CHAPTER XIV

THE morning sun beat fiercely down on Fred Walton and his new friend as they trudged along the dusty road. The pangs of hunger had seized them, and no way seemed open to obtain food short of begging it at one of the farmhouses which they were passing, and that Fred shrank from doing.

“If I could have stopped in Atlanta long enough to have sold my watch we could have paid our way for awhile,” he told his companion, “but I thought we ought to be on the move.”

“Yes, of course,” the younger agreed, with a slow, doubtful look into the other’s face. “Will you tell me—I give you my word you can trust me,” he went on—“if you have any reason, except for my sake, in getting away from the city?”

“Yes, I have, Dick,” Walton replied. “I may as well admit it. I am in a pretty tight place. Things are done by telegraph these days, and I don’t feel entirely safe, even here in the country.”

“Ah, I’m sorry, Fred!” the boy declared. “You have been so good to me that it doesn’t look right for anybody to be running you down like a common—”

“Thief!” Walton supplied the word in a tone of bitterness. “That’s exactly what some would call it. But you mustn’t be afraid of me, Dick. I went wrong, and lost a good home and many friends by it. I’ve lost something else, too, Dick—some one else whom I once had as my own, but who is now out of my life forever.”

“You mean—you mean—a sweetheart?” ventured the boy, as he put out a sympathetic hand and touched the arm of his companion.

Walton nodded. He had averted his eyes, that his companion might not see the tears which blurred his sight, but no word escaped his lips.

“I’m sorry,” Dick Warren said, simply, and his hand tenderly clung to the dust-coated sleeve—“I’m sorry, Fred.”

“I wish you knew her, Dick,” Walton went on, reminiscently. “If you did, I reckon you’d pity your pal. Here I am, a tramp, an outcast in dirty clothing, and no money in my pocket. If you’d ever seen her, you’d never dream that such a girl could have actually cared for a man like me. I’ve got her photograph in my pocket. It is in an envelope. I have not looked at it once since I left her. I may never again on earth.”

“But why?” the boy asked, wonderingly. “It seems like it would be company for you, now that you and she are—parted.”

“She gave it to me in trust and confidence,” Walton answered, his dull gaze still averted. “She wouldn’t want me to have it now. I shall keep it—I simply can’t give it up; but I shall not insult her purity by looking at it. I must harden myself, and forget—forget thousands of things. You may see it if you wish.” Walton drew the envelope from his pocket and extended it to his companion. “I’ll walk ahead, and when you’ve looked at it put it back in the envelope.”

“All right; thank you, Fred.” The boy fell back a few steps, and with his eyes straight in front of him Walton trudged on stolidly. The boy gazed at the picture steadily for several minutes, and then caught up with his companion and returned the envelope. He was silent for a moment then he said, with a slight huskiness in his young voice:

“Would you like for me to say anything about her, Fred?”

“Yes, I think I should,” Walton responded, slowly, as he thrust the envelope back into his pocket. “Yes, Dick, I’d like to hear what you think of her.”

“She is so sweet and gentle looking—so good—so very, very pretty! Oh, Fred, I understand now how you feel! I don’t think I ever saw a face that I liked better. It may be because she is your—”

“Was!” Walton broke in. “Don’t forget that, Dick.”

“I think a girl like that, with a face like that, would forgive almost anything in the man she loved,” the boy went on, in a valiant effort at consolation.

“If she still loved him, perhaps; but she could no longer love him,” Walton sighed. “She belongs to a proud family, Dick, not one member of which was ever guilty of such conduct as mine. She would shudder at the sight of me, she would blush with shame for having cared for me. That’s why I came away. If I had not loved her, I’d have stayed and faced my punishment.” After this talk the two trudged on through the garish sunshine without exchanging a word for several miles. It was noon. They had come to the gate of a farmhouse which bore the look of prosperity, and they paused in the shade of a tree.

“We can’t go farther without eating,” the boy said. “You don’t like to beg, but I don’t care; I’ve done it hundreds of times, and don’t feel ashamed of it. I’m going to put on a bold front and tackle the kitchen in the rear.”

