It was still only a scant hour since daybreak. Heavy, low-hanging clouds in the east, gray with threatening rain, cut off any warmth there might have been in the rising sun and sharpened the raw wind to a knifelike edge. The man on the truck was too engrossed with the thoughts that shook his plump shoulders in regularly recurring, silent chuckles, and a ludicrously doleful effort to shut off with upturned collar the draft from the back of his neck, to hear the boy's approaching footsteps. He started guiltily to his feet in the very middle of a spasmodic upheaval, to stand and stare questioningly at the big figure whose fingers had plucked tentatively at his elbow, until a sudden, delighted recognition flooded his face. Then he reached out one pudgy hand with eager cordiality. "Why, greetings--greetings!" he exclaimed. "Didn't quite recognize you with your--er--decoration." His eyes dwelt in frank inquisitiveness upon the ragged red bruise across Young Denny's chin. "You're the member who stood near the door last night, aren't you--the one who didn't join to any marked degree in the general jubilee?" Young Denny's big, hard hand closed over the outstretched pudgy white one. He grinned a little and slowly nodded his head. "Thought so," the man in brown rambled blithely on, "and glad to see you again. Glad of a chance to speak to you! I wanted most mightily to ask you a few pertinent questions last night, but it hardly seemed a fitting occasion." He tapped Young Denny's arm with a stubby forefinger, one eyelid drooping quizzically. "_Entre nous_--just 'twixt thee and me," he went on, "and not for publication, was this Jeddy Conway, as you knew him, all that your eminent citizenry would lead a poor gullible stranger to believe, or was he just a small-sized edition of the full-blown crook he happens to be at the present stage of developments? Not that it makes any difference here," he tapped the big notebook under his arm, "but I'm just curious, a little, because the Jed The Red whom I happen to know is so crooked nowadays that his own manager is afraid to place a bet on him half the time. See?" Denny smiled comprehendingly. He shifted his big body to a more comfortable and far less awkward position. "I see," he agreed. Somehow, where it would have been an utter impossibility to have spoken lightly to him the night before, he found it very easy now to understand and meet half way the frivolity of the fat, grinning man before him. "Well, when he left town about eight years ago, his going was just a trifle hasty. He--he took about everything there was in the cash-drawer of Benson's store with him--except maybe a lead slug or two--and there are some who think he only overlooked those." The gurgle of sheer delight that broke from the lips of the man in brown was spontaneously contagious.