was not yet done. The sun still moved north; warm, north-blowing winds
blew the last of the lowering, wintry clouds back to the Arctic Seas
whence they had come. And because the road work the convicts were doing
brought them, this afternoon, in sight of the railroad right-of-way, Ben
now and then caught sight of other wayfarers moving slowly, but no less
steadily, toward the north. The open road beckoned northward, these
full, balmy, late-April days, and various tattered men, mostly vagabonds
and tramps, passed the gang from time to time on this same, northern
quest.

Ben thought about them as birds of passage, and the thought amused him.
And at the sight of a small, stooped figure advancing toward him up the
railroad right-of-way he paused, leaning on his pick.

Because Ben had paused, for the first time in an hour, his two guards
looked up to see what had attracted his attention. They saw what seemed
to them a white-haired old wanderer of sixty years or more; but at first
they were wholly at a loss to explain Ben's fascinated look of growing
interest.

It was true that the old man scarcely represented the usual worthless,
criminal type that took to vagabondage. As he paused to scrutinize the
convict gang neither insolence nor fear, one of which was certainly to
be expected, became manifest in his face. They had anticipated certain
words in greeting, a certain look out of bleary, shifty eyes, but
neither materialized. True, the old man was following the cinder trail
northward, but plainly he did not belong to the brotherhood of tramps.
They saw that he was white-haired and withered, but upright; and that
undying youth dwelt in his twinkling blue eyes and the complexity of
little, good-natured lines about his mouth. Poverty, age, the hardships