“A lot of folks have felt that way,” smiled Dick.  “The idea is all right, too, only the work of the civilized world couldn’t be carried on by a lot of tramps without homes or places of business.”

“I’ve heard, or read,” Darry went on, “that a tramp, after one season on the road, is rarely ever reclaimed to useful work.  I think I can understand something of the fascination of the life.”

“I can’t see any fascination about being a tramp,” Prescott replied judicially.  “First of all, he becomes a vagabond, who prefers idleness to work.  Then, too, he becomes dirty, and I can’t see any charm in a life that is divorced from baths.  From mere idleness the tramp soon finds that petty thieving is an easy way to get along.  If I were going to be a thief at all, I’d want to be an efficient one.  No stealing of wash from a clothes-line, or of pies from a housekeeper’s pantry, when there are millions to be stolen in the business world.”

“Now, you’re laughing at me,” uttered Dave.

“No; I’m not.”

“But you wouldn’t steal money if you had millions right under your hand where you could get away with the stuff,” protested Darry.

“I wouldn’t,” Dick agreed promptly.  “I wouldn’t steal anything.  Yet it’s no worse, morally, to steal a million dollars from a great bank than it is to steal a suit of clothes from a house whose occupants are absent.  All theft is theft.  There are no degrees of theft.  The small boy who would steal a nickel or a dime from his mother would steal a million dollars from a stranger if he had the chance and the nerve to commit the crime.  All tramps, sooner or later, become petty thieves.  Thieving goes with the life of idleness and vagabondage.”

“I don’t know about that,” argued Dave.  “A lot of men become tramps just through hard luck.  I don’t believe all of them steal, even small stuff.”

“I believe they do, if they remain tramps,” Dick insisted.  “No man is safe who will deliberately go through life without earning his way.  The man who starts with becoming idle ends with becoming vicious.  This doesn’t apply to tramps alone.  Any day’s newspaper will furnish you with stories of the vicious doings of the idle sons of rich men.  Unless a man has an object in life, and works directly toward it all the time, he is in danger.”

“I’d hate to believe that every ragged tramp I meet is a criminal,” Dave muttered.

“He is, if he remains a tramp long enough,” Dick declared with emphasis.  “Take the tramps we met this morning.  Look at all the trouble they were taking to rob us of food for a meal or two.”

“There may have been an element of mischief in what they did,” Dave hinted.  “They may have done it just as a lark.”

“They were thieves by instinct,” Dick insisted.  “They would have stolen anything that they could get away with safely.  Hello!  There’s a light over there in the woods.”