“How do you mean?” asked the boy.

“There’s always grub on a farm if you know the right way to go about getting it,” was the reply “and there’s very few places I ever go away from without some bread or a hunk of ham or a pie.  Lots of chickens get lost, too, an’ you find them wanderin’ about in the woods, belongin’ to nobody, an’ there’s plenty of nests that hens lay astray that the farmers never could find.  If you watch the bees closely, there’s nearly always some swarm that’s got away an’ made a nest in a dead tree.  The trouble is that most people are too busy to lie still all day an’ watch, an’ those that aren’t busy don’t know.”

“But you don’t rustle tea that way,” said Hamilton, touching the tin pannikin with his knuckle.

“‘Windy’ looks after that.”

“I am not without some small means,” explained the ‘Windy Duke,’ “but my income would not permit my living in any sufficiently attractive city in a manner suitable to my desires.  By adopting this vagrant life, however, I am able to relinquish a part of my very moderate annuity to my sister, and still retain sufficient to share up with my fellow-adventurers when times are hard or ‘Jolly’s’ persuasive tongue is not quite up to the mark.”

“But you didn’t tell me,” said Hamilton, turning to ‘Jolly Joe,’ “why you started going on the road.  You said you didn’t like work, but where had you tried it?”

“I’ll make the story short,” was the reply.  “I’m a railroad section hand, an’ was lookin’ to be made a foreman on a section near New York.  I had a pile of friends among the men just above me, and I believe I would have worked up pretty rapidly.”

“You would be president of the road by now, ‘Jolly,’” put in the ‘Duke.’

“I’d be goin’ up, anyhow,” the other replied.  “But one day an order came along from headquarters changin’ the make-up of the gangs, an’ next week I found myself the only American on an Italian gang, under an Italian foreman.  All of us were shifted around the same way.  The foreman knew a little English—­not much—­an’ he tried to give me orders in mixed English an’ Italian.  I told him I wouldn’t do anythin’ I wasn’t told to do in straight American, an’ when he started in jabberin’ and abusin’ me with every bad name he’d heard since he landed, why, I gave him a hammerin’.  So, just as ‘Hatchet Ben’ here was driven out by Slovaks, it was a gang of Italians that gave me my throw-down.  I tell you America’s all right for everybody but the American He doesn’t stand a show.”

“That sounds hard for the American working-man,” the boy said, “but there must be a lot of them working somewhere, they’re not all tramping it.”

“The back-country farmer is an American nearly every time,” ’Hatchet Ben’ replied, “the foreigners don’t get so far away from the cities and towns.  I don’t know why.”