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The oyster-opener was held pending trial until January court. He was then sentenced to thirty days more in the county jail. Meanwhile little Tobe mounted a freight-train one day to steal a ride, and Brickville has not seen or heard of him since. He enlisted in the great army of vagabonds, doubtless. Perhaps some city swallowed him. Tobit McStenger felt at home in jail.
With long, entangled hair, a thin, crafty face, and stealthy eyes, he was a true type of malevolent gamin, all the more uncanny for the crudity due to his semirustic environments. Such were Tobit and little Tobe, the most conspicuous of the village "characters" of Brickville, a Pennsylvania town deriving sustenance from its brick-kiln, its railroads, and its contiguous farming interests.
When out of jail he was engaged in oyster opening at Couch's saloon, or selling fresh fish, caught in the river, or vagrancy in the streets of Brickville. He lived in a log house containing two rooms, by Muddy Creek, an intermittent stream that flowed sometimes through a corner of the town.
Who is the feller, anyway?" "Pap" Buckwalder read the answer to Tobit's question from the current number of the Brickville Weekly Gazette. "The new teacher is Aubrey Pilling, the adopted son of farmer Josiah Pilling, of Blair Township. He has taught the school of that township for three winters, and is a graduate of the Brickville Academy." Sam Hatch, standing by the stove, remembered him.
The expected and yet the unexpected happened one night in Couch's saloon, the scene of most of the eventful incidents in Tobit McStenger's life since he had dawned upon Brickville. Tobit and Honesty Yerkes, Pap Buckwalder, old Tony Couch himself, and half a score others were making a conversational hubbub before the bar. In walked Aubrey Pilling.
Word by word he could slowly read upon the marble this inscription: "William Albert, beloved son of the late Thomas Kershaw and his wife Rachel; born in Brickville, August 2, 1862; drowned in the Allegheny River near Pittsburg, July 27, 1877, while heroically endeavouring to save the life of a child." The tramp laughed, and then uttered a sigh.
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