hese
full, balmy, late-April days, and various tattered men, mostly vagabonds
and tramps, passed the gang from time to time on this same, northern
quest.

Ben thought about them as birds of passage, and the thought amused him.
And at the sight of a small, stooped figure advancing toward him up the
railroad right-of-way he paused, leaning on his pick.

Because Ben had paused, for the first time in an hour, his two guards
looked up to see what had attracted his attention. They saw what seemed
to them a white-haired old wanderer of sixty years or more; but at first
they were wholly at a loss to explain Ben's fascinated look of growing
interest.

It was true that the old man scarcely represented the usual worthless,
criminal type that took to vagabondage. As he paused to scrutinize the
convict gang neither insolence nor fear, one of which was certainly to
be expected, became manifest in his face. They had anticipated certain
words in greeting, a certain look out of bleary, shifty eyes, but
neither materialized. True, the old man was following the cinder trail
northward, but plainly he did not belong to the brotherhood of tramps.
They saw that he was white-haired and withered, but upright; and that
undying youth dwelt in his twinkling blue eyes and the complexity of
little, good-natured lines about his mouth. Poverty, age, the hardships
of the cinder trail had not conquered him in the least. He was small
physically, but his skinny arms and legs looked as if they were made of
high-tension wire. His face was shrewd, but also kindly, and the gray
stubble on his cheeks and chin did not in the least hide a smile that
was surprisingly boyish and winning. And when he spoke his cracked
good-natured voice was perfectly in character, evidently that of a man
possessing full self-respect and confidence, yet brimming over with easy
kindliness and humor.

Both guards would have felt instantly, instinctively friendly toward him
if they had been free to feel at all. Instead they were held and amazed
by the apparent fact that at the first scrutiny of the man's outline,
his carriage and his droll, wrinkled face, the prisoner Kinney was moved
and stirred as if confronted by the risen dead.

The old man himself halted, returning Kinney's stare. The moment had,
still half concealed, an unmistakable quality of drama. In the contagion
of suppressed excitement, the other prisoners paused, their tools held
stiffly in their hands. Kinney's mind