“‘Now, Governor, you’d say why ain’t they already done it; an’ I’d answer, the main guy—­this banker man—­didn’t know the automobile had got here until he sent me to look, and there ain’t been no ship along since then....  I’ve been special careful to find that out.’  And then the creature began to whine.  ’Have a heart, Governor, come along with me.  Gimme a show!’

“It was not the creature’s plea that moved me, nor his pretended deductions; I’m a bit old to be soft.  It was the ‘banker man’ sticking like a bur in the hobo’s talk.  I wanted to keep him in right until I understood where he got it.  No doubt that seems a slight reason for going out to the Inlet with the creature; but you must remember that slight things are often big signboards in our business.”

He continued, his voice precise and even:  “We went directly from the end of the Boardwalk to the old shed; it was open, an unfastened door on a pair of leather hinges.  The shed is small, about twenty feet by eleven, with a hard dirt floor packed down by the workmen who had used it, a combination of clay and sand like the Jersey roads put in to make a floor.  All round it, from the sea to the board fence was soft sand.  There were some pieces of old junk lying about in the shed; but nothing of value or it would have been nailed up.

“The hobo led right off with his deductions.  There was the track of a man, clearly outlined in the soft sand, leading from the board fence to the shed and returning, and no other track anywhere about.

“‘Now, Governor,’ he began, when he had taken a look at the tracks, ’the man that made them tracks carried something into this shed, and he left it here, and it was something heavy.’

“I was fairly certain that the hobo had salted the place for me, made the tracks himself; but I played out a line to him.

“‘How do you know that?’ I said.

“‘Well, Governor,’ he answered, ’take a look at them two line of tracks.  In the one comin’ to the shed the man was walkin’ with his feet apart and in the one goin’ back he was walkin’ with his feet in front of one another; that’s because he was carryin’ somethin’ heavy when he come an’ nothin’ when he left.’

“It was an observation on footprints,” he went on, “that had never occurred to me.  The hobo saw my awakened interest, and he added: 

“’Did you never notice a man carryin a heavy load?  He kind of totters, walkin’ with his feet apart to keep his balance.  That makes his foot tracks side by side like, instead of one before the other as he makes them when he’s goin’ light.’”

Walker interrupted his narrative with a comment:  “It’s the truth I’ve verified it a thousand times since that hobo put me onto it.  A line running through the center of the heel prints of a man carrying a heavy burden will be a zigzag, while one through the heel prints of the same man without the burden will be almost straight.

“The tramp went right on with his deductions: