Part 3

It was not declination with humility; the manner of the man of the road contained a hint that anybody who drank or smoked was no better than he should be. The girl studied him with renewed interest.

“Don't stand there and try to put anything over on me,” advised the man in gray, showing resentment. “What can I do for you?”

“You might thank the man, Richard,” declared the girl, tartly. She turned to Farr.

“He seems to have forgotten 'thank you' as he forgot 'please.' May I make amends? We thank you!”

“And now I am in your debt,” said the rover. He bowed and walked on.

When the car passed him the girl turned and gave him a long look. He waved his hand. The dust-cloud closed in between them.

“Kat Kilgour! That's a tramp! I'm amazed!” said the elder woman, observing the look and the salute.

“Yes, this world is full of surprises,” agreed the girl, sweetly.

“But your own eyes told you that he was a tramp.”

“There isn't any doubt of it, is there, if you used your eyes?” demanded their escort.

“We'll consider that the eyes have it--and let the matter drop,” said the girl--and her tone was not sweet.

The man of the keen brown eyes and the faded garb fared on.

He plucked a rose from a wayside bush and carried the flower in his hand.

“Your sister just passed this way,” he informed the rose in whimsical fashion. “I don't suppose you and I will ever catch up with her. I go very slowly, but you may journey along with me.”

A HOME-MADE KNIGHT-ERRANT

The wayfarer who called himself Farr came down the long hill and turned the corner of the highway where the alders crowded to the banks of the narrow brook; they whispered to one another as the breeze fluttered their leaves. He drank there, bending and scooping the water in his palm. He bathed the rose and stroked its wilted petals.

“Too bad, little one!” he said. “The long road is a killing proposition, and I'm afraid I had no business inviting you to go with me. Your sister must be a long way ahead of us.”

The rocks were cool where the alders cast shade, and he sat there for a little while, watching the drift of tiny flotsam down the eddying current and observing the skipper-bugs skating over the still shallows on their spraddled legs.

There was a pleasant hush all about. The bubbling ecstasy of a bobolink floated above the grasses of a meadow, and near at hand a wren hopped about in the alders and chirped dozy notes. Peace and restfulness brooded. The man at the brook leaned low and thrust his head into the water and then rose and shook the drops from his thick thatch of brown hair. He did it with a sort of canine wriggle and smiled at the thought which came to him.

“A stray dog!” he muttered. “Of as much account--and he'd better forget the sister of the rose. Here's a good place to put imagination to sleep--here's a place where all is asleep.”

He went on around the curtain of the alders.

There was a big old-fashioned house near at hand. Its walls were weather-worn, its yard was not tidy. The faded curtains at the windows hung crookedly. The glass of the panes was dirty. The entire aspect of the place indicated that there was no woman's hand to make it home. It was commonplace and uninteresting.

But the front door was flung open suddenly with a screech of rusty hinges.

Then came backing out of the doorway a very old man--a bent and wrinkled old man with long white hair which trailed down from under a broad-brimmed hat. He was dragging a coffin, single-handed. The free end of the solemn box bumped down the wooden steps with a hollow clatter that suggested emptiness. There was a woodpile at one side of the yard. The old man tugged the casket over the litter of chips and dropped the end. He wrenched an ax from its cleft in a chopping-block and caved in the top of the coffin with the first blow.

The man Farr, observing from the road, saw that the casket was empty. The old man continued to bash and batter.

The wayfarer, before the destruction was begun, had time to note that the coffin was a remarkably fine specimen of cabinet-maker's work. There were various sorts of wood inlaid with care, and the fretwork along its sides had been jig-sawed with much pains spent in detail, and the pilasters were turned with art. But the old man battered at all this excellence with savageness. It was evident that he was not merely providing kindling-wood--he was expending fury.

It was an affair that demanded undivided attention from the observer in the road; but a man came around the corner of the house just then and Farr promptly gave over his interest in the aged chopper.

The new arrival was clothed cap-a-pie in armor.