tramp, working his arms out of the
sleeves.

"The coat was plainly built for a gentleman," stated the man at the
fire. "Therefore it is of no value to you."

Boston Fat surveyed the stranger with a vicious glint in his little
eyes, as a pig might stare at a man who had struck it across the snout.

"Good afternoon, perfesser," he sneered.

"Why 'professor,' my frayed and frowsled Falstaff?"

"There you go with it--showing yourself up out of your own mouth! Words
a yard long--words that would break a decent man's teeth! You're one of
these college dudes out on the road getting stuff to write into a book.
I've heard about your kind. And that kind is getting too thick and
plenty and you're putting slush all over the real profesh. Quit it and
go back to college. Don't use me for your book."

This was reciprocation of derogatory sentiment with a vengeance!

The man at the fire sat back on his haunches. He finished chewing his
mouthful, regarding the tramp with a languid stare that traveled from
crown of his head to tip of his battered shoe.

"The only thing about a book that you would be good for," he said,
"would be for use in a volume of this sort." He tapped the book in his
palm. "Your anatomy could supply the binding. It is bound in pigskin."

The tramp squealed an oath in the falsetto voice that the weak and the
flabby possess and took one step forward. The man at the fire came to
his feet and stood erect. He was tall, and the brown eyes talked for him
better than threats or bluster. The vagrant shifted his gaze from those
eyes and backed away.

"If I hadn't been penned in a pie-belt jail all winter up North, and all
the strength starved out of me," he whined, "you wouldn't call me a pig
and get away with it."

"A person who forces himself into the presence of a gentleman who is
dining mustn't expect compliments," stated the stranger.

"You ain't a tramp--not a real one," snarled Boston Fat.

Farr's eyes glistened; he smiled; he continued to play on this ignoramus
his satiric pranks of mystifying language:

"More of your lack of acuteness, my fat friend. Because I do not patter
the flash lingo with you, you appear to take me for a college professor
in disguise. _You_ are not a real tramp. You are a bum, a loafer, a yeg.
You never traveled more than two hundred miles away from Hoboken--the
capital city of hoboes. Have you ever hit the sage-brush trail, hiked
the milk-and-honey route from Ogden through the