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."

II

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