The patrolman tapping on the gas-pipe arch with his idle night-stick merely knew that Batty was placid and inoffensive, that he never obstructed traffic and always carried a license-badge. He knew that in damp weather Batty limped and confessed that his leg pained him a bit, from an old hurt he 'd had in the East. And he had heard somewhere that Batty was a sort of Wandering Jew, patroling the whole length of the continent with his broken plates and his gas-pipe frame and his glue-bottles, migrating restlessly from city to city, striking out as far west as San Francisco, swinging round by Denver and New Orleans and then working his way northward again up to St. Louis and Chicago and Pittsburgh.
Remembering these things the idle young "flatty" turned and looked at the green-coated and sunken-shouldered figure, touched into some rough pity by the wordless pathos of an existence which seemed without aim or reason.
"Batty, how long 're yuh going to peddle glue, anyway?" he suddenly asked.
The glue-peddler, watching the crowds that drifted by him, did not answer. He did not even look about at his interrogator.
"D' yuh have to do this?" asked the wide-shouldered youth in uniform.
"No," was the peddler's mild yet guttural response.
The other prodded with his night-stick against the capacious overcoat pockets. Then he laughed.
"I'll bet yuh 've got about forty dollars stowed away in there," he mocked. "Yuh have now, have n't yuh?"
"I don' know!" listlessly answered the sunken-shouldered figure.
"Then what 're yuh sellin' this stuff for, if it ain't for money?" persisted the vaguely piqued youth.