“Get on to the job, then.”
Through the open door Farr could see the woman of the house wringing cloths at the sink.
He stepped to the door and addressed her. “Madame, will you take a boarder? I'm going to do your husband's work on the job yonder. I will pay liberally. In your present difficulties the money may help. I'll be small trouble.”
“We need the money terribly,” she said, after pondering. “Yes, I will take you. In the face you do not look like a tramp!”
“I thank you,” said Farr. “If you will give me some food in my hands I'll take myself out of your way.”
That afternoon Jared Chick came over the hill where the trowels clinked and the great derrick complained with its pulleys. He carried his armor on his back.
He stopped and watched for some time his former companion of the road, who was sweating over his man's toil.
“May I have sixty seconds off to speak with that man yonder?” Farr asked the contractor. “It partly concerns your business.”
The big man nodded surly assent.
“Thee sees I have taken off the armor for a time. I will wear it in the city where horses and people are not so silly. What is thee doing here?”
“I have no time to talk about myself, Friend Chick. I want to ask you if you are still of the same mind about your mission?”
“I am.”
“Then throw down that hardware and come to work on this job. A man has been hurt here--his wife is in need. Earn some money and give it to them.”
“But my mission concerns the world--the wide world.”
“Real selfishness's chief excuse! Here's something ready to your hand. Will you do it?”
“But thee told me thee would not go forth and do good!”
“No matter about me. I am not a professional knight-errant! Will you do this?”
“Ten seconds more!” warned the boss.
“I cannot change my plans so suddenly,” protested Chick.
“A knight-errant should not have plans! My time is up and I have work. Good-by, Friend Chick!”
The young man went back to his task and the Quaker passed on, muttering reaffirmation of his own high aims.
“And how could I expect a vagrant to understand?” he asked himself.
The vagrant toiled two weeks at his heavy task and when the man Jose was about again the volunteer slipped away without farewell.
He left on the table of his under-the-eaves bedroom in the Jose house all the pay he received for his work, to the last penny.
“He wasn't what he seemed to be,” ran the burden of Mrs. Jose's various disquisitions on this strange guest. “He ate his vittles and asked no questions, and was out from underfoot, and was always willing to set up with my husband and give me a snippet of rest and a wink of sleep; and he read out of little books all the time--he had 'em stuffed into his pockets. And there needn't anybody tell _me_! He left all his pay on the table, every cent of it, and stole away without waiting for no thanks from nobody!”
IV
FARR, THE FAT TRAMP, AND A SUIT OF CLOTHES
On a balmy forenoon a jovial-appearing old gentleman went jogging out of the mill city of Marion and along a country road in his two-wheeled chaise. He sat erect and he was tall above the average of men, and he was very neat in his attire.
“I wish,” he mused, “that the men who could really appreciate a good outfit of clothing and could use the same properly were not so infernally touchy. As it is, cranky human nature drives me out on an expedition like this--and I'm afraid I am just as cranky as the rest of 'em, otherwise I wouldn't be doing this!”
The old gentleman hummed a song under his breath and slapped his reins against the flanks of the plodding horse to keep time. He came into a piece of woodland. He seemed to take cheery and fresh interest in this place. He poked his rubicund face out from the shadow of the chaise's canopy and peered to right and to left. There was a smile in his puckery eyes. When there were trees ahead of him, trees behind him, and trees all about he pulled his old horse to a standstill.
He listened, squinted quizzically through the glass of his chaise's rear curtain, and then climbed down. From a box at the rear of the vehicle he secured various articles of clothing and draped them over his arm. There was a frock-coat, not too badly worn, trousers in good repair, waistcoat, and a shirt. He also took out of the box a pair of shoes and a hat. With this load he went to the roadside and began to rig out a fence-post. When the garments were hung on it and the broad-brimmed, black, slouch-hat had been jauntily set on top of the post, anybody could see that the old gentleman was thus disposing of some of his own extra clothing. He was wearing a similar hat and a frock-coat, himself, and the decorated post took on a bizarre and slouchy resemblance to its decorator.
