“He’s a photographer. Oh, he struggles, tries his best, and all that. But with such tension, Mike. That poor misshapen girl over there ties to keep the house, devoted to her mother. Matlin works hard, is devoted, too. And yet the sum comes out in petty strife, nerves, quarrels, uproar. And certainly it cannot be necessary to feud with children.”

“The kids have done their share of that, I’ll bet,” mused Mike. “The kids are delighted—a neighborhood ogre, to add the fine flavor of menace. A focus for mischief. An enemy.”

“True enough.” The Judge sighed.

“So the myth is made. No rumor about ole Matlin loses anything in the telling. I can see it’s been built up. You don’t knock it down in a day.”

“No,” said the Judge uneasily. He got up from the chair.

The young man rubbed his dark head. “I don’t like it, sir. We don’t know what’s in the kids’ minds, or who their heroes are. There is only the gang. What do you suppose it advises?”

“What could it advise, after all?” said the Judge crisply. “This isn’t the slums, whatever Matlin says.” He went nervously to the window. He fiddled with the shade pull. He said, suddenly, “From my little summer house in the backyard you can overhear the gang. They congregate under that oak. Go and eavesdrop, Mike.”

The young man snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.”

“I . . . think we had better know,” said the Judge, a trifle sheepishly.

The kids sat under the oak, in a grassy hollow. Freddy was the core. His face was tight. His eyes never left off watching the house of the enemy. The others watched him, or hung their heads, or watched their own brown hands play with the grass.

They were not chattering. There hung about them a heavy, sullen silence, heavy with a sense of tragedy, sullen with a sense of wrong, and from time to time one voice or another would fling out a pronouncement, which would sink into the silence, thickening its ugliness . . .

The Judge looked up from his paper. “Could you . . .?”

“I could hear,” said Mike in a quiet voice. “They are condemning the law, sir. They call it corrupt. They are quite certain that Matlin killed the dog. They see themselves as Robin Hoods, vigilantes, defending the weak, the wronged, the dog. They think they are discussing justice. They are waiting for dark. They speak of weapons, sir—the only ones they have. B.B. guns, after dark.”

“Great heavens!”

“Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to stop it.”

Mrs. Somers was cooking supper when he tapped on the screen. “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”

“I want your help, Mrs. Somers. For Freddy.”