“Just caught the truth by the tail that time, didn’t you?” the young man laughed. “Well, a kid can’t aim steady if he smokes: that’s one sure thing.”
Tom was seized with a strange desire to strengthen his companion’s side of the case. The poor boy had few enough arguments, goodness knows, in defense of his own habits, and his information was meagre enough. Yet the one little thing which he seemed to remember about the other side of stone-throwing he now contributed willingly.
“It’s bad too if you ever land a guy one in the temple.”
“Well, I don’t know; I don’t think there’s so much in that, though there may be. I landed a guy one in the temple with a stick last summer—accident, of course, and I thought it would kill him, but it didn’t.”
Tom was surprised and fascinated by the stranger’s frankness.
“But a fellow that throws stones is no sport, that’s sure, and you can mark that up in your brain if you happen to have a lump of coal handy.”
“I chucked that coal—honest.”
“Good.”
It had been Tom’s intention to go down through Chester Street and steal an apple from Schmitt’s Grocery, but instead he accompanied his new friend until that mysterious person turned to enter a house.
“Guess we didn’t swap names, did we?” the stranger said, holding out his hand.