" gasped Greg, throbbing with sympathy
for the poor old man.

Outside other approaching steps sounded. Dave and Tom, snatching
up sticks of firewood, sprang forward.

CHAPTER XVI

HOME, HOSPITAL AND ALMSHOUSE

Greg flashed the lantern on four hulking, bedraggled ragged men.

"Hello! It's the same kids!" cried a hoarse voice out in the
storm. "They'll be glad to see us."

"You keep out of here!" ordered Reade, thrusting his stick at
the face of the first tramp---the boss tramp---who tried to enter.

"No!" countermanded Dick Prescott. "Let even the hoboes come
in. Let anyone come in on a night like this."

"Now, that's decent of you," admitted the boss tramp, as he sloshed
heavily in, followed by three companions. Two of these tramps
had been with the "boss" on another well remembered occasion.
The third was a stranger to Dick & Co.

"My, but you've got a real house in here a true port in a storm,"
observed the boss tramp, as he halted to stare about him. "Friends,
this is the best thing we've seen today."

"It is," agreed the other tramps solemnly.

The glance of the newcomers did not rest upon the face of Reuben
Hinman, for Prescott had gently spread a blanket so that it effectually
concealed the little old peddler.

"What have you men been doing?" asked Dick, straightening up and
eyeing them coldly, steadily.

"Drowning in the woods," replied the boss, "for we knew we couldn't
find a house or barn within two miles, and the road is like a
river you need a boat for travel to-night. When the storm came
we men made a brush lean-to and kept as dry as we could under
it. But it got worse and worse. But at last we caught sight
of your light shining through the trees. So we headed for it.
We hoped you'd have a stove with a fire in it, and you have---so
we're all right, and much obliged."

"Keep back there a bit," ordered Dick, so firmly that the tramps
obeyed. "Dave, help me to lift this cot over within a few feet
of the stove. Be as gentle as you can."

Four tramps looked on in solemn curiosity as they saw Darrin and
Prescott lift a cot on which lay something completely covered
by a blanket.

Then Dick turned down the blanket, revealing the bruised, bleeding
head of Reuben Hinman.

"What do you men know about this?" Prescott demanded, eyeing them
compellingly.

But the tramps' look was one of such astonished innocence that
Prescott began to wonder whether he had wrongly suspected