For several days he remained locked in his
office, hardly touching food, and then, with a sad heart he resumed
his customary occupations. He would never have learned the truth about
Syrilla had it not been for a tramp called Chi Foxy.

Chi Foxy made the long walk from Derlingport, and night found him on
the outskirts of Riverbank. He begged a hand-out from one of the small
houses and hunted a place to spend the night. He found it underneath a
tool-house alongside the railway tracks, and that it had been used as
sleeping-quarters by other tramps was shown by the heap of crushed
straw, the bread-crusts, and the remnants of a small fire.

Chi Foxy crawled in and stretched himself out for a comfortable night.
He lighted his pipe, loosened the laces of his shoes, and settled back
for a comfortable smoke.

Just outside the rear of his sleeping quarters ran the wire
right-of-way fence, which was also the back fence of a small piece of
property on which stood a rickety old house. The house was devoid of
paint, but it was a cheerful sight from where Chi Foxy reclined. He
had a clear view of the kitchen window, from which the light came in a
yellow glow, and he could see a woman cooking something in a
frying-pan on a kitchen stove. A man sat beside the stove, his elbows
on his knees, waiting for supper.

Chi Foxy almost decided to climb the fence and knock at the door of
the kitchen at the moment the woman took the frying-pan off the stove,
but he was feeling well filled and comfortable, and he decided to wait
and to use the house as his breakfasting-place. This required no
little strength of character, for the perfume of fried veal chops was
wafted to his nostrils, but he held himself in hand, and when he had
burned his pipeful of tobacco he curled down and went to sleep.

He was awakened by the sound of voices near at hand, and peered out
between the ties. The night was not dark. The voices had come from a
man and a woman, and as Chi Foxy watched them the man began digging in
the sandy soil with a spade. He made quite a hole in the soil and
turned to the woman.

"Hand me the bag," he said.

The woman dragged a heavy gunny-sack to the edge of the hole. The man
untwisted the neck of the bag and up-ended it over the hole. There
followed the rattle of bones, one striking against the other, and the
man handed the bag back to the woman. Chi Foxy peered eagerly at the
hole. He saw bones. He looked up at the stars and saw it m