“I wanna get something to eat,” explained Billy.

“Got any money to pay for it with?” asked the farmer quickly.

“No,” said Billy; “but me partner an’ me are hungry, an’ we gotta eat.”

The farmer extended a gnarled forefinger and pointed toward the rear of the house.  Billy looked in the direction thus indicated and espied a woodpile.  He grinned good naturedly.

Without a word he crossed to the corded wood, picked up an ax which was stuck in a chopping block, and, shedding his coat, went to work.  The farmer resumed his chores.  Half an hour later he stopped on his way in to breakfast and eyed the growing pile that lay beside Billy.

“You don’t hev to chop all the wood in the county to get a meal from Jed Watson,” he said.

“I wanna get enough for me partner, too,” explained Billy.

“Well, yew’ve chopped enough fer two meals, son,” replied the farmer, and turning toward the kitchen door, he called:  “Here, Maw, fix this boy up with suthin’ t’eat—­enough fer a couple of meals fer two on ’em.”

As Billy walked away toward his camp, his arms laden with milk, butter, eggs, a loaf of bread and some cold meat, he grinned rather contentedly.

“A year or so ago,” he mused, “I’d a stuck ’em up fer this, an’ thought I was smart.  Funny how a feller’ll change—­an’ all fer a skirt.  A skirt that belongs to somebody else now, too.  Hell! what’s the difference, anyhow?  She’d be glad if she knew, an’ it makes me feel better to act like she’d want.  That old farmer guy, now.  Who’d ever have taken him fer havin’ a heart at all?  Wen I seen him first I thought he’d like to sic the dog on me, an’ there he comes along an’ tells ‘Maw’ to pass me a hand-out like this!  Gee! it’s a funny world.  She used to say that most everybody was decent if you went at ’em right, an’ I guess she knew.  She knew most everything, anyway.  Lord, I wish she’d been born on Grand Ave., or I on Riverside Drive!”

As Billy walked up to his waiting companion, who had touched a match to the firewood as he sighted the numerous packages in the forager’s arms, he was repeating, over and over, as though the words held him in the thrall of fascination:  “There ain’t no sweet Penelope somewhere that’s longing much for me.”

Bridge eyed the packages as Billy deposited them carefully and one at a time upon the grass beside the fire.  The milk was in a clean little graniteware pail, the eggs had been placed in a paper bag, while the other articles were wrapped in pieces of newspaper.

As the opening of each revealed its contents, fresh, clean, and inviting, Bridge closed one eye and cocked the other up at Billy.

“Did he die hard?” he inquired.

“Did who die hard?” demanded the other.

“Why the dog, of course.”

“He ain’t dead as I know of,” replied Billy.

“You don’t mean to say, my friend, that they let you get away with all this without sicing the dog on you,” said Bridge.