The man did not stir or speak.
"Ain't yer the hermit?" asked the guide.
"Yes," was the bitter reply, "I am a man without a home or a name. Some have said that there is trouble with my brain, but they are wrong. I am not deranged. This is the first time in a year that I have sought the society of human beings, unless it was to trade for such things as I need to sustain life. It was those songs that brought me here. They seemed to act like a magnet, and I could not keep away."
Then he turned to Frank, and asked him to sing one of the lullabys over again.
For all of his peculiar manner, the man seemed sane enough, and the boy decided to humor him.
Frank sang, and the man sat and listened, his face still bowed on his hands. When the song was ended, and the last echo had died out along a distant line of bluffs, the man still sat thus.
Those who saw him were impressed. Beyond a doubt, this man had suffered some great affliction that had caused him to shun his fellows and become one "without a home or a name."
All at once, with a deep sigh, he rose. He was finely built, and, properly dressed and shaved, he must have been handsome.
"Thank you," he said, addressing Frank. "I will not trouble you longer. I am going now."
"Look yar," broke in Old Rocks, in his harsh way; "I wants ter warn you ag'in comin' round yere ther way you done a short time ago. It ain't healthy none whatever."