“You might come along,” retorted the Free Traveller with an injured manner. “What's hindering? I lugs nobody. I lets folks alone.”
He was at the wood's edge by this time, where a dim green path went in, looked over his shoulder a moment, and then disappeared. We scrambled down the bank and over the bowlders, for it was not desirable to wait for Mr. Cummings, and Hagar itself would be no refuge. Hagar was a place where criticisms were made, while the green woods have never a comment on any folly, but are good comrades to all who have the temper to like them. We caught up with him by dint of running and followed silently. It grew dusky with the lateness of the afternoon, the pale green light turning dark, and we were solemn and rather low in our minds. The Free Traveller seemed to grow more vast in outline. Being short of wind he wheezed and moaned and what with his swaying as he walked, and his great humpy shoulders and all, he looked less and less like a man, and more and more like a Thing. Sometimes a tree would creak suddenly near at hand, and I fancied there were other people in the woods, whispering and all going the way we went, to see what would come to us in the end.
So it went on till we came on a little clearing, between the forest and a swamp. A black pond, tinted a bit with the sunset, lay below along the edge of the swamp; and we knew mainly where we were, for there was a highway somewhere beyond the swamp, connecting the valleys of the Wyantenaug and the Pilgrim. But none the less for the highway it seemed a lonely place, fit for congregations of ghosts. The pond was unknown to me, and it looked very still and oily. The forest seemed to crowd about and overhang the clearing. On the western side was a heap of caverned bowlders, and a fire burned in front with three persons sitting beside it.
The Free Traveller slid along the wood's edge noiselessly but without hesitation, and coming to the fire was greeted. One of those who sat there was a tall old man with very light blue eyes and prominent, his beard white and long. As we came to know, he was called the “Prophet.” He said:
“How do, Humpy?” so that we knew the Free Traveller was called Humpy, either for the shape of his shoulders or for the word he used to express himself. There was a younger man, with a retreating chin, and a necktie, but no collar, and there was a silent woman with a shawl over her head.
“These are friends o' mine,” said the Free Traveller to the older man. “Make you acquainted. That's Showman Bobby, and that's the Prophet.”
A vast chuckle of mirth started then from deep within him and surged through his throat,—such a laugh as would naturally come from a whale or some creature of a past age, whose midriff was boundless.
“Ho!” he said. “Bloke with a hay-load lit under him. Ho, Ho!”
“Gen'leman,” said the Prophet with a fluent wave of his hand. “Friends of Humpy's. That's enough. Any grub, Humpy?”
The Free Traveller brought out a round loaf and some meat done up in a newspaper. He might have carried a number of such things about him without making any great difference in his contour. The Prophet did not ask about the hay-load, or where the bread and meat came from.