The tramp—­there was no mistaking that gait and that general air of the vagrant—­snapped himself about, located the noise, stared at the post, and then hurried to it.  He made sure that there was no one in sight.  He scooped all into his arms, climbed the fence and trotted into the woods.  He kept looking behind him as if he feared pursuit.  It was plain from his disturbed demeanor that he was much perplexed and was chased by the uncomfortable thought that he was stealing this property.  He bestowed so much attention behind him that he paid but little attention to what was ahead of him, and so he ran down into a little bowl of a valley among the trees and stopped short there, for he had come upon a man.

It was the man who called himself Walker Farr.

The man was kneeling beside a tiny fire, toasting bread on the end of a beech twig.  He held the twig in one hand and an open book in the other.  He looked up without changing his position when the tramp came charging down the hillside.

He had wide-open, brown eyes, this man in the hollow.  The eyes were not merely wide open on account of surprise at this irruption—­one could see that they were naturally that way—­keenly observant eyes.  He had hair as brown as his eyes; his cap was on the ground beside him.

But the tramp was not taking account of the attractions of this stranger; he was more interested in searching for flaws.

He had been frightened at first sight of the man—­for the tramp had the timidity of his kind; now he began to feel cheered.  This stranger in the hollow had not been shaved recently, his clothing was unkempt, his shoes bore the marks of a long hike.  He was cooking in the open—­plain indication of the nomad.

“Well, I say, bo,” chaffed the tramp, shifting from fright to high spirit with the hysteria of weak natures.  “I’m sure glad to see one of the good old sort.  I didn’t know what I was dropping in on when I fell down that hill.  But it’s all right, hey?  I’m on the road.  My name is Boston Fat, and my monacker is a bean-pot.”

The brown eyes moved slowly from the grinning face to the garments heaped in the man’s arms.  They were cold and critical eyes and there was no humor in them.

“I do not do business during my lunch-hours, my man.  I do not desire to change tailors just yet and I do not buy stolen property.”

His chilliness did not dampen the other’s good nature.

“Oh, that’s all right, old top.  I’m no thief.  These clothes were hung on a fence-post just above here on the road.  I reckon they were only waiting for first-comer.”

He dropped the shoes, cocked the hat on his head, and began to fumble the garments.  The placard dropped out of the folds of the coat and the man at the fire craned his neck and read aloud:  “Help Yourself.”

“Oh, that’s what the paper says, hey?  I never learned to read any of the modern languages,” confided Boston Fat.  “I was too much taken up with the dead ones at Harvard.  Well, comrade, now you can see for yourself that I didn’t steal this mess of moth-food.  There was the sign right on it saying, ‘Help Yourself.’  It was there, even if I couldn’t read it.  Instinck told me them clothes was for me.  I took ’em and came in here.”