“How little he thought you were watching him!”
“Yes, he hadn’t a suspicion of me. I had to pass him, he was going so slowly. I felt him look me all over.”
“And did he recognize you?” she inquired, breathlessly.
“Not a bit of it. My flesh stopped crawling. I was a relieved man. You see, my appearance was so different from that of the dirty tramp he had met, and then he would never expect to find me wearing good clothes and walking on a swell avenue, and finally he would never expect to meet me at all—would never think of me.”
“But, Barry,” said Mrs. Everest, wonderingly, “suppose he had recognized you. What harm could he do?”
“No harm, but he could make it mighty uncomfortable for me. If he had found out I was trying to reform a word from him would have sent every New England tramp this way to quarter themselves on me, and if I refused to harbor them to make up ugly stories about me. Lies are the breath of life to trampdom.”
“Well, what happened? This is very interesting!” she exclaimed, with her eyes shining. “Please hurry on, Barry.”
“My! but you have a good heart,” the man said, admiringly. “I am old enough to be your father, but I always feel as if you were my mother.”
“Go on, go on,” she reiterated, in girlish impatience; “don’t stop to analyze your feelings. You can do that some other time. What else did Smalley do?”
“He didn’t do anything more just then, and you will think that up to this time he had done very little to justify my suspicion of him. However, I returned to the Judge’s after dark. Roblee had gone to bed, but Brick, like all niggers, likes to sit up late. Presently we heard a knocking below. I told Brick to open the window and put his head out. He said, ‘Who’s dere?’ and you know whose voice replied.”