"Take it, and hustle!" followed from beyond the window, and almost mechanically Ralph Fairbanks put up his hand, the handle of the pail slipped into his fingers, and he uttered an ejaculation.
For the pail was as heavy as if loaded with gold, and bore him quite doubled down before he got his equilibrium. Then it was jerked from his grasp, and a gruff voice said:
"Hands off! What you meddling for?"
"Meddling?" retorted Ralph abruptly, and looked the speaker over with suspicion. He was a ragged, unkempt man of about forty, with a swarthy, vicious face. "I was told to take it, wasn't I?"
"Hullo! what's up? Who are you? Oh! Fairbanks."
The speaker was the person who had passed out the dinner pail, and who, apparently aroused by the colloquy outside, had clambered to a bench, and now thrust his head out of the window. He looked startled at first, then directed a quick, meaning glance at the tramp, who disappeared as if by magic. The boy overhead scowled darkly at Ralph, and then thought better of it, and tried to appear friendly.
"I give the poor beggar what's left of my dinner for carrying my pail home, so I won't be bothered with it," he said.
The speaker's face showed he did not at all believe that keen-witted Ralph Fairbanks accepted this gauzy explanation, after hefting that pail, but Ralph said nothing.
"What's up, Fairbanks?" inquired his shock-headed interlocutor at the window--"sort of inspecting things?"
Ralph, preparing to pass on, nodded silently.