"Up and down and across it for hundreds of miles, afoot, and in trains," quickly replied the old fellow, "and say, there ain't any country under the sun that appeals more to me than France did. If I was twenty years younger, hang me if I wouldn't find a way to cross over there now, and take my place in the trenches along with them bully fighters, the French frog-eaters. But I'm too old; and besides, this awful cough grips me every once in so often."
Even the mention of it set him going again, although this time the spasm was of shorter duration, Hugh noticed; just as though he had shown them what he could do along such lines, and did not want to exhaust himself further.
"But about this lady friend of yours, Lu, would you mind mentioning her name, and then we could tell you if we happen to know any such person in Scranton?" and Thad gave the other a confiding nod as if to invite further confidence.
"Let's see, it was so long back I almost forget that her name was changed after she got hitched to a man. Do you happen to know a chap who goes by the name of Andrew Hosmer?"
The boys exchanged looks.
"That must be the sick husband of Mrs. Hosmer, who sews for my mother," remarked Thad, presently. "Yes, I remember now that his first name is Andrew."
"Tell me," the tramp went on, now eagerly, "is his wife living, do you mean, younker, this Mrs. Hosmer, and is her name Matilda?"
"Just what it happens to be," Thad admitted. "So she is the lady you want to see, is she, Lu? What can poor old Mrs. Hosmer, who has seen so much trouble of late years, be to you, I'd like to know?"
The man allowed a droll look to come across his sun-burned face with its stubbly growth of gray beard. There was also a twinkle in his blue eyes as he replied to this query on the part of Thad Stevens.
"What relation, you ought to say, younker, because Matilda, she's my long-lost sister, and the one I'm a-hopin' will nurse me from now on till my time comes to shuffle off this planet and go hence!"