“Don’t ask for anything for me,” Walton said. “I’m not very hungry. I can get along for some time yet.”

“Wait till I find out how it smells around that kitchen,”

Dick laughed. “I’m nearly dead.” The boy had opened the gate, and was walking briskly toward the house, which stood back about a hundred yards from the road. Walton saw him meet a great lazy-looking dog near the steps and pat the animal on the head. Then the dog and boy went round the building toward the kitchen. A moment later Walton saw Dick returning, a flush on his face and empty handed. The dog paused near the front steps, wagging a cordial if not, indeed, a regretful tail.

“The dirty red-faced scamp ordered me to move on!” Dick cried, angrily. “He says the country is overrun with tramps, who won’t work and who expect to live on the toil of honest men.”

“Did he say that?” and Walton’s eyes flashed. “I’d like to prove to him that I’m no—But what’s the use?”

“Look, he’s coming!” the boy said, eagerly. “Maybe he’s changed his mind. A woman was listening to what he said. Perhaps she’s told him to call us back.” The fat, middle-aged farmer, bald, perspiring, and without hat or coat, strode down to them, and languidly opened the gate.

“Say, I just want to tell you fellows one more thing,” he panted, as he wiped his bearded chin with his pudgy hand, “and that is this: We may look like a lot of galoots just out of an asylum along this here road, but most of us have a grain of sense. Back here a piece a neighbor of mine sent two able-bodied men like you two about their business a month ago, and that night his barn was fired. Now, if you fellows try any game of that sort on me, I’ll—”

“Dry up!” Walton cried, as he suddenly faced him. “I wasn’t begging of you. I only let this boy go up to you because he is nearly starved. You can’t insult me—I won’t have it! I am not a tramp. As proof of it, I have a good solid gold watch here that I am willing to sell you or any one else at any fair price you may put on it.”

“Huh! let me see it.” The farmer’s eyes gleamed avariciously as Walton took the watch from his pocket and extended it to him.

The man tested the weight of the timepiece by tossing it lightly in his palm, and then he pried the case open with the stiff nail of his thumb, and, with a critical eye, examined the works.

“Full-jewelled and good make,” he said; and then he gave it back. “I’m a trader,” he went on. “I make money buying and selling any old thing from a pickaxe to a piano, from a pet cat to a blooded horse; but I hain’t in your market.”

“You say you ‘hain’t’?” Dick Warren mocked him, in fresh anger.

“No, I hain’t,” the obtuse farmer repeated. “I did a fool thing like that when I was a boy. I bought a bay mare from a man who rid up to my daddy’s barn without a saddle, blanket, or bridle—had just a heavy hemp rope round her neck. I bit, and chuckled all that day as I rid about, showing the gals how bright I’d been. Then the sheriff of the county hove in sight, and—well, my daddy had to pay out a hundred-dollar lawyer’s fee to prove that I wasn’t of age, never had had any sense, and couldn’t have knowed the mare was stolen property. So, you see, when a fellow comes hiking along here without a nickel to buy a loaf of bread, and lookin’ like he’s been wading through swamps and sleeping in haystacks, and has a gold ticker that is good enough fer the vest-pocket of Jay Gould, why, I feel like pullin’ down the left-hand corner of my right eye an’ axin’ him ef he hain’t got a striped suit under his outside one, hot as the weather is.”

“You blamed old—” Dick Warren began, threateningly, as he bristled up to the farmer, his fists drawn; but Walton put out his hand and stopped him.

“He’s right, Dick,” he said, and there was a pained look about his sensitive mouth. “The circumstances are dead against us.”

“Yes, I reckon they are, gents,” grinned the man at the gate. “Anyways, I don’t think you will find a buyer fer that timepiece. Good-day. There ain’t nothing in all this palaver fer me,” and his eye twinkled as he finished. “My wife’s got dinner waitin’ for me: a good fat hen, baked to a turn, with rich corn-meal stuffin’, an’ hot biscuits, coffee, string-beans, and fried ham—the country-cured sort that you’ve read about!”