Catty was pretty quiet all the afternoon. He seemed to be figuring something out, and every little while he acted as if he had forgotten I was around at all, and would sit down some place and look off at the distance and squint, and bend his thumb back and forth like he expected to pump water with it. When I got to know him better I found out he always worked his thumb when he was het up over something or didn’t know what to do. Once I told him I guessed his brains was in his wrist instead of in his head, and that he had to pump them like they do the pipe-organ in church, or they wouldn’t work. Pretty soon he jumped up all of a sudden, and says to me, in a warlike kind of a voice: “It would be runnin’ away. We’ve been runnin’ away right along.” “Do tell,” says I. “From what?” “Folks,” says he, and then shut his mouth up like a steel trap and began to walk away fast. “Hey!” says I. “Where you goin’?” “To see Dad,” says he. I kept right up with him, but he didn’t speak again till we were right by that little shanty near the waterworks where he and his father were sleeping. It was no kind of a place to sleep at all. There wasn’t a whole window in it; the front door was off the hinges and there was more roof where the shingles was off than where they was on. Honest Injun, it looked as if a good stiff shove would topple the whole shooting-match over. Inside there wasn’t a stick of furniture and the floor was full of holes. It smelled kind of musty and damp. The minute I saw it I knew I wouldn’t enjoy tramping. No, sir. I wouldn’t mind sleeping in the woods or in the hay, but to use a place like this was something I jest naturally would be dead set against. Catty called, but nobody answered. “Dad’s fishin’,” says he, and off we went to the bayou, where, after a few minutes, we came across a man a-sitting on a log with a long cane pole in his hands. I couldn’t see him move so much as his eye-winkers. He was kind of long and narrow, and whiskers that was a sort of red and yellow, mixed, stuck out around his face like the spokes of a wheel. [Illustration: “Who’s he?” said Mr. Atkins, pointing very sudden at me] What he had on his head might have been a hat and it might have been part of a horse-blanket, and it might have been a busted waste-basket. It might have been almost anything, but the thing it looked like _least_ was a hat. He had a nose with a hook in it and a drooping end. Most of his face was nose. That was about all I saw of him first off. Then Catty spoke to him and he turned around slow. “Howdy, Sonny!” says he, and smiled. I saw then that his eyes were brown, with wrinkles all around them. Not laughing wrinkles, but the kind you get from the sun shining in your eyes. I never saw a smile just like his smile. It was kind of patient, and kind of glad, and kind of thoughtful, and kind of sorry—all mixed in—and right off I liked him. “Who’s _he_?” said Mr. Atkins, pointing very sudden at me.