“Don't stand there and try to put anything over on me,” advised the man in gray, showing resentment. “What can I do for you?”
“You might thank the man, Richard,” declared the girl, tartly. She turned to Farr.
“He seems to have forgotten 'thank you' as he forgot 'please.' May I make amends? We thank you!”
“And now I am in your debt,” said the rover. He bowed and walked on.
When the car passed him the girl turned and gave him a long look. He waved his hand. The dust-cloud closed in between them.
“Kat Kilgour! That's a tramp! I'm amazed!” said the elder woman, observing the look and the salute.
“Yes, this world is full of surprises,” agreed the girl, sweetly.
“But your own eyes told you that he was a tramp.”
“There isn't any doubt of it, is there, if you used your eyes?” demanded their escort.
“We'll consider that the eyes have it—and let the matter drop,” said the girl—and her tone was not sweet.
The man of the keen brown eyes and the faded garb fared on.
He plucked a rose from a wayside bush and carried the flower in his hand.
“Your sister just passed this way,” he informed the rose in whimsical fashion. “I don't suppose you and I will ever catch up with her. I go very slowly, but you may journey along with me.”
II
A HOME-MADE KNIGHT-ERRANT
The wayfarer who called himself Farr came down the long hill and turned the corner of the highway where the alders crowded to the banks of the narrow brook; they whispered to one another as the breeze fluttered their leaves. He drank there, bending and scooping the water in his palm. He bathed the rose and stroked its wilted petals.
“Too bad, little one!” he said. “The long road is a killing proposition, and I'm afraid I had no business inviting you to go with me. Your sister must be a long way ahead of us.”
The rocks were cool where the alders cast shade, and he sat there for a little while, watching the drift of tiny flotsam down the eddying current and observing the skipper-bugs skating over the still shallows on their spraddled legs.
There was a pleasant hush all about. The bubbling ecstasy of a bobolink floated above the grasses of a meadow, and near at hand a wren hopped about in the alders and chirped dozy notes. Peace and restfulness brooded. The man at the brook leaned low and thrust his head into the water and then rose and shook the drops from his thick thatch of brown hair. He did it with a sort of canine wriggle and smiled at the thought which came to him.
“A stray dog!” he muttered. “Of as much account—and he'd better forget the sister of the rose. Here's a good place to put imagination to sleep—here's a place where all is asleep.”
He went on around the curtain of the alders.
There was a big old-fashioned house near at hand. Its walls were weather-worn, its yard was not tidy. The faded curtains at the windows hung crookedly. The glass of the panes was dirty. The entire aspect of the place indicated that there was no woman's hand to make it home. It was commonplace and uninteresting.
But the front door was flung open suddenly with a screech of rusty hinges.
Then came backing out of the doorway a very old man—a bent and wrinkled old man with long white hair which trailed down from under a broad-brimmed hat. He was dragging a coffin, single-handed. The free end of the solemn box bumped down the wooden steps with a hollow clatter that suggested emptiness. There was a woodpile at one side of the yard. The old man tugged the casket over the litter of chips and dropped the end. He wrenched an ax from its cleft in a chopping-block and caved in the top of the coffin with the first blow.
The man Farr, observing from the road, saw that the casket was empty. The old man continued to bash and batter.
The wayfarer, before the destruction was begun, had time to note that the coffin was a remarkably fine specimen of cabinet-maker's work. There were various sorts of wood inlaid with care, and the fretwork along its sides had been jig-sawed with much pains spent in detail, and the pilasters were turned with art. But the old man battered at all this excellence with savageness. It was evident that he was not merely providing kindling-wood—he was expending fury.
It was an affair that demanded undivided attention from the observer in the road; but a man came around the corner of the house just then and Farr promptly gave over his interest in the aged chopper.
The new arrival was clothed cap-a-pie in armor.
He stood quietly at a little distance and gazed from under his vizor on the energetic old man at the woodpile.
Farr noted that the armor was obviously home-made. The helmet, though burnished and adorned with a horse's tail, had the unmistakable outlines of a copper kettle. The cuirass could not disguise its obligation to certain parts of an air-tight stove. But the ensemble was peculiarly striking and the man in the road took a quick glance around at the New England landscape in order to assure himself that he was still where he supposed he was.
Farr went to the fence and folded his arms on the top.
The old man, resting a moment, seemed to feel that intent regard from behind and, without turning his body, hooked his narrow and bony chin over his shoulder and swapped a long stare with the stranger.
“Well,” inquired the venerable chopper, “what is on thy mind, sir?” His tone was sour.
“Seeing that the question is direct and remembering that age deserves the truth, I'll say that I was thinking that this seems to be an ideal location for a private lunatic-asylum, and that guests are allowed to enjoy themselves.”
“I will have thee to understand that I have sat for thirty long years at the head of the Friends' meeting in this town and never has it been said that my wits are cracked. Furthermore, this is none of thy affair. Move on.”
Farr merely shifted his feet and took an easier pose at the fence.
“Feeling as I do, it will not trouble me much to come over there and take a chop or two at thee,” warned the old man.
“I didn't know that Quakers ever allowed their feelings to get so highly spiced.”
“Along with thee, tramp!”
“You see, my dear sir,” drawled the man in the road, “I am out in search of peace of mind. If I should go on my way without understanding what this means my itching curiosity would never allow me another good night's sleep. A word from you to soothe curiosity, and then I go!”
“Thee has seen me knocking into pieces a coffin. Is there anything strange in seeing me knock into pieces a coffin I have made with my own hands?”
“No, sir. That is quite within your rights. But why? From what little I saw of it it seemed to me to be a mighty fine piece of work.”
“It was,” stated the old man, a bit mollified. “Walnut with bird's-eye maple inlaid.”
“May I ask if it was made for anybody who died lately?”
“I made it