“Whar is de seegaws in dis sto’?” Pap inquired sleepily.
“I’ll git ’em,” Mustard said.
Selecting the largest cigars in stock, he wandered sleepily back to Pap Curtain. The clock in the court-house steeple tolled the hour. Mustard counted.
“Twelve!” he exclaimed. “Here we been eatin’ five hours an’ to-morrer is de secont day! Git outen dis sto’, Pap Curtain!”
Pap rose, and Mustard followed him to the rear door and shut him out.
Then, tossing his cigar aside, Mustard piled an armload of sacks in the corner, snapped off the electric light, and sprawled down upon his pallet, sinking instantly into a slumber like the lethargy of the gorged boa constrictor, or the inertia of the hibernating bear.
He was a sound sleeper.
II
THE LONE WOLF.
Slatey the Skull was a gentleman of leisure and perverted education; he was also a nitroglycerin expert, making a specialty of the application of this sovereign explosive to burglar-proof safes.
He was a child of the congested cities, loving the noise and clatter of their streets, the whir of machinery, the hum and hustle of their myriad life. But tuberculosis clutched at his panting, crumbling lungs with the pitiless fingers of death, and the ravages of the disease had changed a naturally ruddy countenance into the emaciated, soapstone-colored face which gave him the name among his fellows.