Except when he found shelter with the clamdiggers of the Bayonne Marsh, Peter Lake had to be in Manhattan, where it was never long before the Short Tails got wind of him and took up the chase. It was necessary for him to be in Manhattan because he was a burglar, and for a burglar to work anyplace else was a shattering admission of mediocrity. During those frenetic three years, he had often contemplated moving to Boston, but had always concluded that there was nothing in the place interesting enough to steal, it was laid out badly for burglars, it was too small, and he would probably run afoul there of the Simian Cantarellos (the leading gang, which wasn't much) in the same way that he had run afoul of the Short Tails, though undoubtedly for different reasons. In Boston, he had heard, when it got dark at night, it really got dark, and you could hardly move without bumping into men of the cloth. So he stayed on, hoping that the Short Tails might grow