Riotous laughter from all the listeners followed that declaration; a glance at the tubby tramp and survey of the tall young man whose contours fitted the garments made the fat man’s assertion seem like a huge joke.

“I can prove it!” squalled the vagrant.

“Beat it!  Get out of this city!” commanded a policeman.  “If you don’t we’ll have you on the rock-pile.  What ye mean by such guff?” He flourished his stick and the tramp hurried away.

“It’s no use,” he whined.  “Grab and bluff!  Him what can do it best always wins.  That’s the way the world goes!”

“When I took these clothes off the back of my vanishing friend I felt that they would make a change in my life,” stated Farr, with a smile which provoked more laughter.  “But I did not dream that they would bring me such prominence in so short a time.”  He bowed to the man in the car.

But Colonel Dodd was angry and insistent and did not join in the merriment.

“I say you are a labor-agitator.  Any man who won’t go to work himself has no right to be stirring up other workers against their own interests.  You may as well own up to me, my man.  These men standing around here know what you are—­you have been talking with them.  Outside of stirring trouble, you don’t work, do you?”

“Oh yes, my lord!”

There was smiling mockery in the tone, almost insolence.  He seemed to be willing to display to the rich man the same lack of respect he had displayed to the poor men who stood near and listened to this colloquy.

“Oh, you do?” Colonel Dodd raised his voice.  “Listen sharp, my men!  Do you want to be led around by the noses by a man who doesn’t work?  This gentleman is going to tell us what his job is!” He sneered when he said it.

“I am an assiduous toiler in my profession, your excellency.  I am surprised that as an employer you do not recognize a real worker when you see one.”

This tone of raillery and this stilted manner of speech promptly caught the fancy of the throng.  The men crowded more closely and the orator on the trough was silent.

“What do you work at?”

“I am an architect, your gracious highness.”

“Less of that insolence in the way of names, my friend!  An architect, eh?  Well, what did you ever build?”

“I laid out Dream Avenue in the boom city of Expectation and built on that thoroughfare a magnificent row of castles in the air.  If you had a bit more imagination I might try to sell you something in my line.  But it is useless, I see!  Farewell!”

He swept off his broad-brimmed hat with a deep bow, backed away a few steps, and bowed again and went on his way.  The crowd guffawed.  This baiting of the city’s labor magnate had most agreeably scratched their itching sense of resentment.

“I don’t know who that josher is, but I hate to lose him out of town,” confided the orator on the trough to those near him.