He shook out the garments one by one and hung them on a bush, chattering his comments.  He set the ticking clock on a stump.

The man at the fire slipped a piece of meat between two slabs of toasted bread and began to eat.  He still held the open book in his hand but his eyes were watching the tramp.

The vagrant was orally appraising his find, exhibiting the wisdom of one who has begged garments at back doors for the purposes of peddling them to second-hand shops.

“A moucher,” observed the man at the fire.  He continued aloud, evidently and sardonically exercising his vocabulary, plainly enjoying the amazement he provoked by his style of language.  “The spirit of a stray cat at midnight, the tastes of the prowling hyena!  The fat thief I saw running away into the woods!  When such as these began to take to the road, knight-errantry vanished from the face of the earth.  The varlets borrowed the grand idea of care-free itinerancy and debased it, as waiters borrow a gentleman’s evening dress for their menial uniform, and drunken coachmen wear the same head-gear that a duke wears to a wedding!  Why prove evolution by searching for a man with a tail?  The performances of human nature must convince any thinking man that we have descended from apes!”

The astonished tramp stared for a short time at this person who employed such peculiar language—­then mumbled an oath and shook his head.

He began to try on the frock-coat, paying scant attention to the other’s monologue.  The coat was a ludicrous misfit; it would not meet over the bulging belly; its tails dragged on the fat man’s heels.

“If I happened to stand handy by when a Kansas cyclone ripped the insides out of a clothing-store only the boys’ sizes would drop in the same county with me,” grumbled the tramp, working his arms out of the sleeves.

“The coat was plainly built for a gentleman,” stated the man at the fire.  “Therefore it is of no value to you.”

Boston Fat surveyed the stranger with a vicious glint in his little eyes, as a pig might stare at a man who had struck it across the snout.

“Good afternoon, perfesser,” he sneered.

“Why ‘professor,’ my frayed and frowsled Falstaff?”

“There you go with it—­showing yourself up out of your own mouth!  Words a yard long—­words that would break a decent man’s teeth!  You’re one of these college dudes out on the road getting stuff to write into a book.  I’ve heard about your kind.  And that kind is getting too thick and plenty and you’re putting slush all over the real profesh.  Quit it and go back to college.  Don’t use me for your book.”

This was reciprocation of derogatory sentiment with a vengeance!

The man at the fire sat back on his haunches.  He finished chewing his mouthful, regarding the tramp with a languid stare that traveled from crown of his head to tip of his battered shoe.

“The only thing about a book that you would be good for,” he said, “would be for use in a volume of this sort.”  He tapped the book in his palm.  “Your anatomy could supply the binding.  It is bound in pigskin.”