"Where are your parents now?"
"Mother got divorced from father, and married again down South, somewhere. Father left home twenty years ago. He's somewhere in California—if he ain't dead."
"He isn't dead."
"How do you know?"
"Because I am Henry Guest, of Dentville, and"—he stopped, and, shading his eyes with his hand as he deliberately examined the tramp, added coldly—"your father, I reckon."
There was a slight pause. The young man put down the boot he had taken up. "Then I'm to stay here?"
"Certainly not. Here my name is only West, and I have no son. You'll go on to San Jose, and stay there until I look into this thing. You haven't got any money, of course?" he asked, with a scarcely suppressed sneer.
"I've got a little," returned the young man.
"How much?"
The tramp put his hand into his breast, and drew out a piece of folded paper containing a single gold coin.