Into the Storm by Avi Page B

Hamlyn laughed.
    â€œI’m a collector of secrets,” replied his friend with the utmost seriousness.
    â€œWhat do you think might happen?”
    Mr. Tolliver considered. “Violence, sir. Violence.”
    â€œIn any particular direction?”
    Mr. Tolliver paced again, hands in pockets. Suddenly he stopped. “Well, sir — you might wonder why I should be visiting you at such a time. The truth is, I followed Mr. Jenkins from the hotel. A boy was with him. Mr. Jenkins made his way through the snow, sir, to this house.”
    Mr. Hamlyn sat up. “This house!”
    â€œAcross the street anyway. And, sir, I believe he pointed to this very room.”
    â€œBut why?”
    â€œThat’s an answer I have yet to learn, Mr. Hamlyn. But I am determined to find out.”

 
    J eb Grafton hurried up the shadowy narrow steps to the second floor of a tenement building on Howard Street. The stairwell walls were dirty, and the plaster so full of holes that in many places the cold night air whistled through. Though it was dark on the steps, the boy hardly looked where he was going. Excited, he paid scant attention to the babble that rang out from many directions in the building. Instead, he all but ran down the hallway and pushed against the door that let him into the place that he called his home.
    It was a two-room apartment, one none-too-clean room behind the other. There was an old Franklin stove, but it wassmall and gave but a meager measure of warmth. Not far from the stove a boy, a year old, sat on a thin blanket. He wore a tattered man’s shirt — much too big for him — but nothing else, and the chill that set upon him could be seen in his raw red hands and blue lips.
    There was a table and chair by the room’s only window, which was boarded up. Such light as there was came from a candle set in a cracked dish.
    Seated in the chair before the table was Jeb’s father, Henry Grafton. Thin, scantly bearded, he wore an old army coat over his shoulders, a battered derby on his head, and a tattered muffler around his neck.
    Mr. Grafton was reading a Lowell newspaper, The People’s Voice , by the light of the candle. Now and then he glanced toward the back room, from which an occasional cough could be heard. When it came, he listened intently. When it subsided, he turned back to his reading.
    He was still reading when Jeb burst in.
    â€œLook!” Jeb cried. He had a great grin on his face as he showed off his coat.
    â€œWhere’d you get that?” his father asked.
    â€œNew friend.”
    â€œGet it honest?”
    The boy’s face flushed. “What do you think?” he replied. “The fellah who gave it to me is so rich he just gives money away.”
    â€œWho is he?”
    â€œMr. Jenkins. Jeremiah Jenkins.”
    â€œNever heard of him.”
    â€œPaid me money — good money — just to sit by a door and make sure no one barged into a meeting.”
    â€œHow much?”
    â€œA whole half dime. And he says he’ll hire me again.”
    â€œTo do what?”
    â€œI don’t know. But I bet he does.”
    â€œWhat about the rest of today?” Jeb’s father asked.
    â€œFair.”
    Mr. Grafton held out his hand.
    Ignoring it, Jeb came farther into the room and set his shoe-shine box down in a corner. “How is she?” he asked, nodding toward the back room, from which coughing had erupted again.
    â€œGot through the day.”
    â€œThey speed the machines up again at the mill?”
    â€œShe didn’t say.”
    â€œI hate them mills,” Jeb said.
    â€œSome are worse than others.”
    â€œThen I hate the Shagwell Cotton Mill,” Jeb said decidedly. He crossed the room and sat on the floor next to the child. The youngster chortled and crawled onto his brother’s lap. In response, Jeb opened his coat and drew the infant close, then wrapped him in his arms as well as the coat. “You