ed by Bridget and Norah, who were
dragging stones from the hillsides, while comfortably stretched on the
top of the wall lay my friend, the Tramp, quietly overseeing the
operation with lazy and humorous comment. For an instant I was
foolishly indignant, but he soon brought me to my senses. "Shure, sur,
it's only larnin' the boys the habits uv industhry I was--and may they
niver know, be the same token, what it is to worruk fur the bread
betune their lips. Shure it's but makin' 'em think it play I was. As
fur the colleens beyint in the kitchen, sure isn't it betther they was
helping your honor here than colloguing with themselves inside?"

Nevertheless, I thought it expedient to forbid henceforth any
interruption of servants or children with my friend's "worruk." Perhaps
it was the result of this embargo that the next morning early the Tramp
wanted to see me.

"And it's sorry I am to say it to ye, sur," he began, "but it's the
handlin' of this stun that's desthroyin' me touch at the brick-makin',
and it's better I should lave ye and find worruk at me own thrade. For
it's worruk I am nadin'. It isn't meself, Captain, to ate the bread of
oidleness here. And so good-by to ye, and if it's fifty cints ye can
be givin' me ontil I'll find a kill--it's God that'll repay ye."

He got the money. But he got also conditionally a note from me to my
next neighbor, a wealthy retired physician, possessed of a large
domain, a man eminently practical and businesslike in his management of
it. He employed many laborers on the sterile waste he called his
"farm," and it occurred to me that if there really was any work in my
friend, the Tramp, which my own indolence and preoccupation had failed
to bring out, he was the man to do it.

I met him a week after. It was with some embarrassment that I inquired
after my friend, the Tramp. "Oh, yes," he said, reflectively, "let's
see: he came Monday and left me Thursday. He was, I think, a stout,
strong man, a well-meaning, good-humored fellow, but afflicted with a
most singular variety of diseases. The first day I put him at work in
the stables he developed chills and fever caught in the swamps of
Louisiana--"

"Excuse me," I said hurriedly, "you mean in Milwaukee!"

"I know what I'm talking about," returned the Doctor, testily; "he told
me his whole wretched story--his escape from the Confederate service,
the attack upon him by armed negroes, his concealment in the bayous and
swamp