[Katsunami]

There are two things I've been wondering about for some time.

First: Why do so many authors write "maybe two or three", "maybe five or six", and so on, when talking about a certain number, as if they don't exactly know what that number should be?

"There were five boys, playing a game in the streets."
"There were maybe five or six boys, playing a game in the streets."

What is the reason for introducing such a doubt into the text?

Second: This I often see in old works. A name is replaced with ____. At first I thought this was a mistake in printing, but now that I'm actively reading old(er) works, I encounter it frequently. A sentence often looks like this:

"When Mr. ____ arrived, it was raining in the city of ____. This wasn't very strange: it often rained in these parts. Mr. ____ tied his horse to the fence of a great manor house..."

Is there any reason for that?