Dur­ing his sec­ond night in the cab­in, Mani­ac Magee heard the enchant­i­ng chat­ter of two boys, reflect­ing the inno­cent ban­ter of child­hood, even as they joked about their sur­round­ings. Upon wak­ing to a bleak Jan­u­ary morn­ing, he stum­bled out, cold and weary. As he approached the next cab­in, he found two young boys hud­dled togeth­er. Their play­ful taunts and antics instant­ly filled the cab­in with ener­gy, con­trast­ing his soli­tude.

The boys, Miss­ing Tooth and Screech­er, both around eight years old, ener­get­i­cal­ly teased Mani­ac for his blan­ket. Their spir­it­ed bick­er­ing evolved into a play­ful wres­tle that amused Mani­ac. Once they set­tled, their ban­ter revealed their plan: to run away to Mex­i­co. This unex­pect­ed ambi­tion prompt­ed a grin from Mani­ac, real­iz­ing their inno­cence and naivety regard­ing the dis­tance they would need to cov­er.

As they revealed their stash of stolen goodies—from can­dy to cupcakes—Maniac’s hunger sparked, and he felt com­pelled to inquire about their ori­gins, lead­ing them to inad­ver­tent­ly reveal their act of theft. Despite their ini­tial sus­pi­cion of him, Mani­ac clev­er­ly evad­ed their doubts by spin­ning a tale of being a piz­za deliv­ery boy with a con­test prize wait­ing for them. The boys’ curios­i­ty over whether they’d actu­al­ly won a piz­za or if he was just trick­ing them sparkled in their child­ish eyes.

Encour­aged by Mani­ac’s sug­ges­tion of a short­cut back to their home in Two Mills, they embarked on the jour­ney togeth­er. Reach­ing Cob­ble’s Cor­ner, Mani­ac claimed his reward for con­quer­ing Cob­ble’s Knot, lead­ing to an excit­ing piz­za feast for Rus­sell and Piper, while he refrained, opt­ing instead for some Krimpets and water.

Their laugh­ter and cama­raderie soon dis­rupt­ed when the for­mi­da­ble Big John McNab burst onto the scene, demand­ing to know where the boys had been. Behind Mani­ac, the boys looked slight­ly sheep­ish but still defend­ed him, say­ing he was no threat. As John final­ly focused on Mani­ac, a smile hint­ed at recog­ni­tion before solid­i­fy­ing into an inquiry about his broth­ers’ escapade, merg­ing uncer­tain­ty with the thread of sib­ling loy­al­ty.