"Do you mean that all who tramp the road know each other?"
"Well, 'ardly that, brother. To be sure, I know most o' the reg'lar padding-coves, but you don't have to know a man to help him."
"Are you acquainted with a peddler called Gabbing Dick?"
"Aye, poor soul. Dick's father was hung for a crime he didn't commit, just afore Dick was born, which drove his poor mother mad, which is apt to make a child grow up a little queer, d'ye see?"
"And old Moll?" said I, with growing diffidence.
"Aye, a fine figure of a woman she was once, I mind. But her man was pressed aboard ship and killed, and she starved along of her babby, though she did all she could to live for the child's sake and when it died, she—well, look at her now, poor soul!"
"The world would seem a very hard and cruel place!" I exclaimed.
"Sometimes, brother—'specially for the poor and friendless. But if there's shadow there's sun, and if there's darkness there's always the dawn. But what o' yourself, friend; you've been fighting I think, judging by your looks?"
"Yes, and—I ran away!" I confessed miserably.
"Humph!" said the Tinker. "That don't sound very hee-roic!"