"Deary, deary me!" exclaimed the sisters in concert. "How dreadful."
"You are right, ladies, and I've been tramping ever since."
"How far away is your home?"
"Only a hundred miles, or so."
"You have a family, have you?"
"A wife and four babies—if they only knowed what their poor father had passed through—excuse these tears, mum."
The tramp just then gave a sniff and drew his sleeve across his forehead, but Fred Sheldon, who was watching him closely, did not detect anything like a tear.
But he noted something else, which had escaped the eyes of the kind-hearted ladies.
The movement of the arm before the face seemed to displace the luxuriant yellow beard. Instead of sitting on the countenance as it did at first, even in its ugliness, it was slewed to one side.
Only for a moment, however, for by a quick flirt of the hand, as though he were scratching his chin, he replaced it.