traveler was a very
ragged man--a regular tramp in fact.

On his part Nutty, as he called himself, stared with surprised eyes at
Bunny Brown and his sister Sue.

"Two kids!" cried the tramp. "Bless my ragged gloves! Two kids!"

CHAPTER XIV

A QUEER PICNIC

Bunny and Sue did not know just what to make of this ragged tramp who
was traveling in the freight car with them. It was not, of course, the
first time they had seen a tramp--they were plentiful enough around
Bellemere at times, and often they had come begging for food at the back
door of the Brown house. Bunny and Sue had often seen their mother feed
the poor men, and some of them were quite jolly, and joked about their
bad luck.

This tramp, "Nutty," he had called himself, was one of the jolly kind,
the two children decided. Nutty now came from the corner where he had
been sleeping and stood in the light that came through the door Bunny
had slid back a little way.

"What in the world are you doing here?" asked Nutty, as he again
stretched out his arms, showing the rags and patches of his torn coat.

"We came in to get the kitten," answered Sue.

"What, my kitten? My Toddle?" cried the tramp. "You wouldn't take little
Toddle away from me, would you?"

"Oh, is that your kitten?" asked Bunny Brown. "We didn't know. We
thought it was a stray pussy that had got up in the freight car and
couldn't get out. We climbed up in to take it to our mother so it could
have some milk, and then the train started."

"Oh, ho! So that's how it happened?" asked Nutty. "I wondered how you
two kids got here. I knew you couldn't be tramps. But Toddle is my
kitten all right. I call him Toddle because that's about all he can do
in the way of a walk. He toddles on his four little legs," and Nutty
laughed, which made Bunny and Sue feel better.

"Yes, Toddle is my kitten," the queer tramp went on. "I picked him up
the other day in the fields. I guess he was lost--a tramp like myself. I
put him in my pocket--it's got some holes in it, but none of them quite
big enough for Toddle to fall through--and I've kept him ever since. He
was with me when I crawled into this car to go to sleep."

"Were you in this car when we got in after the cat?" asked Bunny. "We
didn't see you."

"For a good reason," the tramp answered. "I didn't want any one to see
me. The railroad men don't like us tramps, and when they find us in the
cars they put us out. I crawled away back in the darkest c