Part 9

“Yonder goes the spirit of the age,” he told himself, with sardonic twisting of his lips. “When Opportunity knocks, knock Opportunity down. Embrace Opportunity, but be sure it's with the strangle hold. The directors of a robbed railroad make a more dignified getaway than that porcine pedestrian is making--but it's the same as far as the stockholders are concerned.”

He went on slowly toward the hollow under the hill.

The procession met him--a limp man, moaning, borne in the arms of his sweating mates, women trotting alongside and crossing the road, to and fro, like frightened hens--clucking sympathy.

Farr found a half-finished stone bridge under the hill. A paunchy boss with underset jaw and overhanging upper lip was profanely urging his helpers back to their jobs.

“Fifteen minutes before knock-off time--fifteen minutes! You can't help that man by standing around and doing his grunting for him. Get busy!”

The men lifted their tools slowly and sullenly.

“It's hell what can happen when you're fifteen days behind on a contract, with county commissioners waiting and anxious to grab off a penalty,” declared the boss, to nobody in particular. “One man bunged, and four to lug him home, and the rest of the crew taking a sympathetic vacation!”

Farr, sauntering, swung off the highway down the lane leading to the temporary bridge.

“Here, you long-horned steer, want a job?” called the contractor from his rostrum on the granite block.

“No, my Sussex shote, I do not!”

“Damnation! You dare to call me names, you hobo?”

“Yes,” returned Farr, quite simply.

“Well, quit it. I need men here. You're husky. Two dollars a day, even if you're not a regular mason.”

“No.”

He drawled both the affirmative and the negative and there was something subtly insolent in his tone--something that aroused more ire than a cruder retort would have accomplished. He turned his back on the cursing man and went on down to the bridge. He waited there for a time and watched the drift of foam on the fretted waters. The steady burbling of the stream made him oblivious to other sounds and he did not hear the two men approach. They leaped on him and seized him. One of his captors was the paunchy man, and his hands were heavy and his fingers gripped viciously.

“No wonder you wouldn't work! You're making your living in an easier way.”

“What is the occasion of this effusive welcome to your city?” asked Farr.

The man who held one of the captive's arms was panting. He had run at top speed from the house to which he and his mates had borne the injured man.

“You thief! You sneak! Eat a man's grub, his hard-earned grub, and steal when his wife's back is turned!”

“Of all dirty work this job is the worst,” declared the big man.

“She gave you all you could stuff into yourself, you loafer. You ransacked when her back was turned. You even stole her husband's Sunday suit. Where is it?”

“I saw a fat tramp running away into the woods,” returned Farr, quietly. “He was carrying articles in his arms.”

“You're the only tramp in sight around here,” insisted the contractor. “Where did you hide the plunder?”

“She said she fed a tramp. She left him at the back door. You're the sneak,” indorsed the panting emissary.

“If you will take me back to the house you may get some new light on the affair,” suggested their captive. “You need not drag me there. I'll go with much pleasure.”

The mistress of the despoiled home, red of eyes, hurrying from her sink with a cold compress in her trembling hands, viewed Farr from her back door.

“That isn't the man. I never saw him before. Oh, he is in awful pain. Why doesn't that doctor get here? But there doesn't seem to be anything broken. He took my pocketbook, too, with two dollars and twenty-seven cents in it. And it's every cent of money we've got by us. And it may be weeks before he can go to work again. Troubles don't come singly. That mis'able, fat, greasy thief! After I had fed him--even gave him pie!”

“As I told you, gentlemen, it was a fat tramp. I saw him run away into the woods.”