“I think I am all right now,” soliloquized the runaway, slackening his pace to a walk and unbuttoning his heavy muffler, which felt too warm about his neck. “I tell you I am glad to see the last of that tramp, for I didn’t at all like the looks of him. I believe he’d just as soon——”
The runaway’s heart seemed to stop beating. He faced quickly about, and there was the tramp whom he hoped he had seen for the last time, close behind him. He had easily kept pace with the boy, stepping so exactly in time with him that the sound of his feet upon the frosty snow had not betrayed his presence. He held some object in his hand which he flourished over his head, and Huggins, believing it to be a pistol, stood trembling in his tracks and waited for him to come up. The object was not a pistol, but it was a murderous looking knife, which made the boy shudder all over as he looked at it.
“I’ve concluded to make you pay for going back on me so fair and square while you were talking to the agent,” were the tramp’s next words. “Put your hands above your head while I go through your pockets and see what you’ve got in ’em.”
“Do you want my money?” asked Huggins, who could hardly make himself understood, so frightened was he. “If you do I will give it to you, but don’t hurt me.”
He carried his money in two places. The greater portion of it was in Lester Brigham’s pocket-book; and in one of his vest pockets he had the small amount of change the conductor gave him when he paid his fare. As it was all in small bills and made a roll of respectable size, he hoped he could satisfy the robber by handing it over, but he was doomed to be disappointed. When he made a move as if he were about to unbutton his overcoat, the man raised his knife threateningly.
“None o’ that!” said he, in savage tones. “You can’t draw a barker on me while I am within reach of you, and it will be worse for you if you try it. Put your hands above your head, and be quick about it.”
Huggins was afraid to refuse or to utter a word of remonstrance. He raised his hands in the air, and the robber, after dropping the knife into his coat-pocket, so that it could be readily seized if circumstances should seem to require it, proceeded to “go through” him in the most business-like way. He turned all the boy’s pockets inside out, and when he had completed his investigations, Huggins’s money was all gone and he stood shivering in the tramp’s hat and thread-bare coat, while the tramp himself looked like another person. He had appropriated the runaway’s cap, coats, muffler and gloves, and would have taken his boots and Arctics too, if they had been big enough for him.
“Now, then,” said he, as he buttoned the muffler about his neck and drew on the gloves, “I believe I am done with you, and you can dig out.”
“But where can I go?” cried Huggins. “I have no money to pay for a night’s lodging, and I am almost a thousand miles from home.”