The lid of the hollow swung to with a click, the log assumed its wonted
appearance, and the mender of nets, too, turned upon the intruder.

It was the convict Roach who had pushed the door open and now stood with
his swollen body and bestial face darkening the glory of the sunset
without. There was no added expression of greed or of awakened curiosity
upon his sullenly ferocious countenance. He might have seen or he might
not. They could not tell.

"What do you want?" asked Landless sternly.

"Thought as you might not have heard the horn, comrade, and so might get
into more trouble. So I thought I'd come over and warn you." All this in
a low, hoarse and dogged voice.

"Don't call me comrade. Yes: I heard the horn. You had best hasten or
you may get into trouble yourself."

The man received this intimation with a malevolent grin. "Talking big
eases the smart, don't it?" and he broke into his yelling laugh.

"Get out of this," said Landless, a dangerous light in his eyes.

The man stopped laughing and began to curse. But he went his way, and
Landless, too, after waiting to give him a start, left the hut and
turned his steps towards the quarters.

Upon the other side of the creek, sitting beneath a big sweet gum, and
whittling away at a piece of stick weed, he found the boy who, the day
before, had accused him of feeling as fine as the Lord Mayor of London.
He sprang to his feet as Landless approached, and cheerfully remarking
that their paths were the same, strode on side by side with him.

"I say," he said presently with ingenuous frankness, "I asks your pardon
for what I said to you yesterday. I dessay you make a very good
Sec'tary, and Losh! the Lord Mayor himself mightn't have dared to strike
that d--d fine Court spark. They say he has fought twenty duels."

"You have my full forgiveness," said Landless, smiling.

"That's right!" cried the other, relieved. "I hates for a man to bear
malice."

"I have seen you before yesterday. I forget how they call you."

"Dick Whittington."

"Dick Whittington!"

"Ay. Leastways the parish over yonder," a jerk of his thumb towards
England, "called me Dick, and I names myself Whittington. And why?
Because like that other Dick I runs away to make my fortune. Because
like him I've little besides empty pockets and a hopeful heart. And
because I means to go back some fine day, jingling money, and wearing
gold lace, and become the mayor of Banbury. Or maybe I'll stop in