e husky. Two dollars a day, even
if you're not a regular mason."

"No."

He drawled both the affirmative and the negative and there was something
subtly insolent in his tone--something that aroused more ire than a
cruder retort would have accomplished. He turned his back on the cursing
man and went on down to the bridge. He waited there for a time and
watched the drift of foam on the fretted waters. The steady burbling of
the stream made him oblivious to other sounds and he did not hear the
two men approach. They leaped on him and seized him. One of his captors
was the paunchy man, and his hands were heavy and his fingers gripped
viciously.

"No wonder you wouldn't work! You're making your living in an easier
way."

"What is the occasion of this effusive welcome to your city?" asked
Farr.

The man who held one of the captive's arms was panting. He had run at
top speed from the house to which he and his mates had borne the injured
man.

"You thief! You sneak! Eat a man's grub, his hard-earned grub, and steal
when his wife's back is turned!"

"Of all dirty work this job is the worst," declared the big man.

"She gave you all you could stuff into yourself, you loafer. You
ransacked when her back was turned. You even stole her husband's Sunday
suit. Where is it?"

"I saw a fat tramp running away into the woods," returned Farr, quietly.
"He was carrying articles in his arms."

"You're the only tramp in sight around here," insisted the contractor.
"Where did you hide the plunder?"

"She said she fed a tramp. She left him at the back door. You're the
sneak," indorsed the panting emissary.

"If you will take me back to the house you may get some new light on the
affair," suggested their captive. "You need not drag me there. I'll go
with much pleasure."

The mistress of the despoiled home, red of eyes, hurrying from her sink
with a cold compress in her trembling hands, viewed Farr from her back
door.

"That isn't the man. I never saw him before. Oh, he is in awful pain.
Why doesn't that doctor get here? But there doesn't seem to be anything
broken. He took my pocketbook, too, with two dollars and twenty-seven
cents in it. And it's every cent of money we've got by us. And it may be
weeks before he can go to work again. Troubles don't come singly. That
mis'able, fat, greasy thief! After I had fed him--even gave him pie!"

"As I told you, gentlemen, it was a fat tramp. I saw him run away into
the woods."

"I