ent to him. When he encountered unpleasant circumstances anywhere, he prevented their repetition by going away from that place and subsequently avoiding it. People in mass—this was the second characteristic—were intensely interesting to him. If two persons stopped to talk upon the sidewalk, he went close to them and listened; he was an expert on the multi-logue of crowds. He was fully conscious of his own insignificance and that people talked in his presence as though he were not there.
Peewee's independence made him a problem to the authorities. If the man now following him was an agent of the Juvenile Court, his latest long period of liberty, during which his expertness had made recapture seem almost improbable, was now about to terminate.
He was beginning to consider, however, that his follower did not act like any officer of a public sort. Such an officer, having suspected or identified Peewee, would have laid hands upon him at once. He would hardly have followed, as this man had done, for so many blocks that the boy long ago had lost count. At Desplaines
