barns and sheds are but heaps of boards, and the crooked, rusty
switch seems but a fork of lightning which has so wrecked and blackened
the whole Craney homestead that Tim's rags are an ornament to it. And
yet Mr. Craney snaps his fingers and dances a jig. "Now ruin and
mortgage may swallow you as it has me," he says with ridicule, and
knocks some splinters from the house to build a fire in the yard between
four bricks which he knocks from the chimney.

He brings the coffeepot from the kitchen and then kicks it away that he
may boil the coffee in an old can as a courtesy to the young hobo; and
sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs he sets out from his bundle.

"Never can we become acquainted," resumes Mr. Craney; "because how could
I ask her to be mine and all the time about to be swallowed up," he
says, "by the Barlow Suburban, which has already swallowed my father who
built it, and his estate and my own earnings for five years?" And now he
makes plain that he is seizing the opportunity to travel away in search
of fortune, having found a manager in rags who can afford to live on the
dividends of the Suburban.

"We are not engaged; far from it," he says; "yet never would I desert
her to walk such ties as the Barlow Suburban, more cruel than the ties
which bind us together." So he makes out a time card. "In the morning
she goes to work, and back at evening; and some day she may be minded to
ride at noon for the sake of the exercise which is to be had on the B.
S. car." He gives Tim this time card and the key to the box which the
nickels are dropped in. "Good-by; I can trust you." He points up to the
sky. "Do not leave her walk; you solemnly promise! Good-by!"

And having turned his coat wrong side out he twists a red handkerchief
round his neck and is gone. And as he becomes smaller with distance
Timothy feels his own body swell larger with importance; having tried
the key in the fare box he leaves the nickel there as a come-on, and
kicks the horse to his feet as he has seen the truckmen do in the city
slums.

After a bit the lime burners arrive from the kiln half a mile away, and
Tim drives them to Barlow. All the way he thinks of the smoky yards with
the groan of toil rising from them, where all have dwelt so long, afraid
of Regan.

"Myself will rise up to be big boss," he says.

Well the gossoon understands, with the scar on his temple and body
still marked from the drunkard's blows that no one can rule except by
f