e calls a neck."

While he waited for the fifth time before a certain expensive but not
exclusive roadhouse, with the bouncing giggles of girls inside
spoiling the spring night, he studied the background as once he had
studied his father's woodshed. He was not, unfortunately, shocked by
wine and women. But he was bored by box-trees. There was a smugly
clipped box-tree on either side of the carriage entrance, the leaves
like cheap green lacquer in the glare of the arc-light, which brought
out all the artificiality of the gray-and-black cinder drive. He felt
that five pilgrimages to even the best of box-trees were enough. It
would be perfectly unreasonable for a free man to come here to stare
at box-trees a sixth time. "All right," he growled. "I guess
my-wandering-boy-to-night is going to beat it again."

While he drove to the garage he pondered: "Is it worth twenty-five
plunks to me to be able to beat it to-night instead of waiting four
days till pay-day? Nope. I'm a poor man."

But at 5 A.M. he was hanging about the railroad-yards at Hammond,
recalling the lessons of youth in "flipping trains"; and at seven he
was standing on the bumpers between two freight-cars, clinging to the
brake-rod, looking out to the open meadows of Indiana, laughing to see
farm-houses ringed with apple-blossoms and sweet with April morning.
The cinders stormed by him. As he swung with the cars, on curves, he
saw the treacherous wheels grinding beneath him. But to the
chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck of the trucks he hummed,
"Never turn back, never tur' back, never tur' back."

CHAPTER XIV

A young hobo named Carl Ericson crawled from the rods of an N. & W.
freight-car at Roanoke, Virginia, on a May day, with spring at full
tide and the Judas-trees a singing pink on the slopes of the Blue
Ridge.

"Hm!" grunted the young hobo. "I like these mountains. Guess I'll stay
here awhile.... Virginia! Plantations and Civil War history and
Richmond and everything, and me here!"

A frowzy old hobo poked a somnolent head up from a pile of lumber near
the tracks and yawned welcome to the recruit. "Hello, Slim. How's
tricks?"

"Pretty good. What's the best section to batter for a poke-out,
Billy?"

"To the right, over that way, and straight out."

"Much 'bliged," said Slim--erstwhile Ericson. "Say, j' know of any
jobs in this----"

"Any _whats_?"

"Jobs."

"Jobs? You looking for----Say, you beat it. Gwan. Chase yourself.