This time I did not freight it. I paid my fare to New York.
My father ... I must pay him a visit, before lifting my nose in the air like a migrating bird. Where I would go or what I would do that spring and summer, I hadn't the vaguest idea....
It seemed but the day before that I had left Haberford. The fat policeman who leaned against the iron railing of the small park near the station was there in the same place. The same young rowdies pushed each other about, and spat, and swore, near the undertaker shop and the telegraph office.
But as I walked past the Hartman express office—the private concern which Hartman, the thin, wiry shock-haired Swede, had built up through arduous struggle, beginning with one wagon—
Hartman saw me through the window, and beckoned vigorously for me to step in....
"—just got home from another hobo-trip, Johnny?"
"You're almost right, Mr. Hartman."
"A pause....