much as you would have hated me. I don't know that I should
have said hate, for that is not exactly the word. It was more contempt
that I felt for men whom I considered as not belonging upon that
intellectual or social plane to which I considered I had been born.

"I thought of people who moved outside my limited sphere as 'the great
unwashed.' I pitied them, and I honestly believe now that in the bottom
of my heart I considered them of different clay than I, and with souls,
if they possessed such things, about on a par with the souls of sheep
and cows.

"I couldn't have seen the man in you, Billy, then, any more than you
could have seen the man in me. I have learned much since then, though
I still stick to a part of my original articles of faith--I do believe
that all men are not equal; and I know that there are a great many more
with whom I would not pal than there are those with whom I would.

"Because one man speaks better English than another, or has read
more and remembers it, only makes him a better man in that particular
respect. I think none the less of you because you can't quote Browning
or Shakespeare--the thing that counts is that you can appreciate, as I
do, Service and Kipling and Knibbs.

"Now maybe we are both wrong--maybe Knibbs and Kipling and Service
didn't write poetry, and some people will say as much; but whatever it
is it gets you and me in the same way, and so in this respect we are
equals. Which being the case let's see if we can't rustle some grub, and
then find a nice soft spot whereon to pound our respective ears."

Billy, deciding that he was too sleepy to work for food, invested half
of the capital that was to have furnished the swell feed the night
before in what two bits would purchase from a generous housewife on a
near-by farm, and then, stretching themselves beneath the shade of
a tree sufficiently far from the road that they might not attract
unnecessary observation, they slept until after noon.

But their precaution failed to serve their purpose entirely. A
little before noon two filthy, bearded knights of the road clambered
laboriously over the fence and headed directly for the very tree under
which Billy and Bridge lay sleeping. In the minds of the two was the
same thought that had induced Billy Byrne and the poetic Bridge to seek
this same secluded spot.

There was in the stiff shuffle of the men something rather familiar.
We have seen them before--just for a few minutes i