hing is to be
gained here by argument or threats; "since you were fool enough to bind
yourself with a promise, hold your tongue till I can find Craney."

"'T will hold," promises Tim.

Down past the terminal and out the Suburban track, bedraggled and
undaunted, stalks the vagabond along the way of knowledge. Nor does he
look up till coming on faithful old Charley, who has found his way back
to the car and stands waiting to be hitched. Tim halts, surveying him
knowingly.

"Faith, Charley, she was a wise one," he says.

From that hour he takes up the plod of duty, keening in that little
minor whistle which all car drivers pick up from the wind and drumming
of hoofbeats on frozen ground. And he is always on time in every
weather, so that presently the lime burners relent and joke him, and
Katy in pity for the outcast would pat his cheek friendlily--but never
an encouragement do they receive from Tim standing at his brake and
speaking sternly to Charley, meager and windbitten but unconquerable by
humor or kindness as he has been by threat and danger.

All day a bright rage chars the bony breast; at evening it smolders as
if having no more fuel in the wasted body. Yet Tim sits cross-legged
with old sacks folded round him, staring unwaveringly into the
loneliness. And from his boyhood's ashes he resurrects with terrific
will and fearlessness the great things which had been born within him;
in fact he craves and will have no company but them, torment him as they
will. He reflects with derision that the lime burners and Katy do not
understand what goes on within him. But Regan would understand! How the
great things in that man would have raged if he had bound them tight and
fast with a promise. Regan was not such a fool.

"Never again do I promise the duty," says Tim.

The wise old woman had warned him that what a person promises that must
he do, but like a fool he had not profited by the warning.

Even in his ignorance the vagabond understands much of Molly. In his
first musings on these subjects the night of Dan's coming to bargain
with him for the wreck of the car he had foolishly torn up the page she
had written over.

He had torn up that fragment of message because the memory of the cozy
room and hearth fire had tempted his thoughts away from these hardships
and loneliness; he resented Molly's smile and welcome as an attempt to
lure him from the way of ambition, much as the pity of Katy and
good-humor of the lim