the 'banker man' sticking
like a bur in the hobo's talk. I wanted to keep him in sight until I
understood where he got it. No doubt that seems a slight reason for
going out to the Inlet with the creature; but you must remember that
slight things are often big signboards in our business."

He continued, his voice precise and even

"We went directly from the end of the Boardwalk to the old shed; it was
open, an unfastened door on a pair of leather hinges. The shed is small,
about twenty feet by eleven, with a hard dirt floor packed down by the
workmen who had used it; a combination of clay and sand like the Jersey
roads put in to make a floor. All round it, from the sea to the board
fence, was soft sand. There were some pieces of old junk lying about in
the shed; but nothing of value or it would have been nailed up.

"The hobo led right off with his deductions. There, was the track of a
man, clearly outlined in the soft sand, leading from the board fence to
the shed and returning, and no other track anywhere about.

"'Now, Governor,' he began, when he had taken a look at the tracks, 'the
man that made them tracks carried something into this shed, and he left
it here, and it was something heavy.'

"I was fairly certain that the hobo had salted the place for me, made
the tracks himself; but I played out a line to him.

"'How do you know that?' I said.

"'Well, Governor,' he answered, 'take a look at them two lines of
tracks. In the one comin' to the shed the man was walkin' with his feet
apart and in the one goin' back he was walkin' with his feet in front of
one another; that's because he was carryin' somethin' heavy when he come
an' nothin' when he left.'

"It was an observation on footprints," he went on, "that had never
occurred to me. The hobo saw my awakened interest, and he added:

"'Did you never notice a man carryin' a heavy load? He kind of totters,
walkin' with his feet apart to keep his balance. That makes his foot
tracks side by side like, instead of one before the other as he makes
them when he's goin' light."'

Walker interrupted his narrative with a comment:

"It's the truth. I've verified it a thousand times since that hobo put
me onto it. A line running through the center of the heel prints of a
man carrying a heavy burden will be a zigzag, while one through the heel
prints of the same man without the burden will be almost straight.

"The tramp went right on with his deductions:

"'If it com