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Lewis found himself obliged to point out that Grover did not know anyone in the city of Cleveland—not a “single friend or acquaintance.” Just how did he expect to find a law firm ready to take him on? Grover could not say. Then it was folly to be going there, Lewis Allen told his nephew.

Lewis tried to persuade Grover to stay in Buffalo, where it just so happened that he was embarking on a challenging project and could use a young man like Grover to help out. He owned a six-hundred-acre farm on Grand Island where he raised Shorthorn cattle. For eight years, he had been obsessively documenting the bloodline of every Shorthorn he owned—a record of his livestock would be indispensable in establishing the herd as a great domestic breed of cattle. Now he was interested in publishing the results for the benefit of farming and stockman circles.

He proposed that his nephew stay with him for five months and organize everything. The pay would be $50, plus room and board. There was something else that sealed the deal for Grover—his uncle gave him his word that he would do what he could to introduce him to Buffalo’s most “eminent” law firms. It took Grover about five seconds to say yes. He thanked Lewis then tramped two miles back to port, found his friend from Holland Patent, and informed him that he was staying put. He would be settling in Buffalo. Apparently, there were no hard feelings, and the young man carried on with his voyage westward. What became of him, no one can say. He and Grover never saw each other again.

Grover moved in with Uncle Lewis, Aunt Margaret, and their two children, Gertrude and Cleveland. Gertrude was enthusiastic and always seemed to be “full of fun.” Cleveland Allen had had a sickly adolescence and suffered from periodic “spells of derangement,” which may have meant epilepsy.

Grover and his cousin Cleveland, who were close in age, could often be found fishing in the Niagara River. One day, the duo was admiring a giant yellow pike that must have weighed at least fifteen pounds. Generally regarded as the tastiest of all freshwater fish, yellow pike are also aggressive and predatory, as Grover learned when he tried to pry open its razor-sharp teeth with a stick. The stick slipped, the pike’s mouth snapped shut on Grover’s hand, and his injury was so severe he came close to losing two fingers.

The two-story Allen house, constructed of stone and rough stucco, was square and solid, with a veranda out front where the Allens gathered as a family on the warm summer evenings. Behind the house was an orchard with apple, peach, plum, and cherry trees. Beyond that flowed the Niagara River at a swift current, churning up pockets of snowy white foam. It was a splendid vista. The Breckinridge Street Church, just across the street, is where Grover sometimes joined the Allens in Sunday worship. Also on Breckenridge lived a playful little boy, Timothy J. Mahoney, who was ten years old when Grover moved in with the Allens. Timothy first saw the unfamiliar teenager picking cherries in the orchard.

“Who’s the new fellow?” Tim asked the Allen family handyman.

“Name’s Cleveland,” the handyman answered. “Father’s dead. Used to be a minister down east somewhere. Boy’s come to live with his uncle and aunt.”

Tim was the neighborhood mischief-maker-in-chief, always getting into some scrape. He often sneaked through a gap left by a missing plank in the Allen’s picket fence and filled a basket with pears. His petty crime spree came to an end when he ensnared himself in the fence, looked up, and saw Cleveland Allen clutching a fistful of his pants. Grover enjoyed Tim’s company, and he became a sidekick of sorts.

The Allens treated Grover like a son. He accompanied his uncle to the state fair in Utica. Aunt Margaret purchased Grover a formal dress coat—it was the first one he ever owned—and got him to agree to pose wearing it. He looked stiff and uneasy in the photograph.

There were some anxious days at the Allen house when Grover developed a high fever and