Dick drew a long breath. It suddenly dawned on him that perhaps the other had been working matters to suit some hidden purpose of his own. Still, Dick stuck to his guns; he had never known his gentle mother to turn a poor tramp away from her door if she really believed him to be hungry, and ready to do some slight service in return for being fed.
“All right!” Dick declared, on the spur of the moment. “You just come along with me, and I guess my mother will be able to give you a sandwich anyhow. I hope you can walk, though at that it’s only a little way off.”
“I’ve been pretty sick lately,” said the other, shaking his head. “Fact is one time I thought I was going to cash my checks in, and it spurred me to doing something I’d long been figuring on. Thank you, my boy, for your kindness to a total stranger. The bread cast upon the waters may return again before many days.”
Now Leslie, being of a more suspicious nature than his chum, Dick, might have suspected that the stranger was simply taking advantage of the boy’s good nature to impose on him. Dick, as he walked along, the other hobbling painfully at his side, even offered to relieve the tramp of his shabby little bundle.
“You see, I can lay it on the saddle of my wheel, and alongside the basket of eggs I’ve been getting at a farm house,” he explained; and the man looked keenly at him, though Dick did not suspect this fact, wagging his beard as though somehow this thoughtful consideration for his age and infirmities touched his heart.
They soon came to the little Horner home. It was a neat cottage close to the bank of the Sweetbriar River. Indeed, when the wind set from upstream one could plainly hear the murmur of the fretful waters at the place where they formed the rough rapids that gave the several mills their water power.
Grandpop Horner was sitting in the light of the dying sun, because the day had been quite mild for the late season, and he loved the sunshine very much. As Dick and the trampish looking old fellow came through the gate, Mrs. Horner issued from the doorway of the cottage to urge upon the old veteran the necessity for coming in before the chill of approaching evening affected his rheumatic limb.
Dick saw the look of wonder on both their faces as he led his strange companion up the walk to the front porch.
“Mother,” he started to explain, now half afraid that possibly he had done the wrong thing in bringing a total stranger home with him, and at that one who rather looked as though he might be sick and penniless, “this is a poor man I met on the road. He is hungry, and has been sick. I told him I believed you would not refuse him a bite to eat; and that perhaps he could sleep in the hay in our little barn.”
The mother looked a little worried. Then she smiled as though on second thought she could not find it in her heart to refuse to help any one in distress, even though food was never too plentiful at the Horner home.