an understand something of the fascination of the life."

"I can't see any fascination about being a tramp," Prescott replied
judicially. "First of all, he becomes a vagabond, who prefers
idleness to work. Then, too, he becomes dirty, and I can't see
any charm in a life that is divorced from baths. From mere idleness
the tramp soon finds that petty thieving is an easy way to get
along. If I were going to be a thief at all, I'd want to be an
efficient one. No stealing of wash from a clothes-line, or of
pies from a housekeeper's pantry, when there are millions to be
stolen in the business world."

"Now, you're laughing at me," uttered Dave.

"No; I'm not."

"But you wouldn't steal money if you had millions right under
your hand where you could get away with the stuff," protested
Darry.

"I wouldn't," Dick agreed promptly. "I wouldn't steal anything.
Yet it's no worse, morally, to steal a million dollars from a
great bank than it is to steal a suit of clothes from a house
whose occupants are absent. All theft is theft. There are no
degrees of theft. The small boy who would steal a nickel or a
dime from his mother would steal a million dollars from a stranger
if he had the chance and the nerve to commit the crime. All tramps,
sooner or later, become petty thieves. Thieving goes with the
life of idleness and vagabondage."

"I don't know about that," argued Dave. "A lot of men become
tramps just through hard luck. I don't believe all of them steal,
even small stuff."

"I believe they do, if they remain tramps," Dick insisted. "No
man is safe who will deliberately go through life without earning
his way. The man who starts with becoming idle ends with becoming
vicious. This doesn't apply to tramps alone. Any day's newspaper
will furnish you with stories of the vicious doings of the idle
sons of rich men. Unless a man has an object in life, and works
directly toward it all the time, he is in danger."

"I'd hate to believe that every ragged tramp I meet is a criminal,"
Dave muttered.

"He is, if he remains a tramp long enough," Dick declared with
emphasis. "Take the tramps we met this morning. Look at all
the trouble they were taking to rob us of food for a meal or two."

"There may have been an element of mischief in what they did,"
Dave hinted. "They may have done it just as a lark."

"They were thieves by instinct," Dick insisted. "They would have
stolen anything that they could get away