tenements down in Barrel Alley and John Temple and his wife and daughter
lived in a couple of dozen rooms, a few lawns, porches, sun-parlors and
things up in Grantley Square. And John Temple stood a better chance of
being struck by lightning than of collecting the rent from Bill Slade.

John Temple was very rich and very grouchy. He owned the Bridgeboro
National Bank; he owned all the vacant lots with their hospitable "Keep
Out" signs, and he had a controlling interest in pretty nearly
everything else in town--except his own temper.

Poor, lazy Bill Slade and his misguided son might have gone on living in
John Temple's tenement rent free until it fell in a heap, for though Mr.
Temple blustered he was not bad at heart; but on an evil day Tom had
thrown a rock at Bridgeboro's distinguished citizen. It was a random,
unscientific shot but, as luck would have it, it knocked John Temple's
new golf cap off into the rich mud of Barrel Alley.

It did not hurt John Temple, but it killed the goose that laid the
golden eggs for the Slades. Mr. Temple's dignity was more than hurt; it
was black and blue. He w