He went back to the chaise and found a nickel alarm-clock in the box. He wound this up carefully and propped it on a rail of the fence near the clothing.
Before he could escape from the vicinity of the exhibit and get into his chaise a wagon came rattling around the bend of the road. There were firkins and jars in the rear of this wagon and the driver was plainly a farmer-man.
He pulled up short and then saluted the old gentleman with a stab of forefinger at his hat-brim.
“Any trouble, Judge?” he inquired, affably.
“None at all,” replied the old gentleman, edging away from the fully garbed fence-post.
“Airing 'em out, hey?” A jab of the forefinger toward the garments.
“No, leaving them out.”
All at once the old gentleman appeared to remember something else. He took off his hat and produced a placard. He straightened it and stuck it into a crack in a fence-rail. Its legend was “Help Yourself.”
“You're giving them clothes away, are you, Judge Peterson?”
“I am leaving them here for any one who chooses to take them. Do you want first pick, Jolson?”
“Not me! I ain't taking charity hand-me-downs from any man, Judge. If it's a polite question, why are you giving away your duds this way?”
“I think you have just answered that question, Jolson. I offered you these clothes. Your nose went into the air. Other men have acted in the same way in the past when I have offered to give a fellow a good suit. I don't want to hurt other folks' feelings. I don't want to have my own feelings hurt. So, let any man help himself when no one is looking.”
“I'll take the alarm-clock, if you say so,” volunteered Jolson. “It'll help to rout me out of bed at milking-time.”
“No, you cannot have the clock, Jolson. I have tinkered it so that it will purr a little every half-hour. It will call attention to the clothes. You see, a good many men rush through life without looking to right or left, and so they miss a lot of opportunities.”
Jolson clucked to his horse and rattled away down the road, muttering sour remarks.
The old gentleman, with the air of a man who has satisfied his philanthropic ambitions, climbed into his chaise and followed the farmer.
The brisk breeze flirted the tails of the frock-coat and the trousers legs tried out a modest little gig as if some of the jocose spirit of the old gentleman had remained with the garments he had discarded.
There were several passers before another half-hour had elapsed.
The trousers kicked out quite hilariously when a young couple drove by in a buggy. The girl was pretty, and companionship with her might have suited even a judge's garments. But the young man and the girl were quite absorbed in each other, and the trousers kicked and the frock-coat flirted ineffectually.
A peddler's cart passed very slowly, but the driver did not look up from a paper filled with figures.
There were others to whom the judge's garments offered themselves mutely, but no one glanced that way and the clock was discreetly silent. The breeze died down and the trousers and the coat hung with a sort of homeless, homesick, and wistful air. One might have thought they were trying to conceal themselves when the next person appeared, so still were they. He was not an inviting person--not such a new lord and master as a judge's garments might be expected to welcome.
He was grossly fat and his own trousers were lashed about his bulging waist with a frayed belt; his coat was sun-faded, a greasy Scotch cap was pulled over to one side on his head with the peak hauled down upon his ear, and he scuffed along in boots that were disreputable. Surely, a most unseemly and unwholesome character to be wrapped in the habiliments of a judge! But just then, with that cursed inappropriateness of inanimate things, the clock jangled its alarm.
The tramp--there was no mistaking that gait and that general air of the vagrant--snapped himself about, located the noise, stared at the post, and then hurried to it. He made sure that there was no one in sight. He scooped all into his arms, climbed the fence and trotted into the woods. He kept looking behind him as if he feared pursuit. It was plain from his disturbed demeanor that he was much perplexed and was chased by the uncomfortable thought that he was stealing this property. He bestowed so much attention behind him that he paid but little attention to what was ahead of him, and so he ran down into a little bowl of a valley among the trees and stopped short there, for he had come upon a man.