“Are you sure you can spare it?” asked the man.  “I’m sure I don’t want to—­”

“Of course we can spare it,” put in Mollie, quickly.

“Well then I will admit that I am hungry,” spoke the unknown.  “I am not exactly what I seem,” he added.

Betty glanced curiously at him.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he went on quickly.  “I am not exactly sailing under false colors except in a minor way.  Now, for instance, you took me for a tramp; did you not?” He paused and smiled.

“I—­I think we did,” faltered Mollie.

“And I don’t blame you.  I have, for the time being, assumed the habiliments of a knight of the road, for certain purposes of my own.  I am—­well, to be frank, I am trying to find something.  In order to carry out my plans I have even begged my way, and, not always successfully.  In fact—­”

“You are hungry!” exclaimed Grace, and her chums said she made a move as though to bring out some chocolates.  Grace, later, denied this.

“I am hungry,” confessed the tramp—­as he evidently preferred to appear.

Betty took out a generous portion of food.

“It is too much,” the wayfarer protested.

“Not at all,” Betty insisted.  “We have a double reason for giving it to you.  First, you are hungry.  Second, please accept it as a reward for—­”

“For not eating all of your lunch after I found it, I suppose you were going to say,” put in the man, with a smile.  “Very well, then I’ll accept,” and he bowed, not ungracefully.

He had the good taste—­or was it bashfulness—­to go over to a little grove of trees to eat his portion.  Grace wanted to take him a cup of chocolate—­which they made instead of tea—­but Betty persuaded her not to.  The girls ate their lunch, to be interrupted in the midst of it by the man who called a good-bye to them as he moved off down the road.

“He’s going,” remarked Amy.  “I wonder if he had enough?”

“I think so,” replied Betty.  “Now, girls, we must hurry.  We have been delayed, and—­”

“I’m so sorry,” put in Mollie.  “It was my fault, and—­”

“Don’t think of it, my dear!” begged Grace.  “Any of us might have forgotten the lunch, just as you did.”

As they walked past the place which the tramp had selected for his dining room, Betty saw some papers on the ground.  They appeared to be letters, and, rather idly, she picked them up.  She looked into one or two of the torn envelopes.

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Grace.  “Maybe those are private letters.  He must have forgotten them.  I wonder where he has gone?  Perhaps we can catch him—­he might need these papers.  But I wouldn’t read them, Betty.”

“They’re nothing but advertising circulars,” retorted the Little Captain.  “Nothing very private about them.  I guess he threw them all away.”

She was about to let them fall from her hand, when a bit of paper fluttered from one envelope.  Picking it up Betty was astonished to read on the torn portion the words: