"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.