They slowed their pace to a stealthy walk. Behind them and beside them was chilly darkness lurking in caverns among black, bare tree-trunks. Before them they could see a nebulous glow and hear the monotonous voice singing the same words over and over.
Mother shrieked. They stopped. A vast, lumbering bulk of a man plunged out from the woods, hesitated, stooped, brandished a club.
“Tut, tut! No need to be excited, mister. We’re just two old folks looking for shelter for the night,” wavered Father, with spurious coolness.
“Huh?” growled a thick, greasy voice. “Where d’yuh belong?”
“Everywhere. We’re tramping to San Francisco.”
As he said it Father stood uneasy, looking into the penetrating eye of an electric torch which the man had flashed on him. The torch blotted out the man who held it, and turned everything—the night, the woods, the storm mutters—into just that one hypnotizing ball of fire suspended in the darkness.
“Well, well,” gasped the unknown, “a moll, swelp me! Welcome to our roost, ’bo! You hit it right. This is Hoboes’ Home. There’s nine ’boes of us got a shack up ahead. Welcome, ma’am. What’s your line? Con game or just busted?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, young man,” snapped Mother.
“Well, if you two are like me, nothing but just honest workmen, you better try and make ’em think you’re working some game—tell ’em you’re the Queen of the Thimble-riggers or some dern thing like that. Come on, now. Been gathering wood; got enough. You can follow me. The bunch ain’t so very criminal—not for hoboes they ain’t.”
The large mysterious man started down the path toward the glow, and Father and Mother followed him uncomfortably.