curious feeling that young Mr. Smith's melodramatic warnings had been
offered in a spirit of friendliness, rather than of hostility.
Nevertheless, the eccentric young man had unmistakably threatened them.
While Varney had been more interested by the man, personally, than by
his whimsical menaces, the editor's conversation could certainly not be
called reassuring. Smith owned a corrupt newspaper; he was a clever man
and, by his own confession, an unscrupulous one, bought body and soul by
the local freebooters; and if he thought the headlong intruder Maginnis
important enough to warrant it, there were presumably no lengths to
which he would not go to make the town uncomfortable for him, to the
probable prejudice of their mission. Clearly, here was a risk which he,
as Mr. Carstairs's emissary, had no right to incur. The _Cypriani_ was
in no position to stand the fire of vindictive yellow journalism.
Besides, there was the complicating matter of his own curious
resemblance to somebody whom, it seemed, Hunston knew, and not too
favorably.
Considerably annoyed, Varney turned his face back toward the town. To
avoid more publicity, he turned off the main thoroughfare to a narrow
street which paralleled it, and, walking rapidly, came in five minutes
to the street where Peter and the little candidate had left him. This
street came as a surprise to him: Hunston's best "residence section"
beyond doubt. It was really pretty, spaciously wide and flanked by
handsome old trees. Houses rose at increasingly long intervals as one
got away from the town; and they were for the most part charming-looking
houses, set in large lawns and veiled from public scrutiny by much fine
foliage.
Varney cast about for somebody who would give him his bearings, and had
not far to look.
Puffing stolidly on the butt of an alleged cigar, into which he had
stuck a sharpened match as a visible means of support, a boy who was
probably not so old as he looked sat upon the curbstone at the corner,
and claimed the world for his cuspidor. He was an ill-favored runt of a
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