“I am going thy road,” he informed Farr, “because all ways are alike to me.  I would be pleased to talk with one who has journeyed.  Thee may have good counsel for me.  May I walk with thee?”

The wayfarer opened his mouth and closed it suddenly on a half-spoken and indignant refusal of this honor.  He pursed his lips and his thick brows drew together in a frown.  Then, as if in spite of himself, he began to smile.

“I will be no burden to thee,” pleaded the home-made knight.  “I have had my armor for a long time and have practised walking in it.”

“But why the tin suit?” expostulated Farr.

“I will explain as we walk.”

“Well, come along!” blurted the wayfarer.  “Nothing more can happen to me, anyway.”

“So thee has found one of thy own kind to follow about in the world?” inquired the father, tauntingly.  “Feathers on the head and rattles in the hand!  Cockahoops and fiddle-de-lorums!  Thee’ll be back soon with thy folly cured after I have bailed thee from the calaboose!  Then thee’ll stick to thy forge and be sensible!”

Farr noted a small shop by the roadside as they started off.

“My father is a good man, but practical—­wholly practical,” said his new comrade of the ways.  “From my good mother I derive imagination.  My life has not been happy here.  But work has helped.”

He pointed to the shop.  Over the main door a faded, weather-worn sign advertised “Eastup Chick & Son, Blacksmiths.”  On the gable was a newer sign heralding “Jared Chick & Father, Inventors.”

“I am Jared Chick, my friend.”

He talked slowly, pausing to pick words, phrasing with the carefulness of the man of method, talking as those persons talk who have read many books and use their tongue but seldom.  Farr found much quaintness in the solemn man’s discourse.

“My father put my name on the sign when I was young, and it pleased me.  I put his name on the other sign when he was old and it did not please him, though I have insisted that he must share in all credit which comes to me.  But my father does not possess imagination.  I am sorry he lost his temper to-day and broke up his coffin.  Not that I approved of having it in the house all these years, but he was very proud of it.  He made it soon after my mother died.  I think, now that he has destroyed it, he will live many years longer.  He is very strong-minded.”

“I’m glad to have my suspicions confirmed,” said Farr.

“He was extremely angry when his eldest brother died at eighty.  He stood over him in the last moments and made us all very uncomfortable by telling Uncle Joachim that there was no need of his dying—­that if he would only show a little Chick spunk he could stay alive just as well as not and would not go fushing out just when he was most needed in the Friends’ meeting.”

“Considering that the old fellow was eighty and probably felt like quitting, seems as if your father was rubbing it in just a little